The Microsoft UltraCam business unit today announced winners of its recently staged image contest. The competition invited UltraCam customers to submit their most impressive aerial photos, captured with any model of UltraCam, to be considered for judging, with the end goal of recognizing and publicizing the 12 best from among the submissions.
In response to the call for entries, the UltraCam team received roughly 100 image submissions posted to the UltraCam Facebook page. The images featured world-wide locations that included mountain ranges, national parks, coastlines, deserts, farmlands, urban centers, as well as points of interest such as national buildings and monuments, stadiums, museums, and aircraft in flight and on the ground. The submissions ranged in ground sample distance from 4-50cm and were captured by nearly every commercially available UltraCam sensor model including the UltraCamX, UltraCamXp, UltraCamLp and the original UltraCamD released in 2003.
The image submissions were evaluated by the UltraCam team and each photo was assigned a rating for its clarity, detail, color quality, and uniqueness of content. From the contest entries, the following were recognized as the top 12 winners:
Aerial Surveys Ltd. — Motuhoa Island, Tauranga Harbour, NZ
Fugro Maps Ltd. — Star Dunes, Sultanate of Oman
IMAO Aerial Survey Solutions – Sainte Marie Island, Madagascar East Coast
Aerial Surveys Ltd.– SH1 Road & Rail Bridges, Waitake River, Otago,NZ
Terra Messflug GmbH — St. Johann, Tyrol, Austria
Infoterra Ltd. — Shallow Coral Reef Shores, South Mauritius
Topocart — UHE Jaguari – São José dos Campos
Weser Airborne Sensing GmbH & Co. KG — Dresden, Germany
NZ Aerial Mapping Ltd. — Peak of Mt. Taranaki, New Plymouth, NZ
Keystone Aerial Surveys Ltd. — Sarasota, Florida
Astrium Services — Biggin Hill Airshow, London, England
Aerial Surveys Ltd. — Lake Waitaki, Otago, NZ
These images are now featured on the new Multimedia page of the UltraCam Web Site as well as in the entrance to the office of Microsoft subsidiary, Vexcel Imaging (Graz, Austria), headquarters for the UltraCam operation.
About Microsoft’s UltraCam Business Unit
With its operations based in Graz, Austria, and sales and support teams in North America, Microsoft’s Photogrammetry Division brings more than two decades of photogrammetry expertise to Microsoft’s Bing Maps business unit. The division is responsible for the highly successful line of UltraCam digital aerial mapping systems that include the UltraCamLp, UltraCamXp and UltraCamXp Wide Angle and the new UltraCam Eagle digital photogrammetric sensors. Rounding out the UltraCam mapping systems offering is the UltraMap workflow software system that provides an automated project-based color balancing module and additional quality control tools.
