Quote:
Originally Posted by LubeMaster77
Please confirm: In 1978 the U2, from way the F up could take pics so refined they could tell what postage stamp was on an envelope. I say BS but can't confirm or deny...
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I would love to be proved wrong but I have to say that is pure urban myth. I work in the aerial photography profession. The cameras and lenses of the modern era current state of the art stuff are amazing. We have hundreds of thousands of negative going back over 50 years. The old stuff is just junk by today’s standards.
We recently flew an area of downtown OKC just to make a big sample print for our customer area. It was flown very low using top professional mapping equipment. This is small piece of the image and you can see people, but not even who they are.
Our systems are designed for maximum accuracy for mapping and we hear that spy cameras don’t care about accuracy as much as sharpness. Our lens is a 6 inch focal length and is a very wide angle for a 9x9 inch image. A telephoto lens would get a ton more detail but from 60,000 feet you are shooting through 11 miles of air. It is like looking through a soda straw and trying to find the area of interest. I feel sure they can find an ICBM, or a truck and they might see the shadow of a human, but to see down to a ¼ of an inch postage stamp and read it is just beyond silly.
