Spatio-angular resolution tradeoffs in integral photography

  • Authors:
  • Todor Georgeiv;Ke Colin Zheng;Brian Curless;David Salesin;Shree Nayar;Chintan Intwala

  • Affiliations:
  • Adobe Systems;University of Washington;University of Washington;Adobe Systems and University of Washington;Columbia University;Adobe Systems

  • Venue:
  • EGSR'06 Proceedings of the 17th Eurographics conference on Rendering Techniques
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

An integral camera samples the 4D light field of a scene within a single photograph. This paper explores the fundamental tradeoff between spatial resolution and angular resolution that is inherent to integral photography. Based on our analysis we divide previous integral camera designs into two classes depending on how the 4D light field is distributed (multiplexed) over the 2D sensor. Our optical treatment is mathematically rigorous and extensible to the broader area of light field research. We argue that for many real-world scenes it is beneficial to sacrifice angular resolution for higher spatial resolution. The missing angular resolution is then interpolated using techniques from computer vision. We have developed a prototype integral camera that uses a system of lenses and prisms as an external attachment to a conventional camera. We have used this prototype to capture the light fields of a variety of scenes. We show examples of novel view synthesis and refocusing where the spatial resolution is significantly higher than is possible with previous designs.