Choose your focus point *after* the shot

Andy

Light Field Photography with a Hand-Held Plenoptic Camera

Oh those brainy Stanford guys!

:thumb Very Interesting Paper

Examples here

CalfeeRider

Andy wrote:

Light Field Photography with a Hand-Held Plenoptic Camera

Oh those brainy Stanford guys!

Very Interesting Paper

Examples here

But is it SHARP!?

Seriously, if it can produce a tack-sharp image at virtually any focal plane, the implications are huge. Just think how many "almost" shots it could save.

Thanks for sharing!
Jack

Jnichols

The mathematics behind this camera/lens is mind boggling ... just amazing!

dragon300zx

So andy when are you going to buy yours?

Dee

I want one!

Andy wrote:

Light Field Photography with a Hand-Held Plenoptic Camera

Oh those brainy Stanford guys!

Very Interesting Paper

Examples here

WOW, Andy -- how do you find out about this stuff?

ChrisJ

Dee wrote:

WOW, Andy -- how do you find out about this stuff?

Maybe he read my earlier post?

:

DoctorIt

Talk about RAW file, eh? This is cool.

Matthew Saville

I hate to play the pessimist, but photographic talent as we know it is going down the drain, with each new technological advance such as this. It is almost discouraging. First we make beautiful color and sharpness available to those who couldn't compose a compelling image if their life depended on it, and someday we'll let them even focus (and probably pick exposure and ISO) at a later time.

I'm all in favor of RAW and being able to adjust THOSE settings after the fact. Because white balance/contrast/tone/saturation/sharpness/etc. was NEVER something I had to adjust before I snapped a picture on Velvia. But we're waving goodbye to too much photographic talent and saying hello to way too much computer geek-ness, not to mention obsessiveness / brand loyalty / competition bashing, with each new DSLR that everyone MUST own, each new stabilized lens, and each new "turn your $100 lens images into beautiful 24x36 prints!" software... Bleah, no thank you. I'll be hitting up KEH for some old manual focus stuff if you need me.

-Matt-

bham

This is interesting. But what will be the cost. Obviously this will take some computing power to do and to do it quickly, it maybe a while before we see it in practice.

On a somewhat similar note, does anybody know what they have done to achieve HD tv, as compared to regular. Is is just on the tv end or have they also done something on the camera end to increase the depth of field?

Khaos

Matthew Saville wrote:

I hate to play the pessimist, but photographic talent as we know it is going down the drain, with each new technological advance such as this. It is almost discouraging. First we make beautiful color and sharpness available to those who couldn't compose a compelling image if their life depended on it, and someday we'll let them even focus (and probably pick exposure and ISO) at a later time.

I'm all in favor of RAW and being able to adjust THOSE settings after the fact. Because white balance/contrast/tone/saturation/sharpness/etc. was NEVER something I had to adjust before I snapped a picture on Velvia. But we're waving goodbye to too much photographic talent and saying hello to way too much computer geek-ness, not to mention obsessiveness / brand loyalty / competition bashing, with each new DSLR that everyone MUST own, each new stabilized lens, and each new "turn your $100 lens images into beautiful 24x36 prints!" software... Bleah, no thank you. I'll be hitting up KEH for some old manual focus stuff if you need me.

-Matt-

Maybe, but this has happened in other areas. Music software to make music like you owned a redording studio is affordable. Video software and high end digital video cams to make high quailty movies are available, yet one factor remains constant in delivering a product people are willing to pay for or even just recognize. It's called talent.

The technology may be able to perfect exposure and focus, but composition and the type of exposure is still controlled by the person taking the picture. This so often seen in wedding photography where it has become flooded by everyone with a dslr wanting to "get into the businees." Their shots may be sharp and expose correctly, but compared to the established pro, they lack that "magic." You get what you pay for. Sears studios produce crap for a cheap price and people are willing to accept that. Others go to a pro. It won't change much even with this.

ian408

The math in this is well beyond my feeble brain but I'm intrigued by the
idea. However, I would imagine this work to have more value in the sensor
realm (ie;for things like autonomous weapons control) than photography.
for computing more accurate position/size of an object (like say a building
you wanted to guide a missle into on the fly).

Matt, not to worry. Photographers of all ages having been proving that it's
not the camera but the photographer that makes a great image


ian

rutt

Each new tool like this will only raise the bar, which has become incredibly high in the last decade. I guess that every day now more pictures are shot and preserved than in the entire decade of the 1960s. Just walk around the streets of any city and see the people talking on their cell phones and taking pictures, sometimes with cell phones and sometimes with separate cameras.

The result is a veritable mountain of photography which isn't going away. Smugmug is proof of that. As many images as I can upload, they will hold onto as long as I pay them. When I fill up my disk, a new disk 5x larger costs the same as the one I just filled.

Would a Cartier-Bresson be able to make his work famous, seen, in today's environment? What does it take?

A friend of mine, a famous photographer in his own right, speculates that only wedding and portrait photograpers (think senior, engagement, &etc) will be able to make real money at photography. Real photojournalists never made real money and will continue as before because the job calls for a lot of dog work: going to wars, high school football games, staying up all night at the police station.

Is this the result of easy photography? Or just a side effect of being able to store images so easily?

Matthew Saville

I agree, wedding photography is the one last frontier where I am absolutely floored by a great body of work and absolutely bored by everything else. It seems that with nature photography, everything "has been done already" and if one tries to claim traditional, postcard-perfect as their style, they get scoffed at for being unoriginal. But I digress tangential from the point at hand...

rutt wrote:

Each new tool like this will only raise the bar...

Would a Cartier-Bresson be able to make his work famous, seen, in today's environment? What does it take?

No, a Cartier-Bresson would NOT be able to make his work famous in today's environment. There is just too large a mass of average shooters that can buy 75% of their "skill", which is not how it was back then. People back then used primitive equipment by today's standards, yet made incredible, tasteful images that are classics today.

And this raising the bar is what I'm discouraged by. Because "the bar" is going the way of the computer, with it's geeks/nerds. I prefer Ansel's type of dweeb-ness, purely equipment (mechanical) and print oriented. Sure, a computer is just the new tool, and surely there can be "artists" on a computer, But I dislike the computer and it's software and it's crashes and frustrating incompatibilities and ever-changing storage mediums. In short, what I mean to say is that I don't like to see the bar be raised in an area I already abhor. Ian, your comment as well is relevant in this case. Surely it will always be the talent of the photographer that matters. But I dont WANT to have to be talented at keeping all the software bases covered and keeping up to date on computer stuff. I want one talent: going out and capturing photos; and I want that to "be enough".

Although, I guess I can't say I'd prefer the potentially super-complicated darkroom process either, where each mess-up is money down the drain. With this in mind, I suppose I simply wish I were rich enough to be able to shoot, do basic processing, and pay a lab to worry about the rest. (WHCC I might add just blew me away with how professionally they handle printing, btw...)

Take care,
-Matt-

DoctorIt

Matt, do I sense a little bit of "bah humbug" in you? Surely you have to agree that even given the perfect error-impossible camera, most people will not know how to place a subject on a third, giving them space, track a motorcyle to make the rider sharp and blurring the wheels (that perfect camera will just make everything sharp), and so on.

Photography was never a field where there was much money, that's been pointed out. There are few and far between who can make a living at it, and even fewer yet who make a good living at it. Why do you feel so threatened by better equipment? Do you think it will make those few even fewer? I doubt it.

And by the way, Ian was hinting at this. Something this academic is years and years and years away from ever being available in Photoshop CS2,000 (by that time). Us geeks like to play with stuff like this in the lab for a long time. And I agree, I see the greater applications being remote sensing and artificial intelligence.

Uh oh, I shouldn't have said that: Matt, don't worry, there won't be robots taking your job!

:hide

Matthew Saville

DoctorIt wrote:

Matt, do I sense a little bit of "bah humbug" in you? Surely you have to agree that even given the perfect error-impossible camera, most people will not know how to place a subject on a third, giving them space, track a motorcyle to make the rider sharp and blurring the wheels (that perfect camera will just make everything sharp), and so on.

Photography was never a field where there was much money, that's been pointed out. There are few and far between who can make a living at it, and even fewer yet who make a good living at it. Why do you feel so threatened by better equipment? Do you think it will make those few even fewer? I doubt it.

Erik, I guess you could say I'm bah-humbugging against better equipment in an area I'm not fond of, requiring skills I don't enjoy gaining. I'm all for new cameras, better tripods, better filters, better lenses, and so on and so forth. In fact, I've got quite a laundry list of "the ultimate DSLR", incorporating a perfected Foveon chip, an Oly dust-buster, Nikon ergonomics with a bunch of tweaks, etc. etc.

But those are tools for out in the field. I'm just not too keen on tools for sitting in front of a computer screen. I'm not denying that phogographic talent will always shine through, and I don't exactly hate the photographic bandwagon because they could give me a job teaching a photo class lol. I'm just groaning about how all the technology has promoted such a large following of those who think most about equipment and fine computer nerd-ery than in-the-field talent.

Of course, you all do not fall into that category. But places like DPReview are sure home to a few...
-Matt-

Bodley

DoctorIt wrote:

Matt, do I sense a little bit of "bah humbug" in you?

Me Too!

I must admit I find this somewhat depressing. I just got my new Canon 24-70/f2.8 in the mail today and instead of being excited I feel like sending it back and selling all of my other equipment.

I mean what's the point, you'll be able to take a box, point in the area you want a shot and bang. Go to the computer and click a point you want focused and correctly exposed, crop a little and Waa-Laa out pops the perfect photo.

Just takes the fun out of it - count me in the Bah-Humbug group.

colourbox

I don't see any problem with this technology. Where do we draw the line? Real photographers focus manually, real photographers never, ever crop the original frame (there are some photographers who seriously believe this), real photographers build their own cameras?

I'm not worried about it because the top and bottom 10% of photographers will always be the same no matter how much or how little technology they have. Give this new post focus tool to everybody and there will still be a top 10% of photographers who set a more appropriate focus point and depth of field than everyone else, yet everyone else will have more fun with photography. Win-win situation.

Laptop recording studios still don't beat a good producer and a high-end dedicated studio, but the same technology also elevated the capabilities of the high-end studios, and more people than ever can make a record. I don't see any problem with what we collectively gain here.

In addition I hope we get super wide dynamic range cameras so we can overcome more exposure problems the day after a shoot that can't be reshot.

Finally, from my point of view, Photoshop and all of these cool post tools have not tempted me into becoming a lazy shooter - instead, they're done the opposite. Post work is tedious and I'd rather not do it. The more I see how much the exposure, focus, etc. need to be fixed in my less-than-perfect images, the more I am driven to get the exposure, focus, and depth-of-field correct in the first place so I can spend less and less time on the images later. Having flexible post tools at the computer give me an interactive feedback loop as to how to shoot the image better the next time. With this new focusing technology I could try different focus points after the shot and use it as a simulator for how I should set up the camera's focusing system on the next shoot.

Bring 'em on.

Matthew Saville

colourbox wrote:

I don't see any problem with this technology...

Finally, from my point of view, Photoshop and all of these cool post tools have not tempted me into becoming a lazy shooter - instead, they're done the opposite. Post work is tedious and I'd rather not do it. The more I see how much the exposure, focus, etc. need to be fixed in my less-than-perfect images, the more I am driven to get the exposure, focus, and depth-of-field correct in the first place...

There's no problem with the technology. It's just technology in an area where I don't claim expertise. I'm mechanical, not electrical, I guess that's what it boils down to.

And concerning the aspects you mentioned--exposure, focus and DOF--I'm definitely on a quest to master those BEFORE the shutter clicks, too. But you did not mention, I suppose on purpose, the plethora of outnumbering non-mechanical settings, such as WB/contrast/sharpness/saturation. If I had to optimize each one of these settings in the field before I click the shutter, I would go nuts. I don't care how much post-processing it would save me. I'd still be shooting film 99% of the time, just poping a roll in and not worrying about whether my ISO setting is wrong or if I forgot to change back the color space setting or contrast etc. etc.


Bodley, don't sell your equipment. You have not yet become a slave to your equipment unless you've told yourself "wow this 24-70 will automatically make my talent increase tenfold!" ...Which I doubt you thunk.

-Matt-

ian408

He said with a cheeky smile...

Bodley

Matthew Saville wrote:

Bodley, don't sell your equipment. You have not yet become a slave to your equipment unless you've told yourself "wow this 24-70 will automatically make my talent increase tenfold!" ...Which I doubt you thunk.

-Matt-

Bummer - I thought the 24-70 was the "King Midas" lens and everything I shot would turn to Gold

Since I mainly shoot available light (poorly lit sporting events) I've become a "speed freak" so I'm clearing out my last lens slower than f2.8.

Matthew Saville

Bodley wrote:

Bummer - I thought the 24-70 was the "King Midas" lens and everything I shot would turn to Gold

Since I mainly shoot available light (poorly lit sporting events) I've become a "speed freak" so I'm clearing out my last lens slower than f2.8.

Me too! I'm actually seeing two paths, one is a path to fast primes, such as f/1.4's and the like, (and the old Nikon manual 50mm f/1.2's are relatively cheap!) ...the other path is one of all-inclusive zooms which I shoot stopped down for sharpness and DOF anyway, so f/4 is just fine. I contemplated f/2.8 zooms for portrait / wedding work, (the 3rd party DX ones are pretty cheap) but I decided f/2.8 just wasn't a big enoug advantage over f/3.5 and the like, assuming stellar ISO capabilities, so I might as well go for the 1.8's and 1.4's. And plus since I won't be going FF digital any time soon, my DOF is suffering 1/3 or 1/2 a stop, to begin with... That makes the difference between an FF 85mm/1.8 and a 55mm/2.8 cropped 1.5x QUITE detrimental to a portraitist's background...

Though I must say, I'd take a 70-200 2.8 VR/IS ANY day of the week, for my specialty fly-on-the-wall style event photography!

-Matt-