New Open-source Camera Could Revolutionize Photography

“Levoy’s plan is to develop and manufacture the
“Frankencamera” as a platform that will first be
available at minimal cost to fellow computational photography
researchers. In the young field of computational photography, which
Levoy helped establish, researchers use optics benches, imaging
chips, computers and software to develop techniques and algorithms
to enhance and extend photography. This work, however, is bound to
the lab. Frankencamera would give researchers the means to take
their experiments into the studios, the landscapes, and the
stadiums.

“For example, among the most mature ideas in the field of
computational photography is the idea of extending a camera’s
“dynamic range,” or its ability to handle a wide range
of lighting in a single frame. The process of high-dynamic-range
imaging is to capture pictures of the same scene with different
exposures and then to combine them into a composite image in which
every pixel is optimally lit. Until now, this trick could be done
only with images in computers. Levoy wants cameras to do this right
at the scene, on demand. Although the algorithms are very well
understood, no commercial cameras do this today. But Frankencamera
does.”

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