Rich wrote:
http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/...a/lfcamera.wmv

Whoah, that's an interesting video. Worth watching a few times to
understand. They use each microlens as 1MP of pinhole cameras.


Paul Furman wrote:

Rich wrote:
...


The light field camera adds an additional element—a microlens
array—inserted between the main lens and the photosensor. Resembling
the multi-faceted compound eye of an insect, the microlens array is a
square panel composed of nearly 90,000 miniature lenses. Each lenslet
separates back out the converged light rays received from the main
lens before they hit the photosensor and changes the way the light
information is digitally recorded. Custom processing software
manipulates this "expanded light field" and traces where each ray
would have landed if the camera had been focused at many different
depths. The final output is a synthetic image in which the subjects
have been digitally refocused.

...


The idea behind the light field camera is not new. With the roots of
its conception dating back nearly a century, several variants of the
light field camera have been devised over the years, each with slight
variations in its optical system. Other models that rely on refocusing
light fields have been slow and bulky and have generated gaps in the
light fields, known as aliasing. Ng's camera—compact and portable with
drastically reduced aliasing—displays greater commercial utility.



Probably the compromises are too strange-looking for presentation
photography. It sounds like more useful for security cameras but not
very pretty pictures with less than 1MP resolution to the focusing (90k
microlenses).

I have tried merging bracketed focused images and I know it's a huge
problem, even the zoom and angle of view is all messed up, and it is
messed up in big blurry circles, wider the aperture, blurrier the
circles. I've also played with deconvolution software and it looks
awful, even if it does create more info, it's ugly.

I was hoping they had invented a clear 3D holographic sensor g. Then
all you need is a crystal ball on a stick and you've got 360deg
coverage. Or give it a transmitter, levitation powers and a joy stick!
Fill the room with this new quantum holographic phenomenon & you have
every concievable vantage point captured in perfect focus at all distances.

But seriously, thanks for passing on the story, who knows it could be
very cool and useable.