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The multi-aperture thing isn't what makes this interesting. What is interesting is that it takes a bunch of little sensors and combines them into a single bette
by 07d046 11y ago
The multi-aperture thing isn't what makes this interesting. What is interesting is that it takes a bunch of little sensors and combines them into a single better image with software.
Because a lot of work has been done into making very good sensors and optics for phones, this approach does make some sense. It also lets you have more sensor surface area without the bulky optics. I'm pretty sure that there are telescope arrays that work in a similar way.
I'm not about to replace my cameras with these, but it's got potential.
There's more information in http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/7/9473793/light-l16-16-lens-camera-specs-price http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/7/9473793/light-l16-16-lens-... and http://www.technologyreview.com/news/542121/a-high-end-camera-in-a-small-package/ http://www.technologyreview.com/news/542121/a-high-end-camer... .
- steckerbrett 11y agoThe multi aperture thing doesn't make much sense, it appears to have multiple lenses which will have debilitating parallax error due to the positioning. I don't see how that's possible. I'm also struggling to see why they laid out the sensors in such a non geometric pattern too.
- tlrobinson 11y agoParallax could be corrected by software as long as the subject isn't too close. You might lose a little detail around the edges but with enough redundancy it's probably not a big deal
- steckerbrett 11y agoIn their examples there's a macro photo of a chess board.
- tlrobinson 11y agoYeah, it does look a little funky around the edges of the pieces in the background, but surprisingly not the foreground: https://www.dropbox.com/s/o4rx62fjo63nvk4/Screenshot%202015-10-07%2022.28.55.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/o4rx62fjo63nvk4/Screenshot%202015-...
- steckerbrett 11y agohttps://light.co/content/2-gallery/gallery_modal_05.jpg https://light.co/content/2-gallery/gallery_modal_05.jpg You're right, that's like no lens blur I've ever seen.
- vanderZwan 11y agoIt's a lot like an unsharp-mask halo though
- alanh 11y agoRight. Also surprising how much fine noise there is in the background — it ‘should be’ out of focus enough there there would be nearly no noise at all…
- thrownaway2424 11y agoIf you look closely at that photo, the result is really weird. The black pieces behind the plane of focus have very uncertain positions that the software didn't bother fixing. It's bokeh, in a way. A horrible way.
- reitoei 11y agoYup, it's not nice. Headache inducing.
- leni536 11y agoI think that's just a zoomed up picture with low depth of field. I'm not a photographer so correct me if I'm wrong. The chess pieces in the background look still quite big compared to the pieces in the front. It suggests that the photo was taken from around 30-40 cm.
- dharma1 11y agoI wonder what the pixel density on these sensors is like. Because even if you have a bunch of small sensors combined with software, they will still be noisy, and low light performance will be bad if they are standard small sensors For instance, I wouldn't ditch my dSLR for this - http://light.co/content/2-gallery/gallery_modal_02.jpg http://light.co/content/2-gallery/gallery_modal_02.jpg
- 07d046 11y agoI don't see them competing with SLRs. You'll need a lot of small sensors to capture as much light as a one big SLR sensor. However, it's impossible to put larger sensors in thin phones because of the size of the optics, so putting a few small sensors and doing magic in software is a way to overcome this. I can believe that we'll be seeing this technology coming to phones in the not to distant future.