Principals and Pupils of Lenslet-Based Light Field Camera Calibration

Lenslet-based light field cameras offer rich geometric and radiometric data enabling advanced imaging applications such as 3D geometry estimation and novel view synthesis supporting complex illumination phenomena. However, manufacturing variations necessitate robust calibration techniques where metrically grounded measurements are desired. This work introduces a principal plane and pupil-centric camera model that addresses limitations in existing calibration methods that prevent their use in commonly occurring optical configurations including telephoto and wide-field modes. By incorporating pupil and principal plane locations and pupil magnification, we derive a numerically stable, generally applicable, and physically grounded intrinsic model, a 4D distortion model describing complex aberrations, and a distance-normalized image-space reprojection error for balanced performance across spatial and angular domains. We evaluate on two commercial camera types across five focal configurations, comparing to two state of the art methods, and show superior reprojection and pose estimation accuracy and stable operation across all modes. We also show improved rectification performance in both view synthesis and epipolar plane consistency. Our approach generalizes to a variety of light field cameras including commercially available and bespoke systems, providing a robust foundation for calibrated light field processing. Code and data are publicly available.