#M 
r 
y 
m 
L 
m 
L 
AMERICAN MAPPING CAMERAS 
Clarice L. Norton 
Director, Calibration Laboratory 
Fairchild Space and Defense Systems 
A Division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation 
INTRODUCTION 
The purpose of this paper is to summarize the work that has been accomplished 
in the United States, within the last decade, toward improving the photogram- 
metric characteristics of Government mapping cameras, and to report on 
the design and test results of cameras now in the development stage and 
soon to be released. 
Specifically, three cameras will be discussed: Military cameras KC-1B 
and KC-6A, and the special vidicon zoom cameras designed for the Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory. First, the KC-1 and the important modifications 
by which it was updated, will be reviewed. Secondly, the significant photo- 
grammetric characteristics of the KC-6A, a new camera system now under 
development at Fairchild Space and Defense Systems for integration into the 
AN/USQ-28 (as noted by Di Carlo and Eakin in their paper at this convention) 
will be discussed. Finally, and quite briefly, the capabilities of the vidicon 
zoom cameras will be explained, which will enable the NASA scientists to 
obtain photogrammetric information from the first unmanned, soft-landed 
vehicle designed to survey the moon. 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE KC-1B MAPPING CAMERA 
Discussion of the KC-1B can be reduced to simply itemizing well-known facts 
about the camera which is essentially an updated KC-1. 
KC-1 
The KC-1 is a 9" x 9" format camera developed in the early 50 l s 
and equipped with a 6" f/6. 3 Planigon lens. A vignetting coat on 
the filter selectively absorbs the incident light such that it corrects 
the combined vignetting and cosine^ losses of the lens and distributes 
the energy evenly over the format area. This correction reduces the 
effective maximum aperture to a T/ 16. 
In addition - 
a) The average radial distortion for this lens does not exceed 25 
microns when balanced within a half field of 42-1/2° (although 
a sizeable quantity of lenses have been less than 15 microns).