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Optics is a solved problem. Optics. I said optics, not "cameras", or "photography". Plenoptic cameras are cool, and have a bunch of neat features, but each cam
by sbierwagen 16y ago
Optics is a solved problem. Optics. I said optics, not "cameras", or "photography".
Plenoptic cameras are cool, and have a bunch of neat features, but each camera element still uses traditional lenses, made of specially shaped transparent materials, whose fundamental design has not changed in four hundred years. There's been a lot of neat hacks on the basic idea (achromatic lenses, etc) but nothing new. Except superlenses, but you'll never see a macroscopic superlens, so it's useless for photography.
- jacobolus 16y agoHere are some lecture slides from a neat course at MIT: http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/6/sp09/6.815/courseMaterial/topics/topic2/lectureNotes/18_RaskarApr09FredoClass/18_RaskarApr09FredoClass.pdf http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/6/sp09/6.815/courseMaterial/... http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/6/sp09/6.815/courseMaterial/topics/topic2/lectureNotes/20_WavefrontCoding_LightField/20_WavefrontCoding_LightField.pdf http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/6/sp09/6.815/courseMaterial/... My main point is that it’s quite possible that we’ll have cameras in 50 years which are the size of today’s compacts, at the quality (or better) than today’s full-frame DSLRs. Indeed, I’d be surprised if we didn’t.