While satellite imagery is in the news more aerial photography still offers a number of advantages, for example our US aerial photography is typically more affordable, especially for large area coverage, and may be available at a higher resolution (level of detail) than the currently best-available commercial satellite imagery.

Land Info offers a variety of aerial photography products including USGS DOQQs (Digital Ortho Quarter Quads), USDA NAIP (National Agriculture Imagery Program), USGS Urban-Area High-Res and AirPhotoUSA. All but AirPhotoUSA are public domain from US government and therefore typically priced lower than commercial imagery products – on larger orders in fact Land Info actually offers volume discount pricing significantly lower than the cost to purchase direct from US government, and couples the savings with improved service including much faster turn-around times and multiple purchasing / shipping options.

At least one of the lower-priced US government aerial photography products is available for any AOI (Area of Interest) in the continental US (for some AOIs a variety of products are available). DOQQ and Urban-Area High-Res coverage extends to the majority of Puerto Rico but only limited aerial coverage is available of Alaska (Anchorage) and Hawaii (Honolulu / Oahu). AirPhotoUSA products are available for multiple US major metro markets and are typically more up-to-date than USGS Urban Area High-Res aerial photography. The majority of our aerial photography options are only available for the US -- we do offer a limited selection of aerial photography for Canada, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East however outside of the US high-res satellite imagery such as QuickBird, WorldView, Ikonos and GeoEye is typically used.

For aerial photography examples please see our gallery.

Please contact us with your AOI and intended application; we’ll then confirm the best-available aerial options for your specific project.

Land Info also offers custom processing services such as re-projection, format translation, tonal balancing, mosaic output and wavelet compression, along with an off-the-shelf product consisting of the best-available US government ortho aerial photography integrated to a single dataset.

DOQQs were the first US digital aerial photography products to be widely available on a national-level scale. Typically either 1m pan (gray-scale) or CIR (color infra-red) (some quads were re-flown and available as both pan and CIR), DOQQs cover almost all of the lower 48 states and most of Puerto Rico; only limited coverage is available of Alaska.

Each DOQQ covers an area of 3.75 minutes of latitude by 3.75 minutes of longitude (roughly four miles by four miles) and meets 1:12,000 NMAS (National Map Accuracy Standards, equivalent to 10m CE 90).

NAIP is aerial photography acquired by USDA contractors during agricultural growing seasons. The imagery offers the advantages of typically being natural color (a small number of states are CIR), more up-to-date (2002 and newer – acquisitions are on-going) and in the case of CCMs (Compressed County Mosaics) tonally balanced (not entirely seamlessly) / mosaicked by county. Most NAIP imagery is the same 1m resolution as DOQQs however some is acquired at 2m. NAIP imagery is currently ortho-rectified using control points from DOQQs – as specs only call for 1m NAIP to match the reference DOQQs to within 5 meters, 2m NAIP to within 10 meters, NAIP can be less accurate than DOQQs however experience shows the match to be significantly better than the published requirements.

With the 2007 NAIP releases the coverage of the continental US is complete except that most of New Mexico and West Virginia are missing along with a smaller part of Nevada. Land Info has the entire CCM NAIP dataset in-house (approximately 3TB) and available for immediate delivery.

USGS and NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency) contractors have been acquiring higher-res ortho aerials for major metropolitan areas, sometimes extending to larger regions such as counties, smaller states, coastal areas and border regions. The imagery is 2002 – 2006, typically natural color and 30cm (1 ft.) resolution but as high as 15cm (half foot) and as low as 1m. Unlike NAIP imagery the seasonality of the imagery varies. The main advantages of these datasets are higher resolution (level of detail), higher accuracy (often 3m RMSE) and tonal balancing / mosaic output by major metro area. Please contact Land Info for an up-to-date list of all available datasets.

AirPhotoUSA, now a DigitalGlobe company, offers high-res ortho-rectified aerial photography predominately of major metro markets. While there is some overlap between AirPhotoUSA and US government Urban Area High-Res imagery, AirPhotoUSA is typically updated much more frequently and also covers additional areas. All imagery is true natural color, current resolutions varies between ½ ft. (6 inches) – 2 ft.; whenever possible urban areas are acquired at 6 inch resolution, some are even targeted at 3 inch. Accuracy is a high 2 - 5m CE 90, and all imagery is output as eye-pleasing, tonally balanced seamless mosaics. Transitioning from traditional film to digital cameras, starting in 2008 all imagery acquisitions will be entirely digital to allow for larger-area coverage and faster turn-around times.

• TIFF with TFW
• GeoTIFF
• ERS (ER Mapper)
• IDRISI (.rst)
• JPEG 2000

• JPEG with JPW
• Generic Binary (.bil / .blw)
• Img (ERDAS)
• ECW (ER Mapper, compressed)
• MrSid (compressed)