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How would that work? Part of what makes photography a creative art is choosing a creative, personal exposure from a range of visually valid possibilities for a

by lusr 14y ago

How would that work? Part of what makes photography a creative art is choosing a creative, personal exposure from a range of visually valid possibilities for a given scene. Once a shutter speed has been selected you're pretty much stuck with it and I'm not sure any camera design can really compensate for that after the fact. As a hobbyist photographer who enjoys shooting in low-light and is frequently disappointed by focusing errors, I totally see the value in the concept of the Lytro (my most recent disappointment being unable to correctly focus the smoke in this shot and having to post-process to bring it out more, but still not well enough: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lusr/6830872670/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/lusr/6830872670/). Too bad they don't ship internationally yet, although I feel the current lack of manual controls for shutter speed and ISO (and the presumably lower-end sensor) for this first revision would probably be disappointing if I did order it.

pavlov 14y ago
Once a shutter speed has been selected you're pretty much stuck with it and I'm not sure any camera design can really compensate for that after the fact. Imagine a camera that constantly records video at a very high frame rate. You can then "go back in time" to pick a moment, and the creative decision of choosing the shutter speed can be done at that point. Technically it's just a matter of blending a range of frames around your chosen moment (a fast shutter uses just a few frames, whereas a slow shutter would combine dozens of frames to create your image).
- lusr 14y ago
  Fair point - I was a bit too rigid in my statement. High-end DSLRs already support shutter bracketing of this sort. From a technical perspective, my mid-range Nikon D7000 can take 16.2 megapixel images at a rate of 6 frames per second, which may or may not be adequate for what you're proposing. Of course at that point the camera's image buffer fills up and the speed of your storage and the compression engine becomes the bigger technical challenge. Whether you can take decent resolution photos on a device priced at consumer-level at a reasonable rate (without much of a delay between shots) becomes an interesting question and perhaps an interesting camera feature. If I had a Canon I would use CHDK to experiment with this.

by lusr 14y ago

pavlov 14y ago

Once a shutter speed has been selected you're pretty much stuck with it and I'm not sure any camera design can really compensate for that after the fact. Imagine a camera that constantly records video at a very high frame rate. You can then "go back in time" to pick a moment, and the creative decision of choosing the shutter speed can be done at that point. Technically it's just a matter of blending a range of frames around your chosen moment (a fast shutter uses just a few frames, whereas a slow shutter would combine dozens of frames to create your image).

lusr 14y ago
Fair point - I was a bit too rigid in my statement. High-end DSLRs already support shutter bracketing of this sort. From a technical perspective, my mid-range Nikon D7000 can take 16.2 megapixel images at a rate of 6 frames per second, which may or may not be adequate for what you're proposing. Of course at that point the camera's image buffer fills up and the speed of your storage and the compression engine becomes the bigger technical challenge. Whether you can take decent resolution photos on a device priced at consumer-level at a reasonable rate (without much of a delay between shots) becomes an interesting question and perhaps an interesting camera feature. If I had a Canon I would use CHDK to experiment with this.