
The Stanford Multi-Camera Array - DanBC
http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/array/
======
DanBC
There's links to a paper here.
[http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/CameraArray/](http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/CameraArray/)

And there's an Instructables page here: [http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-
Camera-Array-1-Computati...](http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Camera-
Array-1-Computational-Photography-Prim/) (and that author kindly links PDFs in
other places, so you don't need to register to get the PDFs)

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beambot
IIRC, this is the same underlying technology being currently employed in the
"bugs eye" lens system that underlies Lytro -- I.e. this is the lab group that
spawned Lytro.

~~~
ryandamm
Very different applications -- Lytro does use a lens array, but behind a
traditional lens; the lens array is a microlens array covering the pixels on
the sensor. This allows the recovery of the plenoptic function
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_field](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_field))
from within the camera, which allows things like refocusing.

A large-scale array, with no front objective lens, like the one shown here --
that allows recovery of the plenoptic function _outside_ of any lens
environment, which means you can do different fancy stuff. Synthetic aperture
is one (not that interesting); holographic reconstruction is one much more
interesting possibility, though.

With holographic reconstruction, you could serve any possible perspective
behind the array to a VR headset, say, or even create a 'hologram' of the
scene incident on the array. Seriously, it's pretty cool.

I wrote at length about it here:

[http://uploadvr.com/light-fields-are-dead-long-live-
holograp...](http://uploadvr.com/light-fields-are-dead-long-live-holography/)

Awesome. And yes, the professor responsible for that group was the thesis
advisor to Ren Ng (Lytro founder), and now works at Google. His name is Marc
Levoy, and he's done amazing stuff.

~~~
beambot
I know Marc. We worked together in Google[x] for a while. ;)

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ryandamm
This dates back to 2005; headline should reflect this.

