Overview

This section describes the process and best practices for calibrating your camera installed on Arago.

It is essential to calibrate the camera after mounting it on Arago to calculate all its intrinsics such as position and orientation in space, field of view and focal length. All resulting values collectively contribute to an optimal set of captured images used for reconstructing your subject. Arago Control utilizes the calibration values when interpreting camera live view AR overlap, positioning the camera 3D twin representation, automatic positions generator, camera focus frustum, and computing the coverage heatmap.
The calibration process has to be performed only once per camera+lens combination. Resulting calibration values are then saved as a calibration preset and can be re-used in your future projects.

If Arago Control cannot tether to the camera, the calibration process should still be done.

WARNING Skipping the camera calibration and posing step can lead to misbehaviour of safety algorithms and cause potential damage. Generated travel positions will not be accurately representative of the camera physical location and orientation which can result in an incorrect travel path.

Recommendations

For the best possible automatic capture of marker images for calibration it is recommended to:

• Use prime lenses below 80mm in focal length.
• Use a good ambient diffused lighting setup.
  

  LightArray note When using LightArray as a primary light source for calibration, it is highly advised to switch to the ‘ALL’ triggering mode with polarization Enabled.

• Aperture or F-stop number of f8+. Make sure the calibration chart is in full focus.
• Once the images are taken make sure the calibration chart is fully visible in all images taken.
• Calibration chart has to be fastened on the turntable extension with provided screws. Make sure the chart doesn’t vibrate or shake during the capture process.

New Calibration setup

If more than one camera is mounted on Arago, you need to select which camera acts as Primary camera. The Calibration workflow applies only to your main primary camera. Any other camera will act as supporting camera.

In the ‘Calibration & Posing’ section of the Camera panel click ‘New Calibration’. This opens the ‘Camera & Lens Calibration’ window.

1. Place the Calibration Chart

on the second level of the turntable extension (at 60cm/23.6″ height). Follow the installation steps outlined in the Turntable extension installation guide. Make sure the chart and the turntable extension are fully mounted and are not causing vibration or shakiness during movement.

NOTE Inspect the calibration chart for any visual deformations, dust or stains. The surface of the chart should be straight and clean to achieve accurate calibration results.

2. Mount the Camera

on Arago horizontally (landscape) with the provided bracket and the shoe mount. Make sure the camera is visually centred on the tilt element. Use the sliding bracket to re-adjust and secure if necessary.

3. Drive Manually Arago

with the camera live view ON until the calibration chart is fully framed in the camera’s field of view. Make sure the chart is front-facing the camera.

Provide some space both above and below the chart to prevent any clipping.

 

4. Start Capture for Calibration

First of set Quality in the Camera Tethering panel to JPEG Fine Large or similar. Make sure you have a clear scene (no positions or proxy models) and Click on ‘Start Capture for Calibration’. This action will load a list of positions along with a chart 3D model acting as a scan volume and activate panel for starting the capture travel.

 Make sure everything is in place and begin capture for calibration by clicking the ‘Play’ icon in the capture panel. The travel should take roughly 3 minutes.

5. Start Calibration from Images

When the image capturing process is finished, move on to ‘Start Calibration from Images’ and select all the images taken. At this point, it is recommended to inspect images for any out-of-focus or miss-framed images and discard them from the selection. The calibration process will automatically begin after selecting images. This process might take up to 10 minutes depending on the power of your computer. During the calibration process, you can observe the calibration results per image and detected markers. It is possible to identify problematic images by observing individual ‘Reprojection Error’ values. In case any major error value is present, repeat the capture process.

 

6. Evaluate Calibration Computation Result

When the calibration process is finished, the results are displayed. The important part at this point is the ‘Reprojection Error’ shown in bold. The reprojection error should be minimal. The result is color-coded in the following way:
Green – a good reprojection error of <1
Yellow – an average reprojection error of 1-2. In case you observe digital camera placement or field-of-view discrepancies in comparison to the physical camera – try re-starting the process.
Red – a bad reprojection error of >2. It is recommended to restart the calibration process. The results are too erroneous to be used for effective calibration.

 

7. Save Calibration Configuration

Now you can save the calibration file generated as a ‘Calibration Preset’. This preset can also be exported. The preset will be available for later use within the ‘Calibration Preset’ dropdown in the ‘Calibration & Posing’ tab of your primary camera. We recommend naming the calibration preset in a way that describes the camera & lens combination used i.e. “NikonD850+50mm”.

8. Camera Posing: Alignment Calibration

Effectively, the camera calibration is done by taking a picture of another marker already installed on the rig. In order to pose the virtual camera in relation to the physical one, it is required to take a single image of the marker placed in front of Arago’s X-axis as illustrated in the following image.

 

Manually drive Arago unit by using the motion controls until the marker is fully visible by the camera and is targeted at an approximate 45 degree angle. Placement of the camera to take the posing image doesn’t have to be too precise as long as the marker is in focus.

 

In the ‘Calibration & Posing’ tab of your camera click on a ‘Take Marker Photo and Pose’. This action snaps a photo and calibrates the camera based on the selected “Active Preset”. Make sure the preset matches the used camera setup. In case the process is done with a camera incompatible with the Camera Tethering Support, Arago Control will prompt to load the image manually.

If the virtual camera live view and the primary camera live view do not adjust properly to match, make sure the marker is in focus when taking an image. This can also happen if the reprojection error is too high.

WARNING It is important the camera is not moved manually after posing, as this invalidates the process. If the camera is moved, repeat step (8).

At this point, the virtual camera position and field of view are re-adjusted and the calibration process is completed.

The post Camera Calibration and Posing appeared first on Rigsters.

Overview

 

The Camera Tethering Support can function in untethered mode or in tethered mode.

Untethered mode is the initial mode when there is no camera connected to the PC via Arago or when the camera model is incompatible with the Tethering Support. In this mode the Camera panel is limited to only a few settings which can be manually changed by the user.

 

Tethered mode is initiated as soon as a compatible camera is connected to Arago. Starting Arago Control also starts the listener for detecting connected cameras. Initially, if there are no cameras connected, the panel will be available only with general settings in untethered mode. 

 

To activate the Camera Tethering Support you must login to Arago Control with the provided credentials. This is a one-time requirement and the activation will persist across sessions and updates.

 

Untethered mode

 

Untethered mode initiates by default. In this mode, only Aperture, Shutter Speed and Focal Length are displayed and are required by Arago Control to calculate distortion coefficients used in depth-of-field computations of auto-generated positions. In this mode, users are required to manually input the values to align with the camera settings.

Camera Calibration and Posing is also possible and should be done before proceeding to travel and take images.

 

 

Tethering to Your Camera

 

Once mounted on Arago, connect the Camera via USB to one of the ports available in the back of the tilt. If you are using one of the cameras mentioned in the list of compatible cameras, Arago Control will automatically connect to it and load all the settings.

There can be settings such as Program Mode which are not editable via software, depending on the used camera model and the underlying software operating system that the camera has to offer.

It is highly important to Calibrate and Pose the camera before capturing images with Arago.

Multi-Cam Support

 

The Camera Tethering Support can connect to up to 3 cameras simultaneously, mounted on Arago. In this case, you need to specify which camera is your primary camera.

To change between cameras, you can open the camera dropdown and select a different camera.

The primary camera should be indicated by the user. Arago Control automatically sets the first connected camera as primary camera. However, we recommend to mark as primary camera the unit mounted in the center of the tilt element. The other cameras will act as supporting cameras.

When connecting multiple cameras, remember that your captured dataset expands with each additional camera. In such scenarios, it is recommended to generate fewer positions, but with more dispersion, as the parallax effect is guaranteed by the supporting camera(s).

 

Live View

 

You can enable live view by using the checkbox available in the Camera panel (1). The live view can be used to check in realtime any camera settings adjustments made and can also be used for the AR overlap functionality (2).

  
Multiple live views can be opened in parallel for each connected camera.

 

Image Download Path

 

All downloaded images go to the Images directory of your project. If no project has been created or selected, images will be downloaded to Pictures/Arago Control.

You can specify your own naming conventions for downloaded image files by setting a custom file naming expression in the Image Path tab of Arago Control Settings. To open Settings, navigate to View and click Settings.

To compose a file naming expression, use the accepted capital letters in between square brackets. Make sure the Preview of your expression is valid (the text is not in red). Here are a few examples of naming conventions:

 

[C]/[E]/[O] = camera_name/photo_type/photo_name i.e. Canon_R5/JPG/IMG_0000.JPG

Polarised/[O] = Polarised/photo_name i.e. Polarised/IMG_1234.jpg

 

Supported Camera Models

 

Canon

 

Canon M6 Mark II

Canon M50

Canon M50 Mark II

Canon M100

Canon M200

Canon R

Canon Ra

Canon R1

Canon R3

Canon R5

Canon R5 C

Canon R5 Mark II

Canon R6

Canon R6 Mark II

Canon R6 Mark III

Canon R7

Canon R8

Canon R10

Canon R50

Canon R100

Canon RP

Canon 1D C

Canon 1D Mark III

Canon 1D Mark IV

Canon 1D X

Canon 1D X Mark II

Canon 1D X Mark III

Canon 1Ds Mark III

Canon 5D

Canon 5D Mark II

Canon 5D Mark III

Canon 5D Mark IV

Canon 5Ds

Canon 5Ds R

Canon 6D

Canon 6D Mark II

Canon 7D

Canon 7D Mark II

Canon 40D

Canon 50D

Canon 60D

Canon 60Da

Canon 70D

Canon 77D / 9000D

Canon 80D

Canon 90D

Canon 100D / Rebel SL1 / Kiss X7

Canon 200D / Rebel SL2 / Kiss X8

Canon 250D / Rebel SL3 / Kiss X10 / 200D Mark II

Canon 350D

Canon 400D

Canon 450D / Rebel XSi / Kiss X2

Canon 500D / Rebel T1i / Kiss X3

Canon 550D / Rebel T2i / Kiss X4

Canon 600D / Rebel T3i / Kiss X5

Canon 650D / Rebel T4i / Kiss X6i

Canon 700D / Rebel T5i / Kiss X7i

Canon 750D / Rebel T6i / Kiss X8i

Canon 760D / Rebel T6s / 8000D

Canon 800D / Rebel T7i / Kiss X9i

Canon 850D / Rebel T8i / Kiss X10i

Canon 1000D / Rebel XS / Kiss F

Canon 1100D / Rebel T3 / Kiss X50

Canon 1200D / Rebel T5 / Kiss X70

Canon 1300D / Rebel T6 / Kiss X80

Canon 2000D / Rebel T7 / Kiss X90 / 1500D

Canon 4000D / Rebel T100 / 3000D

 

Nikon

 

Nikon Z5

Nikon Z5 II

Nikon Z6

Nikon Z6 II

Nikon Z6 III

Nikon Z7

Nikon Z7 II

Nikon Z8

Nikon Z9

Nikon Z30

Nikon Z50

Nikon Z50 II

Nikon Zf

Nikon Zfc

Nikon ZR

Nikon D3

Nikon D3s

Nikon D3X

Nikon D4

Nikon D4s

Nikon D5

Nikon D6

Nikon DF

Nikon D200

Nikon D800

Nikon D800E

Nikon D810

Nikon D810A

Nikon D850

Nikon D700

Nikon D750

Nikon D780

Nikon D600

Nikon D610

Nikon D300

Nikon D300s

Nikon D500

Nikon D7000

Nikon D7100

Nikon D7200

Nikon D7500

Nikon D5000

Nikon D5100

Nikon D5200

Nikon D5300

Nikon D5500

Nikon D5600

Nikon D3000

Nikon D3100

Nikon D3200

Nikon D3300

Nikon D3400

Nikon D3500

Nikon D40

Nikon D60

Nikon D80

Nikon D90

Nikon S2800

Nikon S3600

Nikon S6700

Nikon S9100

 

Sony

 

Sony a6000

Sony a6100

Sony a6300

Sony a6400

Sony a6500

Sony a6600

Sony a6700

Sony a1

Sony a1 II

Sony a7

Sony a7 II

Sony a7 III

Sony a7 IV

Sony a7 V

Sony a7C

Sony a7C II

Sony a7CR

Sony a7R

Sony a7R II

Sony a7R III

Sony a7R IV

Sony a7R V

Sony a7S

Sony a7S II

Sony a7S III

Sony a9

Sony a9 II

Sony a9 III

Sony FX3

Sony FX30

Sony ILX-LR1

Sony UMC-R10C

Sony ZV-E1

Sony ZV-E10

Sony ZV-E10 II

Fujifilm

Fujifilm GFX 50r

Fujifilm GFX 50s

Fujifilm GFX 50s II

Fujifilm GFX 100

Fujifilm GFX 100 II

Fujifilm GFX 100s

Fujifilm X-H1

Fujifilm X-H2

Fujifilm X-H2S

Fujifilm X-S10

Fujifilm X-T1

Fujifilm X-T2

Fujifilm X-T3

Fujifilm X-T4

Fujifilm X-T5

The post Camera Tethering Support appeared first on Rigsters.

To achieve consistent results in photogrammetry and photometry, your camera must act as a reliable data acquisition sensor. This requires disabling all “intelligent” image processing and ensuring the camera remains in a predictable state across thousands of frames.

1. General Configuration (Universal)

Before any capture, ensure these “Global Offs” are applied to prevent inconsistencies between shots:

• Image Stabilization: Turned OFF. In-body and lens-based stabilization can cause subtle “sensor drift” or frame-to-frame shifts.
  • Sony: SteadyShot → Off
  • Nikon: Vibration Reduction → Off
  • Canon: IS (Image Stabilizer) mode → Off
• White Balance: Must be set to a Fixed Preset (e.g., Daylight 5600K) or a specific Kelvin value. Never use Auto White Balance (AWB).
• Dynamic Range Enhancements: Turned OFF. These features apply local tone mapping which ruins photometric consistency.
  • Sony: D-Range Optimizer (DRO) → Off
  • Nikon: Active D-Lighting → Off
  • Canon: Auto Lighting Optimizer → Off
• Lens Corrections: Turned OFF. Disable Auto Distortion, Peripheral Illumination, and Chromatic Aberration corrections.
• Auto Rotation: Turned OFF. Ensure Auto Image Rotation is disabled so all images retain a consistent orientation in the buffer.

USB Tethering

For AragoControl to communicate with your camera, the USB mode must be correctly configured:

• Sony: USB Connection Mode → Remote Shooting (PC Remote).
• Nikon: USB connection priority → Shooting.
• Canon: Most R-series cameras handle this automatically, but ensure Wi-Fi/Bluetooth connections are disabled to prioritize the USB bus.

USB Power Management

To ensure maximum stability during high-speed data transfer, we recommend disabling internal USB power features. Relying on the USB bus for power can cause connection drops or communication timeouts during intensive capture sequences.

• Power Recommendations: Only use the provided dummy battery adapter or original manufacturer batteries or dummy battery adapter. For long-duration sessions, a dummy battery is the preferred method to provide clean, consistent power without interrupting the USB data bus.
• Disable USB Power Delivery/Charging: Switch off any settings that allow the camera to charge or draw power via the USB-C cable (e.g., Nikon’s USB power delivery or Sony’s USB Power Supply).

2. Photogrammetry Workflow (AutoFocus)

Applicable to LightArray ‘ALL’ or ‘ALL + PALL’ shooting modes.

For high-speed automated capture where the subject depth might vary slightly, use the following AF configuration:

• Focus Mode: Set to AF-C (Continuous AF).
• Priority Settings: Set Shutter Release Priority to Release. This ensures the camera triggers exactly when AragoControl commands it, even if a perfect focus lock isn’t confirmed.
  • Sony: Priority Set in AF-C → Release.
  • Nikon: a1 AF-C priority selection → Release.
  • Canon: AF-C Priority → Release.
• Focus Area: * Center Tracking: For the most accurate representation of AragoControl’s focus coverage estimations, use a Fixed Centre Point.
  • Tracking Modes: If the center point struggles, use Full-Area AF (Sony: Tracking: Wide, Canon: Whole Area AF) with Subject Tracking enabled. Nikon’s 3D Tracking is also highly effective for this.
• Drive Mode: Use Single Frame shooting.
• AragoControl Tuning: Adjust focus delays to account for lens motor speed and ambient light. Navigate to: Window → Settings → Delays → Focus Time (ms).

3. Manual Focus & Photometry (OLAT)

Applicable to photometric OLAT modes and fixed-distance workflows.

• Pre-Focusing: Always achieve focus in AF first, then toggle the lens or body to MF (Manual Focus). This prevents the camera from “hunting” during a high-speed light sequence.
• OLAT Burst Mode: Photometric LightArray modes work best in Continuous High Speed drive modes (ideally 10fps burst).
• Note: Ensure your buffer can handle the sequence length to avoid frame drops.

4. Brand-Specific Considerations

Sony

• Electronic Front Curtain: On newer models (e.g., a7R IV/V), set e-Front Curtain Shutter to ON. This minimizes mechanical delay and ensures better synchronization with the LightArray’s strobe timing.

Canon

• Lens Restrictions: Be aware that some Canon-native RF lenses (and certain EF lenses via adapters) do not support the maximum “Continuous High Speed+” frame rates. Check your specific lens compatibility if you experience stuttering during OLAT sequences.

5. General Tips & Tricks

• Prioritize Electronic Shutter: Whenever possible, use the Electronic Shutter. Photogrammetry sessions often involve thousands of shots; using the electronic shutter prevents shutter wear and eliminates mechanical vibrations.
• The “Sweet Spot”: Always use high-quality prime lenses that remain sharp at high f-stop values to minimize diffraction.
• Exposure Simulation: Turn OFF exposure simulation in the viewfinder/LCD when working in a dark studio with strobes so you can still frame your subject.
• Power Management: Disable all “Auto Power Off” or “Eco Mode” settings. Always use a dummy battery for long sessions.
• Firmware Updates: Always ensure your camera and lenses are running the latest firmware. Manufacturers frequently release updates that improve USB tethering stability, AF tracking reliability, and compatibility with high-speed burst modes – all of which are critical for the Arago workflow.

6. Workflow-specific settings

When working with M-XR Marso or Inciprocal pipelines, please refer to their native documentation resources since they rely on particular camera configuration factors:

• M-XR Marso camera doc
• Inciprocal manual

The post Camera Setup appeared first on Rigsters.