Hello all, This may be of interest to people involved in imaging three-dimensional live scenes or objects for certain Web delivery contexts.
An apparent startup called Refocus Imaging, <http://refocusimaging.com>, is working on cameras able to capture not just a plane of focus, but a three-dimensional field of light with a third axis perpendicular to the usual plane (imagine a z-axis projecting from the face of a camera's CCD sensor, creating a capture zone shaped like a rectangular solid). This enables Web viewers of resulting images to pull focus interactively back and forth as they wish. Part of the firm's marketing blurb reads: "A Refocus Imaging camera captures the entire light field entering the lens, not just an ordinary image. Our computational photography processes the light field to produce pictures, implementing in software what the conventional camera and lens must do physically in hardware." Many of us have heard this idea kicked around in concept before, but their online gallery of example images suggests that implementation is actually moving along well; see <http://refocusimaging.com/gallery/>. Of course, this is basically irrelevant to repro shooting of flat work, and it has lots of open questions and perhaps little relevance re: most museum imaging, since technical parameters of all sorts are unspecified; but in principle, it looks pretty cool for some targeted applications. Could be fun for oblique views of gallery walls or reception shots.... Rob (who has no connection of any kind to Refocus Imaging) ______________________________________________ Rob Lancefield (rlancefield [at] wesleyan.edu) Manager of Museum Information Services / Registrar of Collections Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University 301 High Street, Middletown CT 06459-0487 USA 860.685.2965 Vice President / President-Elect, Museum Computer Network (MCN)
