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Towards an infinite depth of field

"The technologies keeps going farther in images recording. HDR (High Dynamic Range) aim to capture a large light dynamics, with - as far as possible- a constant depth of field, in order to ensure fredom of exposere a posteriori. These advances are due, notably, to the works of Paul Debevec. At the same time, Ren NG and Lytro cameras aime to catch every light ray, and to get the information necessary to get an a posteriori freedom on field depth."

That what says (our translation) Claire Guillot, in a full page of Le Monde (2/25/2012), where we can discover these concepts, illustrated by several examples. For her "The digital revolution has just started", and she concludes "That is fascinating as well for journalists and scientists as for artists". Nevertheless, Pierre Hénon (who helped to write this post), has doubts : "Fugitive visions... resembling to electoral promises of candidates. But no. These works, done in the Fresnoy, are serious. But these admirable scientific results will really be useful on the artistic field ? All the chief operators protested against the first digital cameras, with their small sensors affording a nearly infinite depth of field, and choosed models which afforded fuzziness...".

Such reactions inspired us a wider reflexions about the qualitative and quantitative overproduction of machines. We shall come again on this topic. For the time being, two simple advices :
- if you want to practice : buy a phenoptic camera Lytro (announced in november 2011), which costs around 400 euros, the same as a good digital camera ;
- if you wish understand the theory behind it, read the thesis or Ren NG , who founded the corporation, and presented his thesis in 2006."

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