Post by jeffolie on May 3, 2012 19:31:13 GMT -6
New camera Tech: light vector & light field sensors, no lens to focus using a light vector camera
My geeky, soon to graduate for California University at Long Beach told me today's camera will soon be replaced with a new camera tech. He could not explain how the new tech captures the light rays. Old tech used silver in film, todays tech uses silcone based sensors to make digital data in megapixel measurements.
How a light vector camera light sensor captures light
I found out that the new camera tech merely captures individual light rays, focuses them to a group of much small sized silcone sensor with 'micro lens' capturing so much data that the information managed with newly created algorithms can output an image of large enough quantities of data to appear to not need to focus ... eliminating focusing with lenses much the same way that very old camera used pin hole aperatures (openings) without focusing a lense. The big deal is that instead of pin hole time periods of over a minute to stay still in the old days, todays fast processing managed by algorithm results in a similar total 'depth of field' accomplished extremely fast with the new chips in the silcone 'light sensor'.
=============================
The Camera
The very first light fields were captured at Stanford University over 15 years ago. The most advanced light field research required a roomful of cameras tethered to a supercomputer. Today, Lytro completes the job of taking light fields out of the research lab and making them available for everyone, in the form of the world’s first Lytro Light Field Camera.
Lens
The Lytro Light Field Camera starts with an 8X optical zoom, f/2 aperture lens. The aperture is constant across the zoom range allowing for unheard of light capture.
Light Field Engine 1.0
The Light Field Engine replaces the supercomputer from the lab and processes the light ray data captured by the sensor.
The Light Field Engine travels with every living picture as it is shared, letting you refocus pictures right on the camera, on your desktop and online.
Light Field Sensor
From a roomful of cameras to a micro-lens array specially adhered to a standard sensor, the Lytro's Light Field Sensor captures 11 million light rays.
The Light Field
Defining the Light Field
The light field is a core concept in imaging science, representing fundamentally more powerful data than in regular photographs. The light field fully defines how a scene appears. It is the amount of light traveling in every direction through every point in space.
Conventional cameras cannot record the light field.
Capturing the Light Field
Recording light fields requires an innovative, entirely new kind of sensor called a light field sensor. The light field sensor captures the color, intensity and vector direction of the rays of light. This directional information is completely lost with traditional camera sensors, which simply add up all the light rays and record them as a single amount of light.
Processing the Light Field
How do light field cameras make use of the additional information? By substituting powerful software for many of the internal parts of regular cameras, light field processing introduces new capabilities that were never before possible. Sophisticated algorithms use the full light field to unleash new ways to make and view pictures.
Relying on software rather than components can improve performance, from increased speed of picture taking to the potential for capturing better pictures in low light. It also creates new opportunities to innovate on camera lenses, controls and design.
About Living Pictures
The way we communicate visually is evolving rapidly, and people's expectations are changing in lockstep. Light field cameras offer astonishing capabilities. They allow both the picture taker and the viewer to focus pictures after they're snapped, shift their perspective of the scene, and even switch seamlessly between 2D and 3D views. With these amazing capabilities, pictures become immersive, interactive visual stories that were never before possible – they become living pictures.
Take a Deeper Dive
Want to learn more? Check out the Lytro Blog. Want to learn a lot more? Read our CEO's dissertationhttp://www.lytro.com/renng-thesis.pdf
www.lytro.com/science_inside#
=============================
DI G I TA L L IG H T F I E L D P HOTO G R A P H Y
a dissertation
submitted to the department of computer science
and the committee on graduate studies
of stanford university
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
doctor of philosophy
Ren Ng
July 2006
".... To record the light field inside the camera, digital light field photography uses amicrolens
array in front of the photosensor. Eachmicrolens covers a small array of photosensor pixels.
The microlens separates the light that strikes it into a tiny image on this array, forming a
miniature picture of the incident lighting. This samples the light field inside the camera
in a single photographic exposure. A microlens should be thought of as an output image
pixel, and a photosensor pixel value should be thought of as one of themany light rays that
contribute to that output image pixel www.lytro.com/renng-thesis.pdf
My geeky, soon to graduate for California University at Long Beach told me today's camera will soon be replaced with a new camera tech. He could not explain how the new tech captures the light rays. Old tech used silver in film, todays tech uses silcone based sensors to make digital data in megapixel measurements.
How a light vector camera light sensor captures light
I found out that the new camera tech merely captures individual light rays, focuses them to a group of much small sized silcone sensor with 'micro lens' capturing so much data that the information managed with newly created algorithms can output an image of large enough quantities of data to appear to not need to focus ... eliminating focusing with lenses much the same way that very old camera used pin hole aperatures (openings) without focusing a lense. The big deal is that instead of pin hole time periods of over a minute to stay still in the old days, todays fast processing managed by algorithm results in a similar total 'depth of field' accomplished extremely fast with the new chips in the silcone 'light sensor'.
=============================
The Camera
The very first light fields were captured at Stanford University over 15 years ago. The most advanced light field research required a roomful of cameras tethered to a supercomputer. Today, Lytro completes the job of taking light fields out of the research lab and making them available for everyone, in the form of the world’s first Lytro Light Field Camera.
Lens
The Lytro Light Field Camera starts with an 8X optical zoom, f/2 aperture lens. The aperture is constant across the zoom range allowing for unheard of light capture.
Light Field Engine 1.0
The Light Field Engine replaces the supercomputer from the lab and processes the light ray data captured by the sensor.
The Light Field Engine travels with every living picture as it is shared, letting you refocus pictures right on the camera, on your desktop and online.
Light Field Sensor
From a roomful of cameras to a micro-lens array specially adhered to a standard sensor, the Lytro's Light Field Sensor captures 11 million light rays.
The Light Field
Defining the Light Field
The light field is a core concept in imaging science, representing fundamentally more powerful data than in regular photographs. The light field fully defines how a scene appears. It is the amount of light traveling in every direction through every point in space.
Conventional cameras cannot record the light field.
Capturing the Light Field
Recording light fields requires an innovative, entirely new kind of sensor called a light field sensor. The light field sensor captures the color, intensity and vector direction of the rays of light. This directional information is completely lost with traditional camera sensors, which simply add up all the light rays and record them as a single amount of light.
Processing the Light Field
How do light field cameras make use of the additional information? By substituting powerful software for many of the internal parts of regular cameras, light field processing introduces new capabilities that were never before possible. Sophisticated algorithms use the full light field to unleash new ways to make and view pictures.
Relying on software rather than components can improve performance, from increased speed of picture taking to the potential for capturing better pictures in low light. It also creates new opportunities to innovate on camera lenses, controls and design.
About Living Pictures
The way we communicate visually is evolving rapidly, and people's expectations are changing in lockstep. Light field cameras offer astonishing capabilities. They allow both the picture taker and the viewer to focus pictures after they're snapped, shift their perspective of the scene, and even switch seamlessly between 2D and 3D views. With these amazing capabilities, pictures become immersive, interactive visual stories that were never before possible – they become living pictures.
Take a Deeper Dive
Want to learn more? Check out the Lytro Blog. Want to learn a lot more? Read our CEO's dissertationhttp://www.lytro.com/renng-thesis.pdf
www.lytro.com/science_inside#
=============================
DI G I TA L L IG H T F I E L D P HOTO G R A P H Y
a dissertation
submitted to the department of computer science
and the committee on graduate studies
of stanford university
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
doctor of philosophy
Ren Ng
July 2006
".... To record the light field inside the camera, digital light field photography uses amicrolens
array in front of the photosensor. Eachmicrolens covers a small array of photosensor pixels.
The microlens separates the light that strikes it into a tiny image on this array, forming a
miniature picture of the incident lighting. This samples the light field inside the camera
in a single photographic exposure. A microlens should be thought of as an output image
pixel, and a photosensor pixel value should be thought of as one of themany light rays that
contribute to that output image pixel www.lytro.com/renng-thesis.pdf