The Economics of Close-Range Photogrammetry 
L. Hardegen, Heerbrugg, Switzerland 
Abstract 
For architectural photogrammetry the architect, the person engaged in 
the conservation of monuments, the archaeologist, the art historian, 
the researcher, as well as the surveyor and the photogrammetrist have 
at their disposal a range of photographic and plotting systems whose 
design is based on the latest discoveries in optics, mechanical engi 
neering and electronics. This paper is devoted to show how these in 
struments can be used most economically in practice. 
Remarks on the use of the different instrument systems for photography 
and plotting 
As a result of the development of new photographic cameras and plotters 
for terrestrial photogrammetry, almost every photographic situation can 
be mastered by the photogrammetrist. Various photogrammetric cameras 
with different principal distances ensure utilisation of the full image 
format and the largest possible photographic scale. Such difficult spe 
cial cases as limited space, particularly difficult topographic condi 
tions, objects which are inaccessible, far away or dangerous to set 
foot in make high demands on the universality of the photographic and 
plotting system. Each field of application has its own criteria. The 
size and depth of the object, the camera distance and the required acc 
uracy vary from case to case. The final consideration, as in aerial 
photogrammetry, is to decide under which conditions photogrammetry is 
more advantageous than traditional methods. 
Description of the photographic cameras 
The new Wild P 31 Universal Terrestrial Camera was designed on the 
modular principle and consists, basically of the camera support with 
tribrach and three interchangeable metric cameras 
- the super-wide-angle camera f/5.6, f = 4.5 cm 
- the wide-angle camera f/8, f = 10 cm, and 
- the normal-angle camera f/8, f = 20 cm. 
The cameras rest in a ring on the camera support which can be tilted 
about the horizontal axis. By means of this ring, various camera tilts 
from -50° to vertical as well as the rotation of the camera about its 
axis for photographs with horizontal or vertical format are possible. 
There are fixed stops for parallel-averted or convergent photographs. 
The camera is rotated about a vertical axis relative to the middle sec 
tion of the camera support. The middle section of the camera support