Spatio-Angular Resolution Tradeoff in Integral Photography

Todor Georgiev1     Ke Colin Zheng2     Brian Curless2     David Salesin1,2     Shree Nayar3     Chintan Intwala1    

1Adobe     2University of Washington     3Columbia University


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.

Citation
Todor Georgiev, Ke Colin Zheng, Brian Curless, David Salesin, Shree Nayar, and Chintan Intwala. Spatio-Angular Resolution Tradeoff in Integral Photography. Proceedings of Eurographics Symposium on Rendering, 2006.

Paper
EGSR 2006 pre-print (580K PDF)

Results
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Input Image image image image
Intermediate View Morphing video video video
Effect 1:(fixed aperture, varying depth) video video video
Effect 2:(varying aperture, fixed depth) video video video