Light table used to manually inspect the sites shown in the aerial images. The microscope was provided together with light table.
Since this September CAMEL lab has embarked on a digitization project of declassified U-2 spy plane imagery. The project intends to access and record the historical aerial photographies, which were taken during spy plane reconnaissance missions from late 1950s to early 1960s. U-2 aerial photographies have a high resolution quality (up to 0.5 meter) which is comparable with latest colored satellite imagery, yet these reconnaissance missions happened slightly earlier than the CORONA missions, which allows for the investigation of no longer preserved archaeological and hydrological features in the Middle Eastern landscape, before the gradual urbanization and modernization process during 1960s. Basing on the profound research potential of the quality of historical imagery from U-2 mission, more and more academic institution start their U-2 images acquisition project for archaeological purpose. Currently, Prof. Jason Ur and Prof. Emily Hammer had built online geodatabase on 10 declassified missions with the tracking footage of flight reconnaissance route at Harvard dataverse. Prof. Laurel Bestock and Prof. Oren Siegel are also building an online repository for Brown’s U-2 acquisition mission that focusing on Northern Africa region. These ongoing project inspired CAMEL lab to do complementary works for existing U-2 acquisition projects that directed by other teams. Lab director Prof. Mehrnoush Soroush decides to digitalize the photo coverage of Iranian area from the declassified missions since other projects have not included this region within their database so far.
The Microtek 9800XL scanner with spool.
The CAMEL lab selects five U-2 missions whose coverage included Iranian regions for its future digitalizing project, including B1455, B1480, B1512, B1554, B8683. The digital reproductions of U-2 imageries can only be conducted at the reading room of cartographic branch at National Archive Record Administration (NARA) at College Park, Maryland All of the camera roll cans are currently conserved in the Lexana, Kansas, the pull of the camera roll cans need be requested online one or two weeks prior the on-site visit. At September 30th, research assistant Ruijie Yao had been dispatched to NARA at College Park, Maryland to digitally record the negative images from U-2’s B1480 mission. During his onsite visit at NARA, he tested the Microtek 9800XL scanner with 1600dpi and supporting facilities (including light table and spool equipment for tracking camera roll) at the NARA cartographic reading room to scan the U-2 negative film. Scanner had larger scanning surface (10*12 inches) comparing with regular 100mm-105mm lens camera, which could minimize the visual distortion that might be caused by the stitching process of multiple scans of the negative frame. In the case of Microtek scanner, scanning each 9*18 inches U-2 negative image only requires two separated scans of 10*12 inches frame.
KH-4 CORONA imagery of Kerman region
Microtek’s scanned reproduction of negative has shown with its higher resolution quality and granulation level than the result of previously used SLR photo-stitching method by Emily Hammer and Jason Ur. Within 5 days of onsite visit at NARA, Ruijie scanned 123 high resolution frames of U-2 negative image in total, the coverage of scanned images included the archaeological, hydrological, and coastal features from Kerman, Ahvaz, Babehan, Bandar Abbas, and Hormuz island. During this visit, CAMEL lab supervisor Dominik Lukas noticed the relatively low scanning efficiency of scanner (about 20-30 frames per day with Microtek scanner verse versa 70-80 frames per day with SLR camera equipped with dully) as trade off of the high resolution quality. As a result, CAMEL team prioritized to scan the nadir (vertical camera) view aerial images and the slightly oblique images. The scans of the Kerman region and Hormuz region has shown an exceptional high imagery quality on the ancient fortress and hydraulic engineering system around these areas.
U-2 imagery of Kerman region