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Stanford Team Developing Super 3D Camera
Tookis writes "Most of us are happy to take 2D happy snaps with single lens digital cameras. Imagine if you had a digital camera that could more accurately perceive the distance of all objects in its field of vision than your own eyes and brain. That's exactly what a team of researchers from Stanford University are working on — and it could even be affordable for ordinary consumers."
This sounds like sort of a flip of what Adobe announced recently with their "compound eye" camera lens. The benefit with that, I suppose, is that you'd be able to use your existing camera body provided the lens had the right adapter.
It looks like here we've got an image sensor that would allow you to use your own lens, again provided that whatever camera body it found its way into had the right adapter. They also mention that it doesn't necessarily need an objective lens, though, and that's interesting...
But there are a number of other possibilities for a depth-information camera: biological imaging, 3-D printing, creation of 3-D objects or people to inhabit virtual worlds, or 3-D modeling of buildings...
... that cute girl next door, the cute girl that works across the street, the cute girl walking down the street.
This could revolutionize the entire practice of voyeurism completely! Stanford == science for the masses.
I got a catholic block.
We've already got 3D pr0n, they're called girls.
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
The work they've been doing on lightfields is pretty innovative. I first heard about this when Robert Scoble interviewed Marc Levoy and got some cool demos into the video. I've done some lightfield experiments with my trusty Nikon D40, it's interesting to see what new ideas you can come up with for using a camera once you get into it.
....Goatse in 3D!!!! Yay!!
I tried one of those "girls" once. I don't know. I suppose they're OK, but there are some issues that you have to take into consideration.
/.ers. I've heard you can rent them, but that it's also pretty expensive and you run the risk of getting viruses. Probably not worth the hassle, IMHO.
First of all they are ladened with pretty nasty Digital Rights Management. If you try to access one with your digits and you don't have the proper authorization, you're going to get whacked. And it's harder than you'd think to get authorization. The one I tried seemed to have been encumbered with the ForePlay(tm) DRM system. Man, you practically have to jump through hoops to get any access at all.
Also, you'd think that you pay once and it's yours forever, right? That's not how it works. It's kind of a pay-per-use situation. You've got to buy dinner, movie, etc. Then once you've spent all the cash, you have to negotiate the whole ForePlay system and then finally you get access -- maybe. These things seem to be pretty flakey, because most of the time I just got the "headache" response. What's worse is that the more time that goes by, you have to spend progressively more money. And even with that expenditure, somehow you end up will less and less access.
Oh and did I mention that you're only supposed to have one at a time? That's right. Let's say your primary girl is in headache mode, you aren't supposed to be able to get access to another girl. You just have to wait until the first one comes back on line. *And* most of them are equipped with spyware that calls you up every couple of hours and says inane things like, "Whatcha doin'?"
So, like I said, they're OK I guess. But probably they won't be that popular with most
That doesn't even require a blue screen! Just tell it to cancel out everything > 5 feet away and you're set. That'll be fun for webcam stuff.
Also, I'm not quite sure I'm understanding this right, but would this mean the camera is NEVER out of focus? Like, you'll be able to make out every detail of my thumbprint on the corner of the lens and also see the face of the person I'm photographing and ALSO read the inscription on the wall half a mile behind them?
Man, this thing sounds really cool.
But you can protect yourself from the viruses, with something called -- oddly enough -- a "Trojan."