The NSF/NCAR GV HIAPER flew forward, left, right, and downward facing digital cameras for in-flight image capture.

The forward camera is a Point Grey Research Hi-Res Flea Hi-Color, 1024x768 resolution. The Navitar DO-412 lens has a focal length of 4 mm and the field of view is about 62 x 48 degrees with some barrel distortion. This camera is located on the right wing pylon. Exposure time is automatically controlled by the camera. The image gamma is 1.0 (linear response), resulting in high-contrast images when viewed on ordinary displays.

The left-facing camera is a Point Grey Research Scorpion SCOR-20SO - Color, 1600 x 1200 resolution equipped with an Edmund Optics 6mm lens (#67-709). The field of view is 75 x 54 degrees with approximately 7% barrel distortion. Exposure time is automatically controlled by the camera. The image gamma is 1.0 (linear response), resulting in high-contrast images when viewed on ordinary displays.

The right-facing camera is a Point Grey Research Flea 3 (FL3-FW-14S3C-C) - Color, 1384x1032 resolution equipped with an Navitar 3.5 mm lens (DO-3514). The field of view is 94 x 73 degrees. Exposure time is automatically controlled by the camera. The image gamma is 1.0 (linear response), resulting in high-contrast images when viewed on ordinary displays.

For all cameras, images were acquired once per second and stored as JPEG-compressed files. No image processing was performed beyond converting the raw pixel data from the color cameras to 24 bit/pixel color images. Applying a sharpening filter as is ordinarily done by consumer digital cameras will considerably improve the appearance. The UTC date and time are encoded in the filename as YYMMDD-HHMMSS.jpg.

H.264 compressed, half-resolution movies (.mp4) were created. Each 1-second image was processed with the linux ImageMagick toolkit. The image was first cropped to 512x384 pixels. Sharpening was then performed [SHARPEN(0.0x1.0)]. Each image was then annotated in the lower left with the time the image was recorded and in the upper right with the pointing. Finally, the images were combined into a single block.

For final movies, timeseries animations of a select set of data parameters chosen by the researchers were appended to the right of each image block. These 1-second annotated images were compiled into a video stream running at 15 frames/s, 1500 kbps data rate.

The movies are playable with Quicktime, Windows media player from Windows 7, mplayer, VLC, and others.