The next generation of Photography or a gimic?

[RdEoSg]

http://www.refocusimaging.com/about/index.html


This might have been mentioned here already. If so I apologize. I couldn't find anything.

There isn't a lot to go on about this yet but it looks interesting!

 

[JeffGreene]

That's certainly nothing I'd be interested in! Takes bokeh out of the picture. Every shot would be perfectly focused. Seems somewhat lifeless to me, but different strokes. I spend my days as a statistical consultant and look to my photography as the antithesis to what I do during the day. Computational photography! As Michael Corleone said, something to the effect of "just when I'm just about out you drag me back in again! " 🙄

 

[NickTrop]

To me it looks like what drove me back to film (well one of the reasons) - selective focus! DOF control! bokeh! Except here, it look exaggerated, unnatural, and "blech-y".

 

[Nando]

I don't really see what the big deal is here unless the software can somehow detect the distance of the objects in a photograph and then blur accordingly.

 

[RdEoSg]

I think you guys are missing the point.. 😛 The theory here is that you can change the focus after the fact. Say you focused on the eyes but missed and actually the nose was in focus. Maybe you got the perfect sports moment but missed the focus by a yard because the action was too fast.

This is supposed to make it so that you can fix that on your computer later.

I wonder how this works with f-stops though. They are pretty vague on what is used. Is it all hardware? Obviously there is software but can it be adapted to any camera, is it just a special lens piece? Do you have to have a whole new camera system?

It's weeeeird if you ask me! Takes the fun out of things in my opinion!

 

[Bryce]

Looks like something that could be pretty interesting as a way to present images. Something like 3-d, where things are as your eyes really see them... Panning through a scene, objects at the right distance and near enough the center of your field of vision are sharp, others are not.
To work for that the 'picture' needs to be able to sense what you are looking at at the moment of course.

 

[SolaresLarrave]

I guess it would have more practical than artistic uses... like in surveillance or scientific photography, for instance. Not a thing to have in our bag of tricks as we seem to like the inmutable aspect of photography (to "freeze" a moment in an image in film).

At least, that's how I see it. Let's not criticize, condemn and deplore too soon...

 

[palec]

Sorry, but practically this means that they have camera with large DOF (small sensor) to capture whole scene in focus and later they blur images to create OOF area and appearance of focus. I don't buy it.

 

[visiondr]

That's exactly the point, I think. They mean to eliminate the need to focus. Simply slap on whatever lens you like (angle of view is still important) and fire away. As long as the whatever you're interested in is in focus, the rest can be blurred out a-la shallow depth of field. They also mean to eliminate the "need" for wide aperture lenses. Just run around with a 28 (or wider) set at f/8 and you're good. Of course, the perspective won't be the same as a 90 mm (space compression effect), but most folks wouldn't know the difference anyway. It's chilling how software apps can - and will - eventually do away with photographic technique.

 

[teo]

Is it all hardware? Obviously there is software but can it be adapted to any camera, is it just a special lens piece? Do you have to have a whole new camera system?

read here:
http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/lightfield/
as prototype was used a modified Contax (yes!) DSLR. It has some sort of "bee eye" array of sensor, in this way you get an image that is made of many layers, every one focused on a certain distance. Then you decide if using the in-focus parts of out of focus one.
At least, this is what I understood 😀

Ah, it's been some time since this thing was made, I guess one of the issue is the low resolution of files (2-3 Mpixels if I remember)

 

[dmr]

Hmmmm ... interesting concept. I assume they are using some kind of high-tech analysis to construct the image, as opposed to just picking it off as-is as it appears on the focus plane.

 

[teo]

I was thinking: it could be the joy of stock agencies (and graphics).

 

[Larky]

I thnk for commercial photography it has many many uses. Not for me, but will be loved by many (as long as it will fit onto a 5D).

 

[RML]

Looks like something that could be pretty interesting as a way to present images. Something like 3-d, where things are as your eyes really see them... Panning through a scene, objects at the right distance and near enough the center of your field of vision are sharp, others are not.
To work for that the 'picture' needs to be able to sense what you are looking at at the moment of course.

Bryce, I think you hit the nail on its head. This method will most likely not appeal to a traditional shooter like most here but for someone looking for something different this method may very well be suited. New technology isn't replacing old; it's there in addition to the old. And it will take time and experimenting to give it aplce in the myriad of methods and technologies we already us to create our "art".

 

[Steve Bellayr]

I gather that with this program I take a picture without having to decide what I want to focus on. I download it to my computer & I am capable of continually focusing & refocusing on the image. I gues it would be good for tabloid magazines. If you miss your money shot of Britney Spears...this way you would capture it. Although, when viewing the images I did get a little eye strain as it went in and out of focus & my eyes didn't shift fast enough to the area in focus. Anyway, I was under the impression that photography had something about the ability to focus and capture an image.

 

[jwhitley]

Sorry, but practically this means that they have camera with large DOF (small sensor) to capture whole scene in focus and later they blur images to create OOF area and appearance of focus. I don't buy it.

Your assumption isn't correct here. Google around for papers on "synthetic aperture photography" and "computational imaging". In particular, there's a group at Stanford who has been doing a lot of work in this area, and Adobe has demo'ed a research project (a hardware imager and processing software) in this vein. In brief, a camera equipped for this sort of imaging has multiple (usually smaller) lenses/sensors and records more information about the scene than a conventional single-lens camera. This carefully designed combination of imaging hardware and software allows a single conventional image to be constructed with focus depth and/or DOF determined "after the fact". This is where the "synthetic aperture" bit comes into play.

For those who want to know more, this page has a link to a fairly accessible article by Mark Levoy from Stanford in IEEE Computer, as well as a link to the other five articles on computational imaging which were part of that same special issue:

Light Fields and Computational Imaging
​

IMO, these techinques are rather interesting but will require a lot of bake-out time before we see practical (much less inspiring) cameras that leverage it.

 

[akalai]

Adobe (makers of Photoshop) have also done some interesting work with their Adobe Light-Field lens.

While people are concentrating on the ability to alter the plane(s) of focus what is perhaps more interesting is the ability to capture an image and then, at a later time, move the field of view. In effect this is 3d image capture as the multiple lenses are recording slightly different images as well as mapping the position (and therefore depth) of objects within the image. No doubt this kind of technology could allow creative exploration of new types of images and perhaps even a new genre of photography.

A practical example of this would be sports photographers who often have the problem of capturing high speed action/one off moments while also trying to avoid large sponsorship logos in the surrounding space from appearing in their composition in order to make a salable image. This technology could allow them to concentrate on capturing the moment of action and then fine tune the composition later in order to avoid or decrease the impact of the surrounding signage.

Here is a short video of Dave Story (VP Interactive Design, Adobe) discussing how Adobe's Light-field lens and software work.

Adobe's Light Field Lens And Software (from audioblog.fr)
http://audioblog.fr/archives/2007/10/02/adobe-dave-story-future/

Worth watching and understanding before passing this technology off as

... a new electronically driven toy for the dumbest on this planet.

 

[neelin]

It's chilling how software apps can - and will - eventually do away with photographic technique.

It's chilling how hardware can -and will- eventually do away with brush technique.

Funny after more than 100 years of hardware, people are still using that archaeic brushing technique (brush bokeh?).


robert