Optical transfer function measurment facility for aerial survey cameras

The optical transfer function measurement facility developed at the National Research Council of Canada primarily for testing aerial survey cameras has been upgraded to perform the task in an appreciably more convenient manner. Modifications made to the facility, which is based on the line spread function technique, include the replacement of the cumbersome physical scanning mechanism and detector unit with a detector assembly comprising a relay lens and a linear photodiode array. While eliminating the need for physically scanning the line spread function, it did require a change of light source, a daylight filter, and a new computer software package. The new setup is described in this paper. Several aerial survey cameras have been evaluated with the system, and results are given for a fairly standard Zeiss camera.