Capture Hardware

DSLR / Mirrorless Camera

A DSLR or mirrorless camera gives you cleaner images, better lenses, and more controlled exposure than a phone, which can improve alignment and final 3DGS quality.

Stage: CaptureHigh fidelityObjectsProduction captures

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What It Does

Dedicated cameras shine when you care about final quality. They reduce compression artifacts, preserve detail, and let you choose lenses that behave consistently.

For Gaussian Splatting, the capture should be systematic: enough angles, enough close detail, and no surprise camera setting changes halfway through.

How To Use It In 3DGS

Shoot RAW or high-quality JPEG depending on your processing pipeline.
Use manual exposure and white balance to avoid flicker between views.
Move around the object or space in overlapping rings, including high and low angles.
Process or resize images consistently before alignment if needed.

Things To Watch

Changing zoom or focus during a capture can complicate camera calibration.
Very shallow depth of field looks nice in photos but is bad for reconstruction.
Overly large image sets can slow alignment; curate blurry or redundant frames.

Official And Related Links

COLMAP Documentation Agisoft Metashape ImageMagick

Settings That Usually Help

Use a fixed focal length or avoid zooming; changing focal length mid-capture creates multiple calibration groups.
Prefer deeper depth of field over artistic blur, especially for objects with detail at different depths.
Shoot a color-consistent set: manual white balance and exposure reduce flicker in trained splats.