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

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

#21

Post by thomasgerbe »

clc wrote: post #18

This is a very interesting concept, I would be doubly interested to see this technology used for video in camcorders. However, I'm curious to see if they have the resources available to go toe to toe with Nikon, Canon, and Olympus. The camera industry is so competitive... and the life cycles on digital cameras are so quick nowadays. They may find it difficult to keep up.

I don't think they need to keep up with the middle-to-high end yet.

Given the choice of glass and bodies, I think most professionals would still keep with Nikon and Canon (especially for print).

But for entry-level, I could see it being a killer because of the ease.

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

#23

Post by MichaelApproved »

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…

"- 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 in file browsers. Photoshop won't have any idea what to do with it. Can't print it, of course."

Sure, the raw image needs to be processed but you can export the focused product and do what you like, can't you? I can invasion a raw pic and a "best guess on what you'd like to be in focus" jpeg along with it. You can then improve on the jpeg by using the raw image to change what's in focus and recreate the jpeg.

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

#25

Post by jianshen »

Looking forward, I see interesting applications of this tech in motion graphics and film. Where 3D movies have failed in forcing the user to focus on something, I can see this bringing photos and eventually film to life in ways that let the audience control more of what they want to experience.

On the motion graphics side, I imagine all kinds of creative potential in compositing photography together with procedural or rendered graphics.

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

#26

Post by jws »

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…

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 grand time with SynthCam on my iPhone to act like a large lens camera to regain distance dependent focus even though I have a tiny lens.

It's going to be really thrillingly expensive. – It doesn't need to be. Tiny micro lenses on the image sensor might be much cheaper than large chunks of precision glass. Think "inkjet-like print head squirting one of the resins used for plastic eyeglasses into etched depressions relying on surface tension to form the lens". Just guessing there. Maybe placing precision sized beads in each depression and then heating to reflow into a surface tension defined lens would work better.

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

#27

Post by sbierwagen »

adelevie wrote: post #19
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…

>cellphone-camera sized pictures. With 5+ megapixel cell phone cameras being common these days, what resolution do you imply in that sentence?

Why, back in my day phones didn't have cameras in 'em t'all!

So, I don't know. 1280×720? 1680×1050 at most? They don't quote a megapixel number on their site, of course.

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

#28

Post by m3koval »

ugh wrote: post #16
m3koval wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could probably do it, but it's not clear why it would be superior to stereo vision. Both approaches have the same pitfalls (CPU-intensive, need texture to work well) and stereo vision is largely a solved problem that works on commodity hardware.

Because you don’t need a second sensor and a second lens?

Stereo vision does need two sensors and two lenses, where a micro-lens approach would only require one of each. However, the micro-lens camera would need a much larger and higher resolution sensor to produce a depth image that has the same resolution of the equivalent stereo camera.

Ignoring the size of the sensor, producing two standard camera lenses will always be cheaper than producing an array of multiple (i.e. more than two) micro-lenses. This is doubly true considering that the micro-lens technology is already encumbered by patents.

Finally, stereo is very well understood and has already been implemented on the GPU, on FPGAs and in ASICs (commonly known as STOC, Stereo On-Chip). I would personally love to see a demo of a micro-lens array used for creating a depth map, but I just don't see any practical advantages over stereo.

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

#29

Post by sbierwagen »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #23
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…

"- 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 product is likely to do, and I, Samuel Bierwagen, will bet you $20 that this camera won't do better than three seconds per photo.
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