Coded Aperture Refocusing

(part of Dappled Photography: Mask Enhanced Cameras for Heterodyned Light Fields and Coded Aperture Refocusing, Siggraph 2007)

Full resolution Digital Refocussing using the Encoded Blur Camera (Click on photos to download full resolution versions)

Defocussed photo taken with coded aperture camera and deblurring result

Single Input Photo (Full Resolution) Digitally Refocussed Photo (Full Resolution)
Encoded Blur Camera, i.e. with mask in the aperture, can high spatial images frequencies in the defocus blur. Notice the glint in the eye. In the misfocused photo, on the left, the bright spot appears blurred with the bokeh of the chosen aperture (shown in the inset). In the deblurred result, on the right, the details on the eye are correctly recovered. [Hires Photos]

Differences in photos taken with our Encoded Blur Camera as compared to a traditional camera

Note that when the lens is out of focus, the blur is disc shaped in a traditional camera as shown in the middle figure. With our camera, due to the mask in the aperture, the shape of the defocus blur, or Bokeh, changes according to the mask pattern. Effectively, high spatial frequencies are preserved using the mask, which are otherwise lost. Post-processing in software can recover the sharp image of the scene.

In-focus photo

Out of focus photo taken with a traditional camera

Out of focus photo taken with Encoded Blur Camera