Light Field Cameras/Sensors?

[distant.star]

Fascinating concept. I have to wonder how real it can be in practical terms.

My best hope is that it throws Canon for a loop and makes them innovate.


http://www.lytro.com/picture_gallery

 

[henryblyth]

Wow wow wow wow wow wow wow wow wow wow wow.

For those lazier than myself, (which is quite a feat ) you can jump straight into a demonstration by clicking on the image at http://blog.lytro.com/

This is the most exciting technological advance I have ever seen. Thanks distant.star for posting this!

 

[neuroanatomist]

Fascinating concept. I have to wonder how real it can be in practical terms.

My best hope is that it throws Canon for a loop and makes them innovate.


http://www.lytro.com/picture_gallery

Nice website. I love the clear explanations of the technology, the detailed specifications, etc.

If I had to guess (and some of the limited information in the site supports this), it's primarily software. They've built a camera that's more computer than camera. Take a fairly wide aperture lens, capture a short, fast frame rate video clip as the focus elements are automatically racked from one end to the other (i.e. make a focus stack of images), then the software performs blind deconvolution on the image stack and saves out the deconvoluted cube as a new image stack.

The process has been in use for quite some time in microscopy, with turnkey deconvolution systems available for over a decade. When I used some of the early systems, processing the image cubes would take a several hours on an SGI Octane workstation (turned out it also took several hours on a Cray X1 supercomputer - but the Cray could process a few dozen image stacks simultaneously, vs. just one at a time on the Octane).

 

[macfly]

Fascinating idea, super fast viedo burst focus stacking. Look forward to seeing the reality in action.

 

[dstppy]

Okay, so, um . . . this seems fairly doable with existing hardware, only technically requiring firmware and/or PC link no?

As far as I could see you could do the easy ones by hand (stills):
Get a tripod, a fast lens with super fast focus motor . . . start with a reference shot with very high DOF. Then, set your aperture where you want it, and take repeated shots either using different AF points, or even manually focus . . . merge.

Granted, the reality of this is a slippery slope with regard to hand holding, automation etc; you know, genuine usability. Honestly, I think most of this could be 'faked' with a current Canon models, at least to the extent that you would ever need/want it for a real world situation.

On the other hand, instead of merging these and making them online, it'd make a nice sequential image in a frame

--EDIT--
I got to thinking about it even more and I think I get it, essentially they're talking about streaming sensor data 'realtime' (hah, no such thing, right?) and you can combine the fragments to 'fake' shutter speed, iso, no?

Another thought is if this is conceptually coming from a computer guy, I know where this is going . . . get as much data as possible and cherry pick the good ones . . . Maybe this is lobbying from the memory industry for bigger files

 

[zerotiu]

it's like taking random pictures and then think what the POI later... and it's like raw file but let we choose the focus. I wonder how big is the file size..

 

[Admin US West]

Fascinating concept. I have to wonder how real it can be in practical terms.

My best hope is that it throws Canon for a loop and makes them innovate.


http://www.lytro.com/picture_gallery

I wish them luck. this is not a new unknown technology, Adobe inroduced a plenoptic lens last fall, and I'm sure it is in R&D at other places as well.

http://mashable.com/2011/06/22/lytro/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenoptic_camera

I see lots of PR type stuff on the website, and not even one fact relating to resolution or processing. This should make a person suspicious.

It really reads like a advertisement for a company that is looking to get investors. The companyadvertises itself as a early start-up company, and its Its not uncommon for such companies to seek investors with deep pockets who gamble on making it big if the company is able to sell its self off to a big camera maker for a billion or two.

They advertise a camera release this fall, but its probably going to be delayed, just like Red, its not as easy as college professors think to get a finished product out the door.

There are low resolution examples, likely processed by a super computer, so don't expect a miracle, there are many years to go. And, it still takes a lens in front of the micro lenses.

Black silicone, anyone??