Thread: Camera that shoots in 3D

For centuries, people have been able to image only a two-dimensional image when taking photographs. Even today, the most expensive and powerful cameras even give us a clear and beautiful, but flat image. We can still feel and depth, I can not say how far the objects are from the camera. People tried to bring the stereo effect to photography in many ways, from a stereo slides into 3D glasses, but it is always required picture to be taken with two lenses. However, something thought to be impossible before, it is now one step closer to the actual - Stanford University engineers have made a lens system capable of capturing the distance of people in a snapshot!

The whole system operates differently from the usual sensors work. Rather than have a torch for the entire sensor captures the image into sections. Each section is 16 x 16 pixel sensor has had its own glass to see the world - thanks to this system called multi-opening. Each lens give this mini-sensor a different picture than the other ones, a fact that the final image is made up of many small images overlap slightly with that of the neighbour. Special material is capable of calculating the "depth map" according to the figures that were captured by the sensor. This distance data is the result of the work of the special image editing software, which analyzes the small differences between the positions on the same neighbor sub arrays.

All this not only improvements can show a distance for each pixel, this technology can be used for the stereo imaging in the future. It also reduces noise digital images, the sensor makes it more responsive shooting any conditions and the overall quality of the final image. The researchers say that they see the future of the use of this type of sensors even in portable gadgets like mobile phones, PDA and other devices activated by the camera, because with this technology sensors with small sizes, which are used in portable devices, will suffer less quality loss sufferers than it is now.

Currently, researchers do not have a specific file format for this data, but I would say that this depth information can be written to JPEG metadata. Unfortunately, this revolutionary idea has its flaws. First, it consumes ten times more energy than the usual sensor, which is a very serious problem for portable devices. Secondly, the necessity of using a small lens system for each individual array means that these sensors are more expensive to produce. And thirdly, the depth of field calculation is possible only with issues that have texture and some other small details. If a picture smooth white wall, this information can be analyzed and calculated. However, this technology is developing rapidly, and that all these defects will be corrected, it might be a new word in the world of digital photography.