Can We Calibrate a Camera Using an Image of a Flat Textureless Lambertian Surface?

In this paper, we show that it is possible to calibrate a camera
using just a flat, textureless Lambertian surface and constant illumination.
This is done using the effects of off-axis illumination and
vignetting, which result in reduction of light into the camera at off-axis
angles. We use these imperfections to our advantage. The intrinsic parameters
that we consider are the focal length, principal point, aspect
ratio, and skew. We also consider the effect of the tilt of the camera. Preliminary
results from simulated and real experiments show that the focal
length can be recovered relatively robustly under certain conditions.