Author Topic: Light field camera  (Read 1333 times)

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Scottl

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Light field camera
« on: February 29, 2012, 08:11:00 PM »
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I wonder, with a suitable macro lens element if this type of camera could resolve depth of field issues?

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/87420734/

This unit is not much use, given it is MacOS only (for now) and Facebook-oriented, but the technology is interesting.

wcfn100

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Re: Light field camera
« Reply #1 on: February 29, 2012, 09:03:07 PM »
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I wonder, with a suitable macro lens element if this type of camera could resolve depth of field issues?


That's pretty neat.  The way I read it, you would still need to stack photos and combine them after the fact.  With this camera though, you would only need a single original photograph and would be able to pick your separate points of focus to create the images to be combined.

But I'm prepared to be way off base on that.

Jason

GaryHinshaw

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Re: Light field camera
« Reply #2 on: February 29, 2012, 10:12:57 PM »
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This is a neat technology.  My understanding of how it works is that each final image pixel actually contains many sub-pixels of focus and/or depth information, made possible by micro-lenses in front of the CCD.  The software can change focus by recombining the sub-pixel data differently.  The limitation is inherently low resolution, since the sub-pixels are normal CCD pixels.  This can be overcome with larger optics and detector arrays, but that is expensive.  In the short run, if high resolution is desired, one is probably better off stacking images with Helicon or the equivalent.  But this light field technology is likely to scale up nicely.

-Gary

DKS

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GaryHinshaw

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Re: Light field camera
« Reply #4 on: March 01, 2012, 03:38:46 AM »
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Thanks for the reminder David - I thought it seemed familiar.

I have to say that I don't get the point of the Facebook demo in the video.  The user clicks a portion of the image and the picture focuses there.  Why wouldn't the software just go ahead and focus the entire image by default?  Then let the user defocus areas, if desired.   In any case, it will be interesting to see how this gets used.

-gfh
« Last Edit: March 01, 2012, 03:43:31 AM by GaryHinshaw »

ljudice

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Re: Light field camera
« Reply #5 on: March 03, 2012, 11:29:46 AM »
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