U.S. Department of the Interior

U.S. Geological Survey

Fact Sheet 2005-3074

August 2005

Land Remote Sensing

USGS Releases New Digital Aerial Products

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Center for Earth 

Resources Observation and Science (EROS) has initiated 

distribution of digital aerial photographic products produced by 

scanning or digitizing film from its historical aerial photography 

film archive. This archive, located in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 

contains thousands of rolls of film that contain more than 8

million frames of historic aerial photographs. The largest

portion of this archive consists of original film acquired by 

Federal agencies from the 1930s through the 1970s to produce 

1:24,000-scale USGS topographic quadrangle maps. Most of 

this photography is reasonably large scale (USGS photography 

ranges from 1:8,000 to 1:80,000) to support the production of 

the maps.

Two digital products are currently available for ordering:

high-resolution scanned products and medium-resolution

digitized products.

High-Resolution Scanned Products 

High-resolution files (Figs. 3 and 4) are photogrammetric 

quality and generally created at approximately 1,200 dots per 

inch (dpi) with an output image size of around 9 inches square. 

File sizes are approximately 120 megabytes (MB) for blackand-white images and 360 

MB for color images and 

are stored in a Tagged 

Image File Format 

(TIFF). High-resolution files are produced 

on either a Zeiss SCAI 

Precision Scanner using a 

Photogrammetric Digital 

Image Processing 

System (PHODIS) or 

on a Leica Geosystems 

DSW600 (Fig. 1) or DSW700 Digital Scanning Workstation. 

High-resolution scans of up to 3,600 dpi are available 

upon request.

Le ica G eosystem s DSW 600

Figure 1. Leica Geosystems DSW600

Medium-Resolution Digitized Products

Medium-resolution files (Fig. 5) are non-photogrammetric 

quality and created at approximately 600 dpi with an output 

image size of around 5 inches square. File sizes are approximately 15 MB for black-and-white images and 45 MB for

color images and are 

stored in a TIFF format. 

Medium-resolution files 

are produced using a 

Phoenix IV digitizing 

system (Fig. 2) with a 

digital camera and Adobe 

Photoshop software.

Phoen ix IV D igiti zing System Figure 2. Phoenix IV digitizing system

For More Information

Samples of high-resolution and medium-resolution digital 

data for two frames of photography over an area of New York 

City taken in 1966 at a scale of 1:24,000 can be downloaded to 

your site using File Transfer Protocol (FTP) from the following 

location: http://edc.usgs.gov/phoenix_iv/new_york.

All National Aerial Photography Program (NAPP) data can

be searched and ordered through Photofinder (a “quick and 

easy” search and order tool devoted solely to NAPP) at

http://edc.usgs.gov/photofinder or through EarthExplorer at

http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/.

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)

Center for Earth Resources

Observation and Science (EROS)

Customer Services

Mundt Federal Building

Sioux Falls, SD 57198-0001

Phone: 800-252-4547

Phone: 605-594-6151

TDD: 605-594-6933

Fax: 605-594-6589

Email: custserv@usgs.gov