Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Revolutionary "Light Field" camera tech - shoot-first, focus-later

allthingsd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 97 posts

Re: Revolutionary "Light Field" camera tech - shoot-first, focus-later

#41

Post by eridius »

sbierwagen wrote: post #31
jws wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proprietary toolchain for the dynamic images – you could embed the full dynamic information in a JPEG extension and use the JPEG thumbnail as a thumbnail and the JPEG image as your selected representation. Then you could use your nonstandard code to regenerate the JPEG image data from your full data when you wished. You can just produce a composite image that's sharp all over… – but what fun is that? I'm having a gra…

It's a piece of first-generation consumer electronics, made in small production runs by a new company that's already spent $30 million in R&D. While each camera will not cost much, they will be priced high.

Not necessarily. If the company is looking to recoup its investment soon, sure. But if the company is looking to get mass-market appeal then they'll price it more aggressively. The latter may be a good idea given the declining interest in dedicated cameras - make it cheap enough, while it's still novel, and people will actually buy the thing.

Re: Revolutionary "Light Field" camera tech - shoot-first, focus-later

#43

Post by MichaelApproved »

sbierwagen wrote: post #29
MichaelApproved wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"- Low FPS. Each image requires lots of processing, which means the CPU will have to chew on data for a while before you can take another image." This will improve and processor speed improves eventually making it a nonissue. "- Proprietary toolchain for the dynamic images. Sure, cameras all have their particular RAW sensor formats, but this is also going to have its own output image format. No looking at thumbnails…

Sure, the raw image needs to be processed but you can export the focused product and do what you like, can't you? Certainly, and that will be a cool feature. I don't think it's worth all the other tradeoffs inherent in a light-field camera. This will improve and processor speed improves eventually making it a nonissue. We are not talking about the future. We are talking about what this particular first-generation pro…

Good point about referring to first-gen model though I'd be looking forward to it being able to take 1 good picture fast then 3 so so pictures. Either way, I can't wait to see how well it and future versions work in real world environment.

Re: Revolutionary "Light Field" camera tech - shoot-first, focus-later

#44

Post by hristov »

bad_user wrote: post #40
jws wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proprietary toolchain for the dynamic images – you could embed the full dynamic information in a JPEG extension and use the JPEG thumbnail as a thumbnail and the JPEG image as your selected representation. Then you could use your nonstandard code to regenerate the JPEG image data from your full data when you wished. You can just produce a composite image that's sharp all over… – but what fun is that? I'm having a gra…

You can just produce a composite image that's sharp all over… – but what fun is that? With DSLRs that have huge lenses with large aperture sizes, the depth of field varies a lot and those lenses also have a sweetspot in focal-length / aperture for which images produced are the sharpest. Lowering the aperture size increases the depth of field, but then you've got another problem as the shutter speed also has to be adj…

Focusing with point and shoots should not be a problem. They all have a huge depth of field due to their small sensors, so you have to try really hard to put something out of focus. Smudged pictures on point and shoots are usually not a result of lack of focus, but something else (e.g. shaky camera).

Even with DSLRs you usually only need one focus point. You can focus at the center and re-frame. It is very simple to do, and is much simpler than choosing a focus point (and much safer than trusting the camera to automatically choose a focus point for you). Multiple focus points can be very useful in certain rare circumstances: when shooting something really fast off of center without being able to pre-focus or when your camera is bolted down on a stand. Even then I cannot possibly imagine one anyone would need 51 points. This is obvious feature creep.

But yeah, I am really not sure who the intended market for this camera is. Focusing is just not a pain point, in my opinion. This camera could be used by artists and professional photographers to play around with the depth of field to get a great artistic shot, without making their subjects wait. But with the micro-lens design, will it have enough image quality for professionals? I guess we will see.

Re: Revolutionary "Light Field" camera tech - shoot-first, focus-later

#46

Post by bad_user »

hristov wrote: post #44
bad_user wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just produce a composite image that's sharp all over… – but what fun is that? With DSLRs that have huge lenses with large aperture sizes, the depth of field varies a lot and those lenses also have a sweetspot in focal-length / aperture for which images produced are the sharpest. Lowering the aperture size increases the depth of field, but then you've got another problem as the shutter speed also has to be adj…

Focusing with point and shoots should not be a problem. They all have a huge depth of field due to their small sensors, so you have to try really hard to put something out of focus. Smudged pictures on point and shoots are usually not a result of lack of focus, but something else (e.g. shaky camera). Even with DSLRs you usually only need one focus point. You can focus at the center and re-frame. It is very simple to…

You cannot re-frame when shooting moving subjects - kids playing, sports, birds, cars, motorcycles, boats - there's all kinds of instances in which your subject doesn't stand still and even has unpredictable moving patterns, so keeping your subject in the center of the frame and/or re-framing is in many instances not feasible.

Nikon DSLRs have this 3D tracking feature in which you select an object to keep in focus and it refocuses based on its movement inside the frame when it hits the focus points. And when the subject exists the frame and re-enters, auto-focus comes back. 51 focus points may seem like feature creep, but as I said, it's freaking awesome when shooting moving targets like birds.

Even for subjects that are still, like for portraits, you have a lot more freedom for composition as you just select the person's eyes and then you can move around while the eyes are kept in focus.

Of course, you can do a good job with a single focus point, but professionals and amateurs need predictable results, because good moments for taking photos are rare and you don't want to screw up because your camera wasn't properly focused.

That's why I can see partly the utility of this technology here, but on the other hand I can see serious problems with it too, the biggest one being that for most people quantity of photos trumps quality. Another problem that I can see is the one I mentioned above; precise and predictable focus is not that much of a problem with modern cameras. And yet another: mega-pixels and quality of optics count a lot. Well, maybe once passed a certain threshold, the there's less ROI from a higher MP, but still, under 6 MP a camera is only usable for publishing on Facebook.

My consumer DLSR has 4 FPS and I don't worry about focus as I just continuously shoot like 20-30 pictures in a row to make sure one of them is good, and usually one of them is.

Re: Revolutionary "Light Field" camera tech - shoot-first, focus-later

#47

Post by beambot »

sbierwagen wrote: post #17

The downsides, which, of course, this press release doesn't mention: - Greatly, greatly reduced image resolution. Great big dedicated-camera sized lens and image sensor, cellphone-camera sized pictures. 1680×1050, at most. (1.76MP) - Color aberration. The microlenses have to be small, of course, so they're going to be made of single physical elements, rather than doublets.[1] - Various amusing aliasing problems. (not…

There are other techniques for computational cameras that produce "flexible depth of field" -- images with objects both near and far in focus [1]. That technique works a little differently: the image detection plane is shifted during image capture, and then you apply digital signal processing. Very cool stuff.

[1] http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/06/26/computational-cameras-...

Re: Revolutionary "Light Field" camera tech - shoot-first, focus-later

#48

Post by dennisgorelik »

These guys clearly target investors money, not consumers. 1) Lots of hype long before the product is released. 2) Ignoring market trend (consumers prefer smartphone integration over picture quality). 3) Instead of focusing on refining and selling technology, they want to reinvent the wheel and produce their own camera.

I'd say that investors would lose lots of money on that venture.

Re: Revolutionary "Light Field" camera tech - shoot-first, focus-later

#49

Post by juiceandjuice »

ggchappell wrote: post #2

Very nice. But it leaves me wondering about a couple of things: (1) Given the info captured by the camera, can we, without further human input, create an image in which everything is in focus? (2) What the heck are these people thinking? Going into the camera business? That means that, in order to get my hands on this technology, I am stuck with whatever zillions of other design decisions they made. One product. No c…

You can have your car in any color you would like, as long as it's black.

Re: Revolutionary "Light Field" camera tech - shoot-first, focus-later

#50

Post by tincholio »

DLarsen wrote: post #30

As a geek, I think this is totally awesome. As a casual photographer, I'm less excited. I've pretty much got the hang of focusing my shots as I'm taking them. Why focus later what I can focus now?

This might be a bit far into the future, considering the speed and resolution deficiencies that these first products are bound to have, but in the case of sports and nature photography, this would allow greatly improve the ratio of keepers to frames shot, by making those otherwise perfect but slightly out of focus shots viable. Even with the amazing AF systems available today, a significant number of frames don't have perfect focus. This could provide a solution for that problem.
Post reply on HN