“Hollywood can do it why can’t you?” was the sentence that about put me over the edge back in 2000. I had inherited a “position” where I was going to be the “ortho guy”. Essentially the guy that took 9×9 scanned aerial prints and made orthoimagery out of them. Correct scaling issues and incorporate an elevation model. We had a scanner, we had software, and I had a slight idea of how it worked. Not a great idea so that’s why you had support, manuals, and a list of phone numbers of people I could call and go “I don’t know why but the RC30 Camera report hates Fiducial 4”. I had one job where I was just trying to piece together some imagery and it wouldn’t pull together. I had a bad survey point and one of the bosses said “”Hollywood can do it why can’t you? Just put it all together and “fly” over it. Like Hollywood…”
Anyway – yes – People used to strap cameras with film in them to planes to get aerial photography.
I saw two things that made me remember that stupid story over the last month or so. This article kicked off the thought train.:
Planet Labs: They are tossing out a “flock” of satellites from the International Space Station to image the earth. What they lack in pixel resolution they make up for in timeliness. Almost constant earth monitoring from these small satellites. Brand new imagery. Constantly. I can only imagine the headache of storage.
Sky Box Imaging: Video from a satellite. That’s all I can say on that one. Video. Imagine overlaying your data on video.
So yeah – Hollywood.
