A unified rotation-based self-calibration strategy, which can be applied to both central catadioptric cameras and pin-hole cameras, is proposed for camera intrinsic parameter self-calibration. The two types of cameras are described by a unified spherical projection model. It is proved that when the camera frame makes pure rotation, the distance between spherical projection points for any two static feature points remains unchanged, based on which, a set of constraint equations with respect to camera intrinsic parameters are designed. An optimization function is constructed and finally solved by numerical algorithms. Compared with existing methods, the proposed calibration scheme can be applied to both central catadioptric cameras and pin-hole cameras, and it does not need any complex matrix computation. Simulation and experimental results show that the proposed strategy presents such merits as good robustness regarding image noise and undesired small translation, easy implementation, and sufficiently high calibration precision.