Refocusable Plenoptic Light-Field Photography

virgil_disgr4ce writes "Wired is reporting that a Stanford student using about 90,000 microlenses has developed a plenoptic camera whose images can be refocused, via software, after they are exposed." From the article: "'We just think it'll lead to better cameras that make it easier to take pictures that are in focus and look good,' said Ng's adviser, Stanford computer science professor Pat Hanrahan."

Comments

It's fun.

[Duncan3]

Having seen this stuff in action first hand, it's cool as heck. Also a tad scary. Miniblinds not closed 100% then you can see in, tree in the way no problem.

Basically what we see as solid with 2 eyes, may not be solid at all. So much like the IR/UV cameras, this new toy has a dark side.

At what price in resolution?

[ottffssent]

The linked article comments that there's an effective loss of resolution, but goes no further.

Obviously taking a camera that's designed to record light intensity and modifying it to record light intensity and direction isn't free. In the worst case, you're decreasing your effective resolution by the number of new lenses, or by a factor of 90,000. I don't think that's quite what happens though, because many of these lenses will be recording essentially the same information, and while only one may be perfectly focussed on part of the frame, nearby lenses can probably contribute color and intensity information as well. If we assume a 2Mpixel image is "good", the article's comment that the student's using a 16Mpixel camera but that an 8Mpixel camera might be good enough seems to support a roughly 4x to 8x decrease in effective resolution. Can the poster who claims to have heard the actual discussion at Siggraph comment?

That's a high price to pay for not having to use the viewfinder. It's cool tech, and I'm sure there are practical uses for it somewhere, but I don't think consumer cameras are the place for it just yet.