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Fluid Lens Shaping

Replace shift and tilt with shapable lens.
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Traditional style view cameras are still popular with professional and architectural photographers for a number of reasons. The large film area providing high resolution being one of the big ones.

The other is lens shift and tilt capability. Shift and tilt allow the focal point to be moved across the film, or angled across it for perspective correction and unique effects. With the development of fluid lens systems by Philips and others, shouldn't it be possible to dynamicaly alter the shape of the fluid lens to provide a the same effects as shift and tilt?

This would allow for a compact lens and camera combination that incorporates the advantages of shift and tilt without the bulk and mechanical complexity. Fluid lenes are already vari-focal, it shouldn't be too hard to alter the system to provide these features. Non-symetrical electroweting combined with conductive fluids (liquid crystals?) could produce any number of unique lense shapes on the fly.

Jawzx, May 02 2005

Wired.com: Liquid Camera Lens http://www.wired.co...04/start.html?pg=10
Mostly baked. It can pan, tilt, zoom, and focus. Don't know what shift is. [Laughs Last, May 02 2005]

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       Damn Lucent/Bell Labs! Pan=Shift. I only hope these make it to consumer applications. I'd love to have a high-resolution digital camera with all the lens flexibility of a big, bulky veiw cam.   

       For technical imaging purposes these lenses could be linked to perspective correction software, allowing instant perspective correction without having to apply a filter to an image after capture. This also opens the door for linearly correct super-wide lenses and even eventualy a complete "1 lens solution".   

       Well I guess it was a good idea, even if I'm not first.
Jawzx, May 02 2005
  

       yeah, that was an interesting article [laughs].
neilp, May 03 2005
  

       Why are different lenses needed anyway? Shirley all you need is one superb wide-angle lens plus a stupidly high-resolution CCD chip, and you can do all that panning and zooming in software.
MaxwellBuchanan, May 03 2016
  

       So, basically, a single lens with a stupidly high- resolution CCD chip would solve it, then?
MaxwellBuchanan, May 03 2016
  

       //You couldn’t really achieve this effect... unless you started with a sensor that is massively over-sized for the image circle to begin with//   

       So, basically, a single lens with a stupidly high- resolution CCD chip would solve it, then?
MaxwellBuchanan, May 03 2016
  

       Then I do.   

       It all comes down to the fact that they're only a bunch of photons with nothing better to do than whizz through space. If you stop and ask each one "where are you from", you will be able to reconstruct any image you like.   

       I know this to be true because in 1988, by intercepting photons from the Moon, the Sunday Sport was able to reconstruct a detailed photograph of a WWII bomber that had crash- landed there.
MaxwellBuchanan, May 03 2016
  
      
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