Drone photogrammetry: measuring from photographs
What photogrammetry is, what it produces, and what actually decides its accuracy.
Photogrammetry means measuring an object or a piece of ground from photographs. By capturing the same point from several angles, you recover its position in space — and, point by point, the full shape of what you flew over.
It is what turns a series of photos into data: a plan, a terrain model, a stockpile volume.
What it produces
- an orthophoto — a rectified image you can measure distances on;
- a point cloud, then a terrain or surface model;
- a textured 3D model;
- volumes: material stockpiles, earthworks, site progress.
What decides accuracy
This is where quotes diverge, and the reason is rarely explained.
Overlap. Each point on the ground must appear in several photos — in practice 70 to 80 % overlap. Flying too fast or too widely spaced leaves gaps no software fills.
Flight height, which sets the ground pixel size: flying higher covers more ground and measures less finely. That trade-off is decided before take-off, not after.
Ground control points. Without markers surveyed by precision GNSS, the model is internally consistent but floats in space: internal distances are right, absolute position is not. For a cadastral plan or a tie-in, that is disqualifying.
Light. Hard shadows and uniform surfaces — water, sand, snow, a new roof — deprive the algorithm of the reference points it lives on.
What Waypoint360 does, and what it does not
We do not process images. Waypoint360 computes no point cloud, no 3D model, no orthophoto — that is the job of dedicated software, and saying so is more useful than letting you assume otherwise.
What we cover is everything around the flight: preparation, zones, logbook, compliance, and archiving the mission's documents.
And on the client side: the directory lets you find an operator who declares survey and mapping among their activities, with their qualifications.
Going further
- Orthophoto — the image you measure on.
- GSD — what one pixel represents on the ground.
- LiDAR — the other route, when photography is not enough.