What is Photo Drift?

You may ask, what is photo drift? During photogrammetric measurements, the coordinates of each photograph captured along a specific flight line are recorded with high precision within milliseconds. In this process, important image orientation parameters such as omega, phi, and kappa must also be taken into account, and these parameters must be recorded together with the coordinates in the same meticulous manner.

A similar level of precision is required during the post-processing stage. In the post-processing phase, the coordinates of the visual materials, namely the images, are balanced by shifting them based on ground control measurements obtained from local surveys. As a result of this complex process, the generated report data must remain within acceptable error limits.

If an error exceeds the acceptable margin, it usually requires rapid correction. During the photogrammetric evaluation process, if a deviation of the image position from its expected location is detected, this situation is generally referred to as “drift” in photogrammetric assessment.