photographers no longer need to worry about cropping?

[Darren Dirt]

PhotoSynth -- new technology from Microsoft that figures out multiple photos are taken of the same object/location... and "pieces them together", pretty cool:

http://www.videosift.com/?domains=www.videosift.com&search=Microsoft+PhotoSynth


...and apparently the algorithm *doesn't* require high-quality photos:
PhotoSynth: What? How? Why? (interviews with developers)

[Lazybones]

doesn't have anything to do with croping. It is all about organizing,searching and presening.

Very cool demo.

[Darren Dirt]

Sorta similar, neato image-related technology.

"Researchers of Carnegie Mellon University has managed to teach a computer to recognize and transform 2D images into 3D."


WOW! The second example especially makes me think "Imagine the Quake/UT levels someone could make by just taking some digital camera shots of their local town, subway system, university campus, etc."


"This is a response to the "Transforming a 2D image into 3D" video. Same concept. Better in my opinion. The video is in French, but you don't really need to understand to appreciate."



- - -

This other video is even more amazing! "Teddy is a Java-Applet Drawing Program that takes the 2D images you draw and renders them in 3D. The alogrithm adds shading according to the strokes and connections between the lines. This is truly a cool program for anyone and everyone!" (and the narrator sounding like George Takei is pretty funny to boot!)

[Darren Dirt]

Okay so maybe cropping / framing your photo is always gonna be necessary because that determines exact what light-info data gets captured.


But now, thanks to Lytro ("computational photography") maybe photographers don't have to worry about focus?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q26mekrMoaY

[Lazybones]

Company founded in 2006

The consumer product has been out since 2012.

It is an interesting concept... They need to get the sensor down to cellphone size however to push the tech forward.

[Darren Dirt]

Company founded in 2006

The consumer product has been out since 2012.

It is an interesting concept... They need to get the sensor down to cellphone size however to push the tech forward.

Yeah it seems like people are super-picky about size of certain electronics (hence it not taking off like it totally should!) ... case in point: (and how I even found out about the damn thing!)

http://boingboing.net/2015/08/17/59-off-first-generation-lytro.html

The damn thing is smaller than a typical smart phone, and holds 700 of these special images (and remember these have the complete light-field data, to be processed later into either focus-of-your-choice images or else change-the-perspective-a-bit images!) and it's less than $100... remember when crappy digital cameras were 5 times that?


...compare that to the Apple Watch, which is nothing ground-breaking neither in technology nor in interface/design. And it's ... well, the price of digital cameras 10 years ago.



edit: in January 2015 there is a Youtube video reviewing the Lytro "Illum" which shows the on the fly depth-of-field altering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfScn-YlQ0U

[Lazybones]

Phones kind of kills all point and shoot cameras and home video cameras... For this product to sell, they need to be IN phones or in higher end camera gear.

At the end of the day I think average joe user would want the "everything is in focus" mode most of the time.. Which would still be rather cool.

[Darren Dirt]

Wow did not know this: The Lytro is pretty much the modern product realization of something *Leonardo da Vinci* speculated about!

http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/gadgets/lightfield-photography-revolutionizes-imaging <-- this article (on the website for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers aka "I-triple-E") also includes some diagrams about how this puppy works (and how it's different than a standard lens etc.)



PS: obviously the basic consumer market is in the far future, but for now it's very impressive new technology [with a new name to boot] in the eyes of some very impressive visual artists, for example "adventure photographer" Chris Burkard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64-ChLv-Iw8

^ I now want to go visit Iceland. It's so green (and white).