In example embodiments, techniques are provided for calculating camera rotation using translations between sensor-derived camera positions (e.g., from GPS) and pairwise information, producing a sensor-derived camera pose that may be integrated in an early stage of SfM reconstruction. A software process of a photogrammetry application may obtain metadata including sensor-derived camera positions for a plurality of cameras for a set of images and determine optical centers based thereupon. The software process may estimate unit vectors along epipoles from a given camera of the plurality of cameras to two or more other cameras. The software process then may determine a camera rotation that best maps unit vectors defined based on differences in the optical centers to the unit vectors along the epipoles. The determined camera rotation and the sensor-derived camera position form a sensor-derived camera pose that may be returned and used.