After a month long teaser campaign Nikon released 10Megapixel D80, a successor to its 2004 blockbuster D70.

At $999 without lens, it doesnt excite me too much. Nikon D70 was a pathbreaker when it came out in 2004, 2 years later D80 just seem to be a lackluster update. I was expecting at least a Full Frame sensor – but looks like Nikon is commited to DX format with its APS sized sensors. Except for the 10Megapixel bump it still has almost same specs (and in some cases a step back from D70).

How does it compare to Nikon D70s? Here is a full spec table.

Well here is one cool new camera – instead of going up in a mega pixel war like “64megapixel camera”, some Stanford students spent time on improving the imaging technology behind the capture device.

So, what the heck is Plenoptic ?
Apparently, its a camera which is capable of refocusing after the picture is shot.

Original Picture:

Computer Refocussed:

Notice how the focus has changed from white guy in the first picture to the black guy in the second picture – now that’s what I call a breakthrough imaging.

I have been playing the NEF (Nikon Electronic Format) images for all my shots – so I know the power post production brings out (hidden latitude and colorspace) from an image. I enjoy the freedom of changing even the exposure values in the post, as NEF is basically data which is stolen from the camera before they are put through the JPG compression grinder. Now this Plenoptic camera goes even one step further – it allows you to choose your Depth of Field and Point of Focus.

This opens up a boatload of creative opportunities! I have discarded so many many wonderful moments coz they are not in proper focus.

How do they do it?
They explain it here:

This is achieved by inserting a microlens array between the sensor and main lens, creating a plenoptic camera. Each microlens measures not just the total amount of light deposited at that location, but how much light arrives along each ray. By re-sorting the measured rays of light to where they would have terminated in slightly different, synthetic cameras, we can compute sharp photographs focused at different depths. We show that a linear increase in the resolution of images under each microlens results in a linear increase in the sharpness of the refocused photographs. This property allows us to extend the depth of field of the camera without reducing the aperture, enabling shorter exposures and lower image noise. Especially in the macrophotography regime, we demonstrate that we can also compute synthetic photographs from a range of different viewpoints. These capabilities argue for a different strategy in designing photographic imaging systems.

I don’t understand a word of it – but the pictures speak for themselves.