Description:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>The quality of 3D scene reconstruction and monitoring through structure‐from‐motion multiview stereo (SfM‐<jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">MVS</jats:styled-content>) depends on critical key factors, including camera calibration and image network geometry. The goal of this paper is to examine the monitoring ability of an SfM‐<jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">MVS</jats:styled-content> workflow based on four or more ground‐based digital single‐lens reflex (<jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">DSLR</jats:styled-content>) cameras and to estimate differences when adopting both fixed and variable camera positions and orientations. This was achieved by conducting work on a scaled laboratory testfield and a sea cliff. Tests demonstrate that a monitoring system using just four fixed cameras can achieve valuable monitoring capabilities and tolerate imperfections in the camera calibration. Furthermore, such a configuration can achieve accuracies comparable to terrestrial laser scanning (<jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">TLS</jats:styled-content>) and drone‐based photogrammetry. The study demonstrates that minimising registration errors between point clouds is critical. The “registration <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">SIFT</jats:styled-content>” approach could resolve such problems.</jats:p>