dreamdancer 0 #1 November 18, 2009 interesting... QuoteTHE signs of the digital photography revolution are hard to miss, from cameras embedded in our cellphones to gigabytes of images stored on hard drives. But if you thought the revolution finished with the death of chemical film, think again. Computational photography promises equally dramatic changes, turning even the most ham-fisted of snappers into veritable Cartier-Bressons. We are on the cusp of a new era in which every camera comes with a sophisticated built-in computer, says Ramesh Raskar of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who delivered a presentation on advances in computational photography at an imaging technology conference in Monterey, California, this week. Low-cost processing and memory combined with new digital sensors will deliver richer images created by fusing elements from multiple shots and even video. Hints of the changes to come can be found in cameras such as Casio's EX-F1, which launched last year and has been dubbed the first computational camera. In poor light, photographers face a difficult choice: use a flash, which can produce a harsh illumination, or go for a long exposure, where the risk of image blur increases. The EX-F1 offers a third option. It shoots a burst of images at long exposures and its computer merges the shots into a single image, reducing the blur as it does so. The process may not yet outperform established anti-blur techniques, such as using a tripod, but its existence is a significant advance in itself. In labs around the world, researchers are developing a slew of other computational tricks for cameras. "We're creating images that people have never been able to produce," says Marc Levoy at Stanford University in California. Many of the new techniques tackle the old problem of capturing a fleeting moment. Imagine watching a kingfisher arrowing towards a lake surface. It takes a lot of patience, skill - and luck - to capture the precise moment at which the bird breaks the water's surface. Using an everyday digital camera, it is possible to switch to video mode to record the action and subsequently extract the right frame. But video's resolution pales in comparison to still photography, so the resulting images are low quality. Michael Cohen at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, and colleagues think they have found a way round this problem. Their system captures a video stream and, every second or so, takes a high-resolution still image of the same scene. After the event, users can review the video and select a frame. The software then uses information from the stills taken immediately before and after that point to enhance the resolution of the video frame. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427346.700-computational-cameras-perfect-your-photos-for-you.htmlstay away from moving propellers - they bite blue skies from thai sky adventures good solid response-provoking keyboarding Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
antonija 0 #2 November 19, 2009 I'm not reading anything new here... creating one photo from multiples has been practice to do those contrasty scenes where you either got a burn out or a dark photo. Shoot at different exposures and spend few minutes at computer and problem solved. Same could be applied to all "revolutionary" statements in this text. But if this will be built in (and working properly) then at least more people will use it...I understand the need for conformity. Without a concise set of rules to follow we would probably all have to resort to common sense. -David Thorne Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
