DMC – The Digital Sensor Technology of Z/I-Imaging

Aerial cameras manufactured by Carl Zeiss have been successfully used around the world for many decades. Z/IImaging is continuing this tradition with the digital camera system DMC. The DMC uses a modular design to achieve high geometrical resolution together with multispectral capabilities. It comprises a variable number of synchronously operating CCD-matrix based array cameras that can be built together in different configurations. Four parallel cameras can generate multi-spectral R,G,B and Near Infrared imagery for the acquisition of color composites. Four panchromatic images from converging cameras, are mosaiced digitally to form a single high resolution image. The color composite image and the composed panchromatic image have the same ground coverage. The resulting image is based on central perspective view and can be handled by existing photogrammetric workstations. Based on its outstanding electronic Forward Motion Compensation the DMC reaches ground resolutions better than 2 inches. Thus it can be used for the same wide range of applications as film-based aerial camera systems like the RMK-TOP which are mostly used for mapping applications with photo scale between 1:5.000 and 1:15.000. The paper describes the properties of the camera system and modules. Test results with system components will be discussed.