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A lens that keeps everything in focus (aka, large or infinite depth of field) is not desirable for most photography applications; this mainly has important impl

by css 7y ago

A lens that keeps everything in focus (aka, large or infinite depth of field) is not desirable for most photography applications; this mainly has important implications for industrial use. It is always interesting to see innovations in this space.

narrowtux 7y ago
I'd be interested if this lens would transmit more light than a traditional lens stopped down to f/13 and focussed to hyperfocal distance. If that's the case, it could find application in photography for low-light photography.
- glitchc 7y ago
  Not sure I understand this statement. The depth of field spans a distance both in front and back of the focussing range where all objects are in equivalent focus. To focus all objects of interest spanning a set of ranges, the appropriate approach is to focus on an element roughly in the middle of the set, then increase the depth of field until all elements are in roughly equivalent focus. One does not focus at the hyperfocal distance and step everything down. If all objects are at or beyond the hyperfocal distance, one can focus the lens to infinity and be done with it. All objects will remain in focus regardless of the size of the aperture as all rays incident on the lens from a given object are quasi-parallel. EDIT: Quasi-parallel from the object, not quasi-parallel to the optic axis.
  - narrowtux 7y ago
    Hyperfocal focus distance can be achieved with lower focus distances than infinity, see this table: https://www.photopills.com/calculators/hyperfocal-table https://www.photopills.com/calculators/hyperfocal-table It depends on the focal length, the chosen aperture, and to some extent on the resolution of the camera. What I want to say is, if these new lenses transmit light at a high rate (let's say 1:2.8) while being hyperfocal from 0 mm to infinity all the time, you could take pictures at night more easily without having to focus or stop down to get larger scenes fully in focus. Thus being actually useful in traditional photography. Landscape photography could be another application.
zxcmx 7y ago
Can you explain more about this? I've seen a few startups now pitching depth-of-field innovations for biometric use. For example http://www.infinityoptics.com.sg/who-we-are/ http://www.infinityoptics.com.sg/who-we-are/ Not sure if this is a bit too directly commercial for HN, asking re: optics not the whole solution. Assuming a celllphone-ish sensor in terms of scale and cost (assuming lenses are free) how well can one do in theory? Particularly for iris? How feasible is it to have iris scanners we don't need to shove our faces into?
altcognito 7y ago
Software can fill in many of the gaps required for photography.
- glup 7y ago
  A common opinion among software engineers, but less common among serious photographers. "Portrait mode" looks like a cheap instagram filter. To be fair, it does let a much larger population experiment with effects that otherwise take a bit of specialized gear and knowledge.
  - jayd16 7y ago
    We can just make a lens that's unfocused at every depth and merge the two as needed. Joking aside, I wouldn't doubt this creeping into the film industry or other professional photography. Everything already goes through so much post processing, color correction, etc etc.
  - ansgri 7y ago
    Modern phones get you 90% there. The bokeh quality apparently wasn't a priority until very recently. For indoor applications, a Huawei P20 Pro with artificial bokeh and good onboard image processing beats my APS-C-format Sony camera with an F/1.4 lens most of the time — not even counting cases when the depth of field of said F/1.4 is too shallow! No way can that mobile thing compete with a good lens in good lighting though. But soon that won't be because camera hardware isn't competitive; rather, the phone's computational photography pipeline and lack of dedicated controls wouldn't allow enough flexibility in shooting techniques. Again, the mobile phone manufacturers are just starting advancing to higher-end photography — the science and computing power is basically there, you can do a lot with deep learning combined with real understanding of image formation and photography. I wouldn't call myself anything serious as a photographer; OTOH some serious photographers whom I follow start turning more into 3D artists or videographers. Photography as a profession seems to be in a crisis: not that it's not needed, it's that many adjacent things (3D, video, design, marketing) are also needed, not unlike in programming: there's almost no such thing as a senior (e.g.) Python developer, there are senior Web, Data, etc. developers which primarily use Python along with other tools (JS, sql, etc).
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 7y ago
> is not desirable for most photography applications Hardly. It's namely portraiture that benefits from thin DoF, or similar applications where figure/ground relationship can be improved by keeping OOF elements blurry. There are a great variety of situations where you do want as much in focus as possible. Landscape and macro photography are the most notable examples, where most high-level images utilize focus-stacking composites to simulate extreme DoF. Certainly focus depth is a creative tool, but don't confuse expensive wide-aperture lenses for what is necessarily good.

by css 7y ago

narrowtux 7y ago

I'd be interested if this lens would transmit more light than a traditional lens stopped down to f/13 and focussed to hyperfocal distance. If that's the case, it could find application in photography for low-light photography.

glitchc 7y ago
Not sure I understand this statement. The depth of field spans a distance both in front and back of the focussing range where all objects are in equivalent focus. To focus all objects of interest spanning a set of ranges, the appropriate approach is to focus on an element roughly in the middle of the set, then increase the depth of field until all elements are in roughly equivalent focus. One does not focus at the hyperfocal distance and step everything down. If all objects are at or beyond the hyperfocal distance, one can focus the lens to infinity and be done with it. All objects will remain in focus regardless of the size of the aperture as all rays incident on the lens from a given object are quasi-parallel. EDIT: Quasi-parallel from the object, not quasi-parallel to the optic axis.
- narrowtux 7y ago
  Hyperfocal focus distance can be achieved with lower focus distances than infinity, see this table: https://www.photopills.com/calculators/hyperfocal-table https://www.photopills.com/calculators/hyperfocal-table It depends on the focal length, the chosen aperture, and to some extent on the resolution of the camera. What I want to say is, if these new lenses transmit light at a high rate (let's say 1:2.8) while being hyperfocal from 0 mm to infinity all the time, you could take pictures at night more easily without having to focus or stop down to get larger scenes fully in focus. Thus being actually useful in traditional photography. Landscape photography could be another application.

zxcmx 7y ago

Can you explain more about this? I've seen a few startups now pitching depth-of-field innovations for biometric use. For example http://www.infinityoptics.com.sg/who-we-are/ http://www.infinityoptics.com.sg/who-we-are/ Not sure if this is a bit too directly commercial for HN, asking re: optics not the whole solution. Assuming a celllphone-ish sensor in terms of scale and cost (assuming lenses are free) how well can one do in theory? Particularly for iris? How feasible is it to have iris scanners we don't need to shove our faces into?

altcognito 7y ago

Software can fill in many of the gaps required for photography.

glup 7y ago
A common opinion among software engineers, but less common among serious photographers. "Portrait mode" looks like a cheap instagram filter. To be fair, it does let a much larger population experiment with effects that otherwise take a bit of specialized gear and knowledge.
- jayd16 7y ago
  We can just make a lens that's unfocused at every depth and merge the two as needed. Joking aside, I wouldn't doubt this creeping into the film industry or other professional photography. Everything already goes through so much post processing, color correction, etc etc.
- ansgri 7y ago
  Modern phones get you 90% there. The bokeh quality apparently wasn't a priority until very recently. For indoor applications, a Huawei P20 Pro with artificial bokeh and good onboard image processing beats my APS-C-format Sony camera with an F/1.4 lens most of the time — not even counting cases when the depth of field of said F/1.4 is too shallow! No way can that mobile thing compete with a good lens in good lighting though. But soon that won't be because camera hardware isn't competitive; rather, the phone's computational photography pipeline and lack of dedicated controls wouldn't allow enough flexibility in shooting techniques. Again, the mobile phone manufacturers are just starting advancing to higher-end photography — the science and computing power is basically there, you can do a lot with deep learning combined with real understanding of image formation and photography. I wouldn't call myself anything serious as a photographer; OTOH some serious photographers whom I follow start turning more into 3D artists or videographers. Photography as a profession seems to be in a crisis: not that it's not needed, it's that many adjacent things (3D, video, design, marketing) are also needed, not unlike in programming: there's almost no such thing as a senior (e.g.) Python developer, there are senior Web, Data, etc. developers which primarily use Python along with other tools (JS, sql, etc).

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 7y ago

> is not desirable for most photography applications Hardly. It's namely portraiture that benefits from thin DoF, or similar applications where figure/ground relationship can be improved by keeping OOF elements blurry. There are a great variety of situations where you do want as much in focus as possible. Landscape and macro photography are the most notable examples, where most high-level images utilize focus-stacking composites to simulate extreme DoF. Certainly focus depth is a creative tool, but don't confuse expensive wide-aperture lenses for what is necessarily good.