Camera pointing error?

[Craig Putnam]

We have the camera calibrated and tracking the lightbox target using the tilt/pan mechanism. However . . . when the camera is nicely locked onto the target, it consistently points a little to the left of the target (and a little high too). This is based on an admittedly unscientific estimate of where the camera is 'boresighted'; I simply looked at the tilt/pan mechanism and where the camera appears to be aimed. It's not off by a lot, but it is most definitely off.

Being bothered by this, we ran a little experiment. We left the camera pointing exactly where it locked onto the target using the Bells & Whistles tracking code, then switched it over to the LabView GUI. When we look at the picture using that GUI, the target is dead center in the image. So it appears that the code is doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

We can certainly use the camera this way, but it is very off-putting to have it lock on nice and solidly and be pointing nearly 10 degrees to the left and up (my estimate based on the geometry of the test rig we have set up).

I did another little experiment and pulled up one side of the header used to connect the camera to the motherboard - so the camera is now a little cockeyed relative to the plane of the motherboard. As I expected, that corrected the panning problem, but it's not of course a satisfactory solution.

It acts like an alignment error in the camera unit itself, but I think that's pretty unlikely...

Has anyone else experienced this, have any ideas about what is going on or how to correct it?

Thanks in advance for your advice and wisdom.