During the last years the number of available low-cost digital
consumer cameras has significantly increased while their prices decrease.
Therefore for many applications with no high-end accuracy requirements
it is an important consideration whether to use low-cost cameras.
This paper investigates in the use of consumer cameras for photogrammetric
measurements and vision systems.
An important aspect of the suitability of these cameras is their geometric
stability. Two aspects should be considered: The change of calibration parameters
when using the camera's features such as zoom or auto focus and the time
invariance of the calibration parameters. Therefore laboratory calibrations
of different cameras have been carried out at different times. The resulting
calibration parameters, especially the principal distance and the principal
point, and their accuracies are given. The usefulness of the information
given in the image header, especially the focal length, is compared to the
results of the calibration.