Thought you'd love an affordable twin lens digital camera from a major camera company? Wondering when such a product will hit the market? But why settle for just twin lenses. How about a digital camera with over 12 thousand lenses?
An electronics research team at Stanford is working on a new camera design with what they call a "multi-aperture image sensor." And it may eventually cost less than a standard mid-range digital camera because the quality of main lens will no longer be of critical importance.
"We believe that you can reduce the complexity of the main lens by shifting the complexity to the semiconductor," explained Keith Fife, one of the trio of scientists working on the project.
Seeing the world through thousands of tiny lenses would give you a 2D image with everything, near and far, in focus. But most importantly it would also generate a "depth map" recording the precise distances to each object captured in the frame.
In addition to processing a great stereoscopic image from this data other applications could include security using facial recognition, medical imaging, 3D printing, 3D models of buildings, creation of 3D avatars for virtual world gaming or interaction.
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