Time to Focus
Light field cameras were all the rage a few years ago. Lytro was one such device that was expensive but offered the ability to refocus different parts of an image. Now, many smart phones come with multiple lenses that can potentially be used stitch together images to refocus an image or de-blur images that were originally blurry.
Thirty years ago, in my burgeoning photography days, I’d finish off a roll of 24 images of a 400 ISO film with my family’s Nikon and gleefully race to Black’s Photography to have the images developed in matte with their 7 day service (I was on a budget). The thrill of visiting a mall to see my creations was often dashed after seeing blurry image after blurry image. Now, to Black’s credit, whenever they encountered a blurry image, they’d put a little black sticker on it that said “no charge”.
Fast forward to today and in another episode of Two Minute Papers, there’s a presentation of a new technique that with only a few images can create an infinitely focusable image.
The result is that blur will likely need to be re-introduced back into photos as an effect as it will forever be removed from images going forward.
What other artifacts of photography are going to be disappearing over the next few years that will need to be re-introduced?
