Satellite image much larger than the requested coordinates

Question

I use the BingMapsRESTToolkit package to make calls to Bing Maps for satellite background images. These images are to be included in a PDF file that gets printed by our users. However, the satellite images produced by Bing Maps show a much larger area than the one requested.

Here you can see one such case. The pushpins are rendered at the actual coordinates (the MapArea BoundingBox in an ImageryRequest). As you can see, the image returned by Bing Maps has some (fairly substantial) extra padding around the requested coordinates.

Is there a way to make Bing Maps return an image that spans the requested MapArea and nothing more? (In my case, I can easily crop the image to the pushpins' pixel coordinates, which are returned by Bing Maps, but that leaves out the map attribution, which is forbidden)

Answer 1

This is to be expected. Your bounding box is used to determine the center and best integer zoom level that will fit your data. The map will rarely if ever be tight on your bounding box, and especially since the aspect ratio of your bounding box and requested image size would also need to be perfect for that to happen. Note that if fractional zoom levels were used you would end up with an image that isn't as clear because it would have to be scaled.

Here are a couple of older articles that give insights into what is happening under the hood:

https://rbrundritt.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/determining-best-map-view-for-an-array-of-locations/

https://rbrundritt.wordpress.com/2008/10/25/ve-imagery-service-and-custom-icons/