the pinhole model.

  • Similar to thin lens model in Physics: central rays are not deviated.
  • Assumes lens camera in focus.
  • Useful approximation but ignores important lens distortions.

pinhole camera transformation

  • add virtual image plane, where focal length is dist between camera center and image plane

how do we project 3D points into 2D image coordinates? P is the answer.

  • P holds the camera intrinsics and extrinsics info

  • camera coordinates = world coordinates

  • want a camera matrix P such that the points get transformed to image coordinates

  • need to generalize matrix by translating from camera coordinate system to image coordinate system (diff image origins)

    • camera coordinate system observes something on the image plane, at (x,y,z) cm
    • the real image coordinate is in pixels (i,j) on a 2d plane
    • this involves scaling + translation
  • the camera system is not at the origin of the world, so there is

    • 3D point in world coordinates
    • 3D point in camera coordinates
    • 2D point in image coordinates
  • we need to align world coordinate system with camera coordinate system to do the math

    • transformation

camera and lenses

  • focal length
  • aperture = light intensity of image pixels
    • smaller aperture less light passes thru less diffraction and clearer image

also

How do we estimate P and its components? camera calibration & pose estimation