Isn't this just a copy of Nokia's Refocus? https://refocus.nokia.com/ edit - better link: http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/14/nokia-refocus-camera-app-...
The method at least is very different. The Google app is doing structure from motion, which essentially uses parallax to get the 3D shape of the scene. From there, you can blur/deblur according to depth. The Nokia app uses focal sweep, i.e. it just takes lots of pictures of the same scene focussed at different depths. I'm not sure what the pros and cons of each approach are.
The Nokia app requires a longer exposure time, encompassing multiple shots, which basically means that anything moving is a no-go. The quality of its pictures is theoretically superior, though, because the depth effect comes from the photos themselves, and not a simulation.
Google's version, on the other hand, works with only a single photo, so it's more versatile. It may suffer issues with quality, though (arising from the difficulties in accurately extracting depth values from a 2D image). That has yet to be seen.
Hi, I am the author of the Lens Blur blog post and the sentence was indeed wrong as a result of multiple edits. Bokeh and shallow depth of field are indeed two different things. By Bokeh we mean that the blur is synthesized using a disk kernel, e.g. as opposed to a Gaussian Blur. The blog is now fixed.
Hey, is there any chance we can download the RAW data alongside the JPG file?
You can extract the computed depthmap, all-in-focus image, and focus settings from the XMP data of the jpeg. See
With these algorithms, will it become feasible to make a driverless car that doesn't need a LIDAR and can run with just a few cameras? Currently, the cost of LIDARs are prohibitive to make (or even experiment with) a DIY self-driving car.
Yes. Machine vision has advanced a lot in recent years and it might just be possible. There is at least one startup trying to make self-driving cars with just machine vision.
Computing the differences between several cameras can be a judge of distance, but you can also see how much the object moves as the car moves, and get an estimate based on normal machine vision (how big objects like that normally are, objects nearby it, where it's shadow is, etc.)
On a slightly related tangent, every time I see someone post a "#nofilter" photo on facebook I have to bite my tongue to stop from asking them how their camera managed to separate the RGB channels without a Bayer (or similar, eg Foveon) filter. I mean, I sort of get what they are saying and I hate the overuse of Instagram filters probably much more than the next guy, but the odd relevance people place towards getting…
Regarding no filters, I've been shooting on 35mm film for the last year and been really enjoying it, almost never have to color correct, and the photos look so damn good! (especially skin tones) I just do develop + scan at the drug store, no prints lol. Doesn't work for everyone though, as waiting a day for photos might not be ideal (but I enjoy the anticipation heh).
Is the store's scan resolution decent? The last time I asked about that sort of service (a few years ago), they only offered scans at some completely awful resolution, e.g. ~1k pixels across...
We had an interesting discussion about this a few nights ago at a Photojournalism talk. In that field, digital edits are seriously banned, to the point multiple very well known photo journalists have been fired for one little use of the clone tool [1] and other minor edits. It's interesting to think I can throw an f/1.8 lens on my DSLR and take a very shallow depth of field photo, which is OK, even though it's not ve…
They should make an exception for photos appearing online, since you can always link to the original one. Maybe a stipulation that the edited photos can't be used in print, unless accompanied by the original.
Isn't this just a copy of Nokia's Refocus? https://refocus.nokia.com/ edit - better link: http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/14/nokia-refocus-camera-app-...
Lots of people have been working on this - I haven't tried Nokia's but they're not the first either. Fact is this will get more attention because it's Google and plays to a larger ecosystem.
I sure wish you could buy a DSLR that just plugs into your iPhone. I don't want any of that terrible DSLR software -- just the hardware. I think many devices should become BYOD (bring your own device) soon, including big things like cars. edit: I don't just want my pictures to be saved on my phone. I'd like the phone to have full control of the camera's features -- so I can use apps (like timelapse, hdr, etc.) direct…
They have large-aperture digital cameras that are similar already: http://store.sony.com/smartphone-attachable-lens-style-camer... I'm interested why you'd want DSLR, though, because if it attaches to my phone i'd probably be happy to use the phone screen as the viewfinder and save the depth and weight that would otherwise go to a moving mirror assembly.
Which is massively interesting, as I can walk forward effectively cropping the scene to remove (let's say) a car from the very bottom corner. I could use software to crop the image to remove the car, but if I use the clone tool to get rid of it, that's a big no-no.
The difference, in the PJ ethics sense of things, is that while the car is gone in both cases, cropping is a "lie of omission" while cloning is a "lie of commission". It's the difference between not mentioning the years 2001 through 2003 on your CV at all on the one hand and claiming you were the CEO of a now-defunct foreign company (when you were actually incarcerated) during that period on the other. (That's a bit hyperbolic, of course, but such exaggerations are differences of degree, not kind.) All journalism, no matter how "fair and balanced" you wish to paint it, is editorial and bias, but there is a big difference between editorial and fabrication. (And you don't have to zoom or "zoom with your feet" normally; cropping in post/printing is ordinarily allowed, though the editor/publisher will want to see the full frame as well. The shot you intend is not necessarily possible with the lens you have mounted - think of all of the PJ that has been done with wide primes over the years, as often as not so that "f/8 and be there" is all you need to think about. As long as the full frame is not showing your crop to be a blatant lie, like turning a dozen people in an otherwise empty city square into a massive popular demonstration, the publication will usually run with the image you intended rather than the one you captured.)