Stanford Team Developing Super 3D Camera

Tookis writes "Most of us are happy to take 2D happy snaps with single lens digital cameras. Imagine if you had a digital camera that could more accurately perceive the distance of all objects in its field of vision than your own eyes and brain. That's exactly what a team of researchers from Stanford University are working on — and it could even be affordable for ordinary consumers."

Wait.

[More_Cowbell (957742)]

This story has been up for over four minutes and no comments about revolutionizing the pr0n industry?

Re:Wait.

[edwardpickman (965122)]

This story has been up for over four minutes and no comments about revolutionizing the pr0n industry?

We've already got 3D pr0n, they're called girls.

Re:Wait.

[More_Cowbell (957742)]

We've already got 3D pr0n, they're called girls.

Wait... are we still on Slashdot?

Re:

[rubycodez (864176)]

of course, but he means one of those creatures that modeled for the vaginal orifice on our fleshlights

Re:

[Scrameustache (459504)]

We've already got 3D pr0n, they're called girls.

Wait... are we still on Slashdot?

For now, but we're all headed to the strip clubs... bring singles!

Re:

[AmigaHeretic (991368)]

We've already got 3D pr0n, they're called girls.

Yeah, but when I ever go into the locker room to view that "real" porn I get arrested.

Of course, I guess it still ends up with sex. It's just that it's then with a guy named Bubba who's sharing my cell. :(

Re:Wait.

[by Anonymous Coward]

I tried one of those "girls" once. I don't know. I suppose they're OK, but there are some issues that you have to take into consideration.

First of all they are ladened with pretty nasty Digital Rights Management. If you try to access one with your digits and you don't have the proper authorization, you're going to get whacked. And it's harder than you'd think to get authorization. The one I tried seemed to have been encumbered with the ForePlay(tm) DRM system. Man, you practically have to jump through hoops to get any access at all.

Also, you'd think that you pay once and it's yours forever, right? That's not how it works. It's kind of a pay-per-use situation. You've got to buy dinner, movie, etc. Then once you've spent all the cash, you have to negotiate the whole ForePlay system and then finally you get access -- maybe. These things seem to be pretty flakey, because most of the time I just got the "headache" response. What's worse is that the more time that goes by, you have to spend progressively more money. And even with that expenditure, somehow you end up will less and less access.

Oh and did I mention that you're only supposed to have one at a time? That's right. Let's say your primary girl is in headache mode, you aren't supposed to be able to get access to another girl. You just have to wait until the first one comes back on line. *And* most of them are equipped with spyware that calls you up every couple of hours and says inane things like, "Whatcha doin'?"

So, like I said, they're OK I guess. But probably they won't be that popular with most /.ers. I've heard you can rent them, but that it's also pretty expensive and you run the risk of getting viruses. Probably not worth the hassle, IMHO.

Re:Wait.

[by Anonymous Coward]

But you can protect yourself from the viruses, with something called -- oddly enough -- a "Trojan."

Re:

[Facegarden (967477)]

Heh, yours must be defective, i'd return her if i were you. Mine happily allows me to freely access her as needed with little work, and doesn't mind if i share some of my content with others, so long as it's only a temporary license (none of that annoying spyware either). I guess if your girl was an MS product, mine would be Linux - with compiz thrown in, 'cause she's actually cute too! ;) I just hope i don't find out down the line that i shouldn't have skipped that annoying EULA that came up at first... -T

Re:

[awrowe (1110817)]

You might think yours is GPL'd right now, but I think you are going to find that later, when you start thinking about distributing copies, that EULA is going to come up and bite you on the arse. At some point, they ALL have a clause about using other systems.

Me, I think I'm pretty lucky. Mine is expensive, but she brings me cans of beer and watches the football with me, while the dinner is being cooked and the washing machine is doing its things. I've hacked the access system so ForePlay is minimal, but on

Re:

[xmark (177899)]

Make sure you get one with a PlaysForSure sticker on the package before you even *think* of inserting your USB key in the slot. And get rid of that pathetic 256MB unit you carry around in your jeans pocket. Go big or go home. After seeing what's up there on YouPorn, "girls" all want 8GB's (or more!) these days.

Device drivers

[jd (1658)]

Remember that device resources have to be scheduled. Make sure that your Relational Operating System isn't suffering from interrupt exhaustion. You should probably verify that your signal handlers are compatible, or the handshake won't go through correctly. Some devices appear to have a shared buffer, so input to them is rejected if they have not completed a communications transaction. Others seem to operate over transactional TCP, rejecting any session that is not complete to specifiction. So long asthe I/

Duh.

[jd (1658)]

I thought everyone knew that hotnwetware operates strictly on a point-to-point protocol, and that broadscast protocols were inefficient on bandwidth and were less stable.

Re:

[TapeCutter (624760)]

"The above applies only if your ugly"

...and have no money.

Closely related recent development from Adobe?

[neocrono (619254)]

This sounds like sort of a flip of what Adobe announced recently with their "compound eye" camera lens [audioblog.fr]. The benefit with that, I suppose, is that you'd be able to use your existing camera body provided the lens had the right adapter.

It looks like here we've got an image sensor that would allow you to use your own lens, again provided that whatever camera body it found its way into had the right adapter. They also mention that it doesn't necessarily need an objective lens, though, and that's interesting...

Re:

[layer3switch (783864)]

The benefit with that, I suppose, is that you'd be able to use your existing camera body provided the lens had the right adapter.

Not correcting you or anything, but I believe, Adobe's innovation comes from using the Photoshop application along with the compound lens. So it's not only the adapter which will be required, but with the new Photoshop application so that compound image can be rendered as 3D.

But the primary difference I believe is that, 19 objective lens taking one single image compounded in 19 s

Re:

[Animaether (411575)]

The two methods are actually remarkably similar, just that one handles it in the lens and the other on the sensor. Both have advantages... the former you don't need a new sensor, meaning you can use it on any camera body that accepts the lens including any converter kits for fixed lens cameras. The latter means you can use -any- lens you'd like (from long focal lengths through to fisheye lenses, although the result will be somewhat odd in the latter case) as long as it fits on the camera body that has the

Uses

[explosivejared (1186049)]

But there are a number of other possibilities for a depth-information camera: biological imaging, 3-D printing, creation of 3-D objects or people to inhabit virtual worlds, or 3-D modeling of buildings...

... that cute girl next door, the cute girl that works across the street, the cute girl walking down the street.

This could revolutionize the entire practice of voyeurism completely! Stanford == science for the masses.

Prior art

[TheLink (130905)]

The insects are calling.

Lightfields

[ka9dgx (72702)]

The work they've been doing on lightfields is pretty innovative. I first heard about this when Robert Scoble interviewed [podtech.net] Marc Levoy [stanford.edu] and got some cool demos into the video. I've done some lightfield experiments [flickr.com] with my trusty Nikon D40, it's interesting to see what new ideas [flickr.com] you can come up with for using a camera once you get into it.

I wonder...

[jd (1658)]

If you use a high-res 16bpp b/w digital camera, you can produce "true" HDR images by using the same technique as an early Russian photographer - simply rotate between red, green and blue filters. You now have a 48bpp colour image. If you now apply the 3D techniques, you would get a far more realistic 3D image (as you have far better data to work with).

Re:

[IndieKid (1061106)]

Is there any point in changing filters? Modern DSLRs (e.g. a Nikon D80) have options for simulating different coloured filters in B&W mode, I'm sure you could do the same thing in post processing on a computer with a single 16bpp B&W image.

Re:

[mikael (484)]

Modern DSLR have a monochrome CCD image sensor. But there is a color filter array [wikipedia.org] above this which converts each group of 2x2 elements into a GRBR pattern. You lose half the full resolution that way. You also get color bleed from adjacent elements which can be difficult to correct.

If you have a monochrome CCD image sensor and have interchangable filters, then you can keep your images to the full resolution of the sensor, and have a much easier time sharpening the image.

Re:

[IndieKid (1061106)]

Yes I'm aware of that, and I see why you would want to use a camera with a monochrome CCD (or CMOS) sensor. I was just wondering whether there is any reason to use coloured filters when you could artificially colour the images in post-processing?

Research paper

[FleaPlus (6935)]

For anyone interested in more than the press release, here's a link to their paper [stanford.edu], "A 3MPixel Multi-Aperture Image Sensor with 0.7m Pixels in 0.11m CMOS."

Re:

[TubeSteak (669689)]

They've shrunk the pixels on the sensor to 0.7 microns, several times smaller than pixels in standard digital cameras.
...
The first benefit of the Stanford technology is straightforward: Smaller pixels mean more pixels can be crowded onto the chip.

I thought the prevailing wisdom was that smaller pixels equaled noiser images, assuming the sensor size stayed the same. Did I miss something in TFA which explains how really small pixels somehow change this dynamic?

http://www.google.com/search?q=pixel+size+noise [google.com]

Just imagine...

[madbawa (929673)]

....Goatse in 3D!!!! Yay!!

Re:

[fractoid (1076465)]

My god, it's full of... OH SHI-

Re:Just imagine...

[Scrameustache (459504)]

....Goatse in 3D!!!! Yay!!

That Z vectors' gotta be a pain in ass...

Ooh, bluescreen technology

[ZombieRoboNinja (905329)]

That doesn't even require a blue screen! Just tell it to cancel out everything > 5 feet away and you're set. That'll be fun for webcam stuff.

Also, I'm not quite sure I'm understanding this right, but would this mean the camera is NEVER out of focus? Like, you'll be able to make out every detail of my thumbprint on the corner of the lens and also see the face of the person I'm photographing and ALSO read the inscription on the wall half a mile behind them?

Man, this thing sounds really cool.

Re:

[complete loony (663508)]

They've made some progress on the manufacturing front. Last time I saw this idea posted to /. they were talking about placing a sheet of small lenses in front of a standard camera CCD at the focal point of the main camera lens.

From what I understood the last time, each small lens intercepts all the light at that focal point and splits it up on the small pixel grid behind it. So instead of just getting the intensity of the light at that point you also capture vector information about where that light entere

Wow

[tsa (15680)]

I read TFA and WOW, it's such a very simple idea, easy to make, and has such enormously cool implications! Simple ideas are often the best!

Existing 3D technology

[TheMCP (121589)]

Before everyone gets excited over 3D porn, I think we should consider existing 3D technology, and how this differs.

Stereographic imagery has existed since before the creation of the camera. 3D cameras have undergone several bouts of popularity. As a child, I remember my grandfather getting out his ancient 3D camera, and my father had a 3D adapter for his regular camera. 3D lenses are now available for digital SLRs [loreo.com], and if you are interested in video, you can even get a box that converts 2D TV to 3D TV in realtime [yahoo.net]. (Note: CRT TV required. That aside, I've got one, and it works much better than I expected.)

Among the advantages of the system they're describing in the article we're discussing is that it actually has depth information for everything in the image, and using that, it can either be used for measurements or to pick out things in the image at specific depths. It also can be done with one lens, so the 3D image can be rotated while preserving the 3D effect. With conventional stereo imagery, you have to use 2 lenses, and if you turn the camera sideways to take the picture, you can only ever look at it sideways afterward.

In all, I think this new system sound like a great advance and I hope they'll license it cheaply so it can become widely used.

Already released

[kamapuaa (555446)]

This is old news, a high-technology firm has already released one of these stereo-cameras. [techfever.net]

A ZBUFFER?

[Kamineko (851857)]

A Zbuffer for digital cameras? Yas pleez!

Just think of all the depth of field stuff you could do in postprocessing.

Narrow range of viewpoint; 2D happy snaps win

[dpbsmith (263124)]

This seems like interesting and cool technology. But I'm not sure exactly how far it takes us, because if the total distance between the most extreme lenses in the array is only a few inches, it's not as if you could reconstruct the full scene and synthesize views from any viewpoint: the background objects are still concealed behind the foreground objects and the lenses don't have much capability to look "around" them, which in turn means that the finished product will still have to be "viewed" from a very

Old Story

[FunkyELF (609131)]

Cool, but old story.
I can't believe there was no mention of their web site on either this Slashdot posting or the article.

Watch the movie!

http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/lfcamera/ [stanford.edu]
http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/lfcamera/lfcamera.avi [stanford.edu]

Also from Stanford

[springbox (853816)]

Light Field Photography with a Hand-Held Plenoptic Camera [stanford.edu]. A regular camera with a special lens that emulates the "thousands of tiny lens" from the thing in the article. Includes pictures and a video of how the focus of images taken with the camera can be adjusted as a post processing step.

Re:

[Brian Gordon (987471)]

Sounds obvious. Is anyone surprised that machines can do things better, longer, and more reliably than a human body? And how exactly does a machine "perceive"?

Re:Sounds cool

[gnick (1211984)]

The human body is a far superior machine, and far less expensive.

A human less expensive than a car? You obviously either:
1) Don't have children and/or have never tallied what you actually cost to house and maintain.
or
2) Live in a box, eat strays that you catch yourself, and don't bother with doctors or hygiene.

Re:Sounds cool

[daem0n1x (748565)]

Humans are cheap (and fun) to manufacture but the maintenance fee is a nightmare.

Re:

[baffled (1034554)]

Imagine how robust image editing will be. Instead of contrast-based edge-detection, you'll have 3d-surface based object detection.

Image analysis will be more accurate, in turn improving image search engine utility, giving robots better spatial vision, allowing big brother to identify bombs and brunettes more accurately, etc..

Re:

[camperdave (969942)]

Are you saying a brunette can't be da bomb? Fine. More for me.

Re:

[SeaFox (739806)]

Holographic Diorama

Re:

[Brian Gordon (987471)]

A database of objects with nothing more than xarc,yarc,distance,color,brightness? Sounds a lot smaller than actual image data.

Re:

[tsa (15680)]

No, super 3D is just 3D but then very much so.

Re:

[Garridan (597129)]

You mean, super 3D is 3D. With "jazz hands".

Re:

[hyades1 (1149581)]

I would assume the term is used in the same sense that Super 8mm was used to denote a higher-quality image than that typically provided by Standard 8 mm on similar technology. The difference came from film/image management rather than objective lens improvement. I won't bore you with the details, but if you RTFA, you'll notice that the analogy applies quite nicely.

Your simplistic analysis and comment leads me to believe that you misunderstood the reference.

Re:

[kilraid (645166)]

There are pictures shot with the Stanford prototype, and they date back to 2005! Oh and be gentle with the 74 MB video...

http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/lfcamera/ [stanford.edu]

Camera not the problem

[Comboman (895500)]

Cameras that take 3D images have been around since the beginning of photography. The real impediment to 3D images is not the camera but the display. Most require glasses of some kind for viewing and for most people that extra inconvenience does not offset the benefits of 3D.