I am planning to try to attend this talk too. I went to one of the first talks on plenoptic cameras a couple of years ago: it was fascinating.
The technology at that time demonstrated the potential capabilities of what is possible when there is enough pixel resolution to capture vector information as well as the spatial resolution and intensity information of the incoming optical image. The prototype they were experimenting with had a 36 million photosite resolution sensor and output about a 4 Mpixel plenoptic image with vector information. In other words, it took 12 pixels to record adequate spatial, intensity, chroma and vector data for one output pixel. It did this by ganging a 12 pixel block under a single micro-lens on the sensor surface at a time, and processing out the differences in image intensity across those matrices of pixel blocks to derive the vector information. Because you have the light vector information, you can actually, really readjust the focus throughout the scene, both across the boards and selectively, in processing. It's as if the camera lens were made of a flexible glass that can be squeezed or stretched at any time. Their notion at that time was that these types of cameras would become a reality when about an order of magnitude more pixel resolution was available at cost effective prices ... around 120-160 Mpixel was the projection. At that time, pro SLRs with 10-12 Mpixel sensors were surfacing, now pro SLRs with 24 and even 40 Mpixel are available. We're on the way ... It should be a fun talk! On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 8:56 AM, John Francis <[email protected]> wrote: > > The next meeting of the Silicon Valley SIGGRAPH chapter may be > of interest to Bay Area photographers. The talk is entitled > "The Camera of the Future", and will discuss (and demonstrate) > images captured at more than just a single viewpoint, single > plane of focus. > > See <http://silicon-valley.siggraph.org/next.html> for details. > > Meetings are open to non-members (I believe a fee of $5 is charged). > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. > -- Godfrey godfreydigiorgi.posterous.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
