Happy for this "invention" but I would wait for this kind of stuff when smartphones will have all their laser sensors for depth measurment, so this calculations doesn't require a sequnce of taken picture, as the main character could move quickly and deform the final picture or the blur effect. But for static photography or selfies looks amazing.
Lens Blur in the new Google Camera app
231–240 of 249 posts
Re: Lens Blur in the new Google Camera app
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Subtracting details from background without adding details to subject ... Not sure what you mean by this. Blur is only due to focus distances and aperture sizes. Making the depth of field narrower (making the OOF regions more blurry) does not add detail to the areas that are in focus. Usually, it's even the other way around. Example: Say we shoot a portrait of a person at 5m with a forest 30m away in the background…
But there are still advantages. With a larger aperture the sensor/film is receiving more light which means the shutter speed can be increased. If the subject isn't perfectly still this can result in decreased blurriness. It's been a while since my HS photography class but I think that's correct.
Yes, my wall of text above applies to static subjects and cameras only.
Whether the freezing of subjects results in more information (detail) or less (without movement info) is subjective.
Re: Lens Blur in the new Google Camera app
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are certain things you can't replicate with just a single tiny camera MOST DoF and bokeh effects in photography can't be replicated with a single small camera. As a photographer, bokeh is surprisingly difficult to fake, and looks glaringly bad when you notice. The blur effect is due to focal distance ratio differences, and it's very difficult to determine the distance in software. Hell, it's hard to determine…
Unfortunately, as a non-professional photographer, I think this article very disingenuous. Most of the shots aren't taken from the same distance, angle, nor lighting. "Here we are, closer to the subject and from a different angle; notice that we don't have to deal with distinguishing our focused subject from subjects that no longer exist!" "Sure these look the same, but this one is done with optics and is definitely…
While it is unfortunate that they did not do the exact angle in all shots, it is still possible to see the difference in the simulated and real effects.
I can say that, as a non-professional photographer, picking up a prime lens and using that for the family shots has been an extremely eye opening experience. To the point that I actually dislike most photos from point and shoots.
There is definitely a bit of "quit caring about aperture." And I can't argue against progress in making the phone cameras better. I'm just not seeing compelling evidence to ditch my DSLR.
Re: Lens Blur in the new Google Camera app
#234With 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.
These algorithms can allow you to have a self-driving car with only cameras. But, there would be a lot of problems if you tried to make a camera-only system for consumer vehicle navigation. Vision systems need distinct "features" in images to find and track across frames to allow you to compute distance, speed, etc. If you don't have many features, pure vision approaches won't work. Nighttime operation is a big problem, as is driving on relatively smooth, featureless terrain.
The basic downside is that standard consumer cameras are passive devices. That's why Google uses LIDAR- it's an "active" technology that creates its own features. And driving is an application where the usual computer vision "it works most of the time" is just not good enough. Time of flight cameras are interesting sensors that combines active with passive technology. As this technology matures it might allow for self-driving cars without LIDAR.
Re: Lens Blur in the new Google Camera app
#235I 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…
Would a wifi enabled SD card work for you? http://www.eyefi.com/products/mobi?lm Creates a hotspot that your iPhone can connect to. Photos are then immeidately moved to your device as they are saved to the SD card by the camera. I havent tried it, but Ive heard it works well for quickly sharing pictures. Downsides are cost compared to normal SD cards and battery use by your device.
I have tried it. In the default configuration, it tries to upload all photos online whenever it finds itself in the known WiFi network. I didn't like this.
Direct transfer to other devices is possible, but the configuration UI is horrible. I spent half a day to configure it. Did I tell it doesn't work in Linux? Bottom line: I managed to be able to browse the contents of the card from the Windows PC, and much slower than if I inserted it in the card reader.
On the go, EyeFi is almost useless. The best configuration that worked for me (without synchronizing everything, but uploading only selected shots and only to the phone) was with phone providing a WiFi hotspot. And it eats the battery pretty fast. WiFi connection attempts take forever. I had to prevent the camera from sleeping too. Transfering huge DSLR files to the phone was always an overkill.
On the scale of 1 to 10, I'd give EyeFi usability a solid 3. It kind of works, but it didn't solve my problem.
Worst of all, some files were not saved properly (they remained 0 bytes). It happened at random, but regularly. Afterall, I retired the EyeFi card and switched back to normal SD cards which are faster and much more reliable.
Re: Lens Blur in the new Google Camera app
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the magic here is the generation of the depth map. Decently convincing blurring has been available for a long time.
The depth part is actually much easer than you might think and we've had techniques for doing some aspects of it since the 80's if not earlier. One early technique was to take video form a mounted camera moving horizontally on weals looking 90 degrees to the side from the direction of travel (think looking out the side car window). Now if you take that sequence of video frames and stack them one after the other like…
Thanks for the explanation. I've been working a little bit with a guy doing some computer vision stuff for an industrial system (shingle production line), and I've noticed that a lot of (what seem like) complex problems can be effectively solved with very simple solutions.
Is there any simple literature that covers this domain? Like a book of algorithms for computer vision, or something?
Re: Lens Blur in the new Google Camera app
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
The depth part is actually much easer than you might think and we've had techniques for doing some aspects of it since the 80's if not earlier. One early technique was to take video form a mounted camera moving horizontally on weals looking 90 degrees to the side from the direction of travel (think looking out the side car window). Now if you take that sequence of video frames and stack them one after the other like…
Thanks for the explanation. I've been working a little bit with a guy doing some computer vision stuff for an industrial system (shingle production line), and I've noticed that a lot of (what seem like) complex problems can be effectively solved with very simple solutions. Is there any simple literature that covers this domain? Like a book of algorithms for computer vision, or something?
Sadly I've found that most sources prefer to be academically rigorous over quickly comprehensible. Of course it's good that people have done the academic work, but it can be tragically comical how obtuse an academic paper can make a simple concept.
However, one of the most recommended books on the subject is available online, so you might want to check that out.
Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications by Richard Szeliski
Re: Lens Blur in the new Google Camera app
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I appreciate #nofilter. Color correction and enhancement is one thing, but not every selfie or food pic needs to be antiqued. Most filter usage seems to be an attempt to cover up crap lighting and careless composition with "irony".
I don't think anybody's intending for their filtered photos to be ironic. It's just aesthetics... old photos are low-fi in a way that's pleasing, while grainy blue-tinged cell phone pics are not. With one tap you can hide the latter with a filter that makes it look like the former. It's a simple thing and it's no big deal.
Re: Lens Blur in the new Google Camera app
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that it irks me. But I find that irritation hard to justify: Shallow depth of field is artificial in all cases. Your vision doesn't really work that way. Even saying "Your eye is like a camera" is only partly true. You can't get at the unprocessed image. What you think you see isn't the image on your retina. So saying that the effect as a result of a wide-open aperture is more truthful than algorithmically bl…
I do not understand what you mean by "Shallow depth of field is artificial in all cases. Your vision doesn't really work that way." If I hold my hand very close and focus on it, the background obviously becomes blurred.
Your eye has long-ish depth of field. Your brain also compensates for focus. So you perceive an in-focus area several inches to many feet deep.
With an f1.2 lens, I can put objects just a few millimeters in the foreground and background of a subject out of focus.
Photographers, consciously or otherwise, use a language of optics effects to suggest ways of seeing, but they never work the same way as your vision system, which also lacks the ability to introspectively show you the raw data from your eye. So the saying that "your eye is a camera" is true, but the camera image is not directly accessible to your own mind.
So, somewhat ironically, this faux DoF effect might work more like your eye, putting a whole foreground object in sharp focus, and making the background uniformly "blurry."
Re: Lens Blur in the new Google Camera app
#240So, is there a way to get the depth map out of the image separately for more post-processing?
Fake DOF is nice, but there are a lot more fun things you can use a depth map for. For example, it seems like ghetto photogrammetry (turning photographs into 3D objects) wouldn't be too far away.