Dual Aperture Photography: Image and Depth from a Mobile Camera

Abstract

Conventional cameras capture images with limited depth of field and no depth information. Camera systems have been proposed that enable additional depth information to be captured with the image. These systems reduce the resolution of the captured image or result in reduced sensitivity of the lens. We demonstrate a camera that is able to capture extended depth of field images together with depth information at each single frame while requiring minimal impact on the physical design of the camera or its performance. In this paper we show results with a camera for mobile devices, but this technology (named dual aperture to recall the major change in the camera model) can be applied with even greater effect in larger form factor cameras.