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As neat as they are, the Lytro camera’s re-focusing tricks aren’t going to convince most of us to replace our highly pocketable cameraphones. So a California company called DigitalOptics has found a way to give us the best of both worlds with a new ultra-thin sensor that promises Lytro-like tricks.
Instead of employing clever ‘light field technology’ like the Lytro, the Mems|Cam simply snaps a series of photos with varying depth of fields in quick succession, and then combines them all into a single image that allows you to change the focal point afterwards. It’s not only a less complicated approach, but the images from the new sensor could be as large as 13 megapixels in size, compared to the Lytro’s measly one-megapixel.
It sounds like a win-win development that surprisingly gets even better because the Mems|Cam sensor is created with ‘micro-electro-mechanical systems’ technology that results in ultra-thin electronics with incredibly low energy consumption. To the point where this new sensor uses about one per cent of the energy of a traditional cameraphone sensor, and facilitates handset form factors as thin as five millimetres. At the moment there are no official announcements as to what hardware manufacturer will be adopting the Mems|Cam sensor, but it’s already ready to ship and should be appearing in phones later this year. [Digital Trends via PetaPixel]
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This will really suffer in situations where the phone is moving/shaking.
What camera doesn’t?
It’s going to be made worse by multiple frames taken at different points in time – so a shudder will mean every frame will be of a different angle.
Do you think that they should not bother with it then?
Theoretically, if the camera is steady, it means that focusing won’t become an issue. But the only situation in which a camera is steady enough for this to be a good idea will be when the camera is on a tripod, and who carries a tripod without a focus lens!
I suppose if they get some good anti-shake algorithms it might be not-terrible, but I’m apprehensive. Yourself?
I just think it would be pretty surprising if they had made a camera for a phone that doesn’t work in situations where your using a phone. Phone companies would never use there product in their if this was the case.
I don’t see why camera shake would be any more of an issue for this type of camera than any other. I think this is an assumption that is not necessarily correct.
If it takes a number of images in quick succession at different focus levels and your camera is shaking then you’ll end up with a number of images at different focuses which are all taken from slightly different positions. I assume the only thing that would happen is that when you select a different focus level in the software the view would shift a bit – that wouldn’t affect the quality of the image though.
It combine them all into a single image so you can get every focal point between the focuses too, I think. If not, you have a point.