In the future, cameras may be able to focus as fast and accurately as the human eye, making photos like this a thing of the past. Photo Charlie Sorrel
Why can humans glance at a scene and focus instantly on the subject, near or far, when a camera takes — relatively — forever? That’s the same question Johannes Burge and Wilson Geisler asked themselves, before developing an algorithm to do it.
Humans and animals focus their eyes by estimating the blur in a scene, and then snapping the eye into sharp focus almost instantly. Contrast-detection AF in a camera is much slower, hunting back and forth and comparing the contrast as the lens’ focus shifts until it settles on the sharpest version.
Geisler and Burge noticed that — whatever the scene — some forms of blurriness, sharpness and detail were consistent. They then used computers to detect these elements, and found they could tell just how out-of-focus they were. Using this and the varying chromatic aberration of the lens, they can not only tell the degree of focus blur, but also its direction.
This tech could let cameras know exactly what to do to focus the image, simply by looking. No hunting, no trial and error. Just pin-sharp focus, instantly. Which could mean I no longer take blurry photographs like the one above.
Optimal defocus estimation in individual natural images [PNAS via Science Mag and PetaPixel]
See Also:
- Ren Ng Shares His Photographic Vision: Shoot Now, Focus Later …
- Lytro Camera Lets You Focus Photos After You Take Them
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