Tom,
“but doesn’t it still have to do that in order to “takes and average of the lens distortion from all the photos”?”
This would seem logical, but RC runs on magic not logic. lol. I’m sure there are all kinds of optimizations and complex maths that would require a PHD and a novel to understand. I wish there was a better more in depth guide explaining each setting better than the generic help in the program. As the staff only offers the minimal amount of help in posts ,I believe it is a mix between language barrier (I could be wrong, they are smarter than me) and not wanting to give away there secret sauce.
If anyone knows of more articles, web pages, youtube videos, or PDFs that go into more of the settings (more than just take overlapping pictures add control points as necessary and calculate depthmaps) that gives you a deeper understanding of the mechanics at work, I would love to read/watch it.
I want one of those big manuals like software used to come with. Remember the ones for Windows 3.1 or 95, or like your car.