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3D Cameras Are About To Go Mainstream 141

An anonymous reader writes: Vox's Timothy B. Lee reports that everyday imaging is about to take a big step forward as 3D photography finally makes it to prime time. Technological advances in 3D processing algorithms have accelerated at the same time the equipment for taking these shots has become significantly cheaper. Those facts combined mean that we're going to be seeing 3D cameras become much more prevalent very quickly. "If things go according to Intel's plan, within a few years all of our tablets and laptops, and perhaps even our smartphones, will have fancy 3D cameras instead of boring old 2D ones." Throw in the fledgling industries of commercial camera drones and autonomous vehicles, and you have a lot of major companies throwing huge amounts of research money into making cheap 3D cameras work. "The result will be a proliferation of devices, from tablets to self-driving cars, that understand and interact with the world around them."
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3D Cameras Are About To Go Mainstream

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  • No one cares. Come back in 20 years for another 3D cycle.

  • Image quality (Score:2, Informative)

    Too bad the image quality in "tablets and laptops, and perhaps even our smartphones" is dreadful compared to even pretty basic point and shoot. Optical zoom, low light performance, time to focus, time from power off (or sleep) to on and recording.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Too bad no one cares vs convenience.

    • You heard the man. 2D is boring.

      This is why no-one, anywhere, is making 2D films any more.

    • Re:Image quality (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Sunday January 11, 2015 @10:17AM (#48786631) Journal
      I think it's nothing short of amazing how far tablet / phone cameras have come in terms of picture quality, given the crappy lens and tiny sensor. Zoom, low light performance and a halfway decent flash are the obvious things missing from those cameras, but pictures taken in good light conditions actually look very good. Good enough to enlarge and print, and good enough for most people to be unable to tell that the photo was taken with a phone rather than a proper camera.

      And nothing beats the camera you have on you.
      • by rnturn ( 11092 )

        Bah! With a phone camera, it's not point-n-shoot but point-n-pray. In the time it takes the camera in my phone to let me get the zoom set to what I want and then focus on the subject, my point-n-shoot camera has been powered on and has already let me take several shots that are, you know, actually in focus. Especially if I'm indoors. I'm not a big user of flash unless I can adjust the output -- most camera's flash units are too "hot" (IMHO) and overexpose the subjects -- and I've yet to see a phone camera w

      • I'm surprised people don't talk more about this. At least as worthy as 3D... and I love 3D.

        It brings out far more detail, depth, dynamism and a lot of other Ds. Most importantly, it takes pictures that look more like how we see things.

        Why don't pocket cameras have this?

        Now it's occurred to me before that 3D ie two lenses can help with HDR and the software should be able to figure out both HDR and 3D from one lens doing short (dark) exposure and the other lens doing long (light) exposure.

        The biggest flaws

    • by javilon ( 99157 )

      I think the point here is that with 3D comes the ability to better understand the images. Don't think about producing content. Think about gathering information from the environment. A phone or tablet will always know where it is, even if GPS doesn't work, just by processing the input from its camera (see Google's project Tango). And eventually will understand what the objects it sees are. Think robotics, enhanced reality and many more applications...

      For those applications image quality is not relevant.

      • I don't need my phone to know what objects it's looking at by analyzing 3d photos. This can more easily be done right now for many uses just with existing bar codes and qr codes (visually handicapped people looking for a product).
        • by javilon ( 99157 )

          Well, in my mind a bit more intelligence in the phones is better than painting the world with qr codes.

          • Why would you need to "paint the world with qr codes?" Your phone simply does not need to extract information about its' environment from an image. If it needed to, we'd already be doing that today with 2d technology.

            How about a navigation system for the blind that can tell the difference between a red light and a green light? What blind person is going to walk around holding their phone in front of them all the time (and killing the battery)? And you could do this in 2d anyway, and you'd also be better

      • by Rei ( 128717 )

        Most of this "3d" is just stupid stereoscopy. It's useless except for appearances. Unless your camera is building a 3d *model*, it's just a bit of eye candy - and most commonly, eye candy that requires special glasses or crossed eyes.

    • by JanneM ( 7445 )

      Think passive near-field 3D-sensors, not holiday snapshots. User position, gestures, navigation, that sort of thing. Kinect-like functions everywhere. Fire phone, but with actual uses.

      You could do a lot of subtle UI improvements if you can localize the users in space around the device for instance; you could figure out who is speaking and if they're turned toward the device. No more "Yo, googly Siri-man, what's mein wiener kapiche?"-keywords, as the device can figure out if you're addressing it or not.

    • by jythie ( 914043 )
      On the other hand, if the tech becomes practical we might start seeing more of it in dedicated or multimedia camera. And with still photography, it is hard to go wrong with having more data to play with in post production.
  • by tomxor ( 2379126 ) on Sunday January 11, 2015 @09:44AM (#48786539)

    Yes it could be done and made cheaply... if it's something that consumers actually want, beyond a gimmicky "My phone has it" selling point.

    Maybe i'm just not consumer enough, but i don't really want my photos or video to be 3D, in the same way that film looks better at 24FPS and games look better at >60FPS.

    I think high frame rates and depth perception are along the same lines as far as application goes, they bring ultra realism. For things like games, simulations etc that's great. But for many forms of media it seems that lack of realism and it's artistic capacity are somehow entwined, adding ultra realism seems to destroy that. Granted - selfies are tenuously artistic so perhaps this will make it into phones.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Yes it could be done and made cheaply... if it's something that consumers actually want, beyond a gimmicky "My phone has it" selling point.

      From annoying ringtones to the SOS flashlight mode, name 10 features you asked for in your current smartphone.

      I rest my case.

      I'd say you're hardly much of a consumer at all if you haven't noticed that you're going to get features like this shoved up your ass whether you want them or not.

    • This is not really about making 3d photos. 3D cameras have a wider application in areas like object recognition or augmented reality.
    • Outside of a C-suite executive meeting, no one cares about the answer to your question other than other people who somehow dislike the technology and don't particularly want to see it.

      The only people who need to be concerned are the producers of the product. That's literally their concern and no one else's

      If nothing else, it will be a two-quarter spike in profits to report, and the related technologies may work they way into other applications.

      Or another way to look at it: the people behind this project wa

    • by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Sunday January 11, 2015 @03:36PM (#48788491)
      Yes you want it. There are two things the humungous DSLR lenses give you: More light so you can capture images in dark situations with less noise. And shallow depth of field [cambridgeincolour.com].

      We''re finally reaching the point I predicted in the early 1990s when the first digital cameras with reduced sensor size came out. That spawned endless debates about what exactly the sensor size did to the depth of field. It turns out when you reduce sensor size, you increase depth of field. This results in photos that look like they were shot with a point and shoot modern digital cameras - everything in the photo is in sharp focus. This happens in the 35mm point and shoot because the lens has a small aperture (ratio of lens diameter to focal length). In digital cameras it happens because they use a tiny fingernail-sized sensor.

      To generate creative effects like isolating the subject [howdoiusem...camera.com] of a photo from the foreground and background using focus, you need a DSLR with a large lens and large sensor. Would the photo of the Afghan Girl [wikipedia.org] been so striking if the dirty wall of the refugee camp behind her had been in sharp focus?

      You can simulate shallow depth of field in software by blurring portions of the photo. But this is usually just a guess based on location in the photo. e.g. Blur the bottom and top third, leave the middle third in focus. It ends up looking rather fake [blogcdn.com], which is bad unless fake is the effect you're trying to achieve. (That last one's a real scene, it just looks like a miniature because shallow depth of field is also characteristic of photographic miniatures. Your brain has seen it so often that it associates extreme shallow depth of field with miniatures.) [niksebastian.com]

      With a sensor which also captures 3D depth info, the sensor and lens size limitation is gone. You can perfectly blur the image in software to simulate any depth of field, from shallow, to deep. Even effects not possible with optical lenses, like non-linear depth of field, are possible. The only remaining reason to lug around huge DSLR lenses is for low-light photography with little noise.
    • There's nothing new about 3D cameras. Back in the 1980's I used to shoot Kodachrome in an old 50's-era Kodak Stereo camera. Lots of fun, and it taught me new ways of looking at photographic subjects and composition. I've got some shots from that camera that would make little sense in 2D but are intriguing when viewed in 3D.
      I've owned a Fuji 3D digital camera for perhaps 6 years now, and Fuji has yet to come up with a successor model, since apparently it sold so poorly (mine was a store demo unit that kep

    • by Kremmy ( 793693 )

      Perhaps not right this moment, but I think the consumer will want it soon. You can do reasonable stereo viewing on almost any smartphone by using a Google Cardboard type setup. A few have their own manufactured enclosures for it, like the Galaxy Note4 with GearVR or the iPhone4 with the Hasbro My3D. The content for them is a little sparse, but the entire concept is still in infancy. Lots of us grew up with the ViewMaster and I don't think it's going to be long before we start enjoying a true advancement of

  • by Anonymous Coward

    The camera isn't the problem, its the viewer.

    You capture 3D content, you play it into the brain via a 3D TV and the brain interprets it as 3D scene. When you replay 2D TV images, the brain ALSO interprets it as a 3D scene. When a train drives towards you in a 2D scene, your brain is telling you this is a train coming at you in 3D. Adding some depth changes the path to the brain, but the thing in the brain is still a 3D train.

    I noticed when I got my 3D TV, the effect would work for a while and once I got int

    • The 3D technology doesn't work very well with eye glasses either. Lots and lots of people can't see very well or well enough to enjoy a movie without their current glasses. Add those clunky glasses on top of current set and the whole experience sucks, not to mention it gives a lot of people a headache.

      The whole point that we process visuals in 3D. No need for extra 3D.

      Unfortunately, the visual processing software to recognize objects is not a good as a toddler so it's pretty darn useless, and why do I ne

      • I'd be curious to try 2D glasses if someone has ever made them. By that I mean have the same polarisation for both eyes so you throw out one of the two images and look at the other one.

    • This article is about how computers see things, not people. Taking the expensive parts out of depth sensing and replacing them with a second camera, and processing the results instead of using expensive hardware. That's kind of a guess, reading into Intel's product announcements.

      Having a second camera for 3D dick pics will be a side effect, not the point.

  • by Rashdot ( 845549 ) on Sunday January 11, 2015 @09:59AM (#48786581)

    Camera's are only half of what's needed to make them successful. You also need 3D screens without the need for special glasses.

    • There are already autostereoscopic [wikipedia.org] displays. My phone has one (and a "3D camera," aka two cameras). They actually work fairly well but have a highly restricted viewing angle.
      • The limited viewing angle, which, like progressive bifocal lenses, makes the whole thing rather useless.

  • do you have to wear silly glasses

    Remember the old Viewmaster slides from 45 or mor years ago?

    • More like 75, and they're still around.

      • More like 75, and they're still around.

        And kids aren't asking for them. Parents buy them for their kids because of the "Gee, I had one of these" nostalgia. They forget how boring they were after half an hour.

        We've had 3d comic books, 3d tv, 3d computer displays, and who knows how much other "gimmicky crap." Nobody wants it. What's interesting is that sound, on the other hand, we DO want more than mono. Look at the popularity of 5.1 and 7.1 sound systems - they make a real difference watching a movie.

        • Too bad some people buy "computer grade" 5.1 systems (to be plugged on a computer admittedly) which then sucks as much as the 2.1 stuff : (bad and punchy) lows, highs and no mediums. That was an Altec Lansing kit.
          I've heard sound coming out of very recent low end TVs too : it is as weak and narrow as sound coming out of a smartphone.

          I hope people would try a real stereo system (even if cheap), it's about like a real 5.1 system but without the 5.1 so obviously you don't get the whole experience, but you don'

    • That's the key question. 3D television and movies does not appear to be more than a gimmick, and if this is based on the same queasy and uncomfortable technology, no thanks.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    I can't wait until these become cheaply available for home automation. I want lights that "know" what direction I am walking and automatically turn on ahead of me as I move from one part of the house to another. I want a thermostat that knows I am in the room, even when I'm sitting still just watching tv.

  • by crow ( 16139 ) on Sunday January 11, 2015 @10:55AM (#48786819) Homepage Journal

    Remember the HTC EVO 3-D? It had a 3-D screen and took 3-D photos and movies. Remember how the revolutionary technology completely took over the market? No, it was pretty much ignored.

    I had the HTC EVO 4G which preceded it, and it was a pretty good phone for the day (though Sprint's 4G coverage was horrible--I used it once in the years I had it; too bad they didn't start out with LTE).

    3-D has always been a gimmick to attract consumers that has mostly failed. Hollywood is still trying it as a way to get people to have a different experience in the theater from home, but few people seem to care. TV manufacturers jumped on it, but they didn't sell. It's just not something people care about.

    • I'm still using that phone - at the time I bought it, it was Virgin Mobile's only "4G" phone. WiMAX hasn't been switched off yet, so I get to use it on the odd day I'm in Mountain View or one of the other very few places it ever worked.

      The 3D camera (aka two regular cameras) is nothing special, but the autostereoscopic display is pretty cool. Still a gimmick though.

  • Do not want (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AndyMan! ( 31066 ) <chicagoandy&gmail,com> on Sunday January 11, 2015 @11:14AM (#48786895)

    3D has been "The next big thing" for more than 150 years. Starting with crude Stereoscope viewers in the mid 1800's, a resurgence in the 70's with the first mass market 3D movies, an attempt at another resurgence in the 2000's, and a push by the industry for 3D TV's more recently. Each of these technologies has shown the exact same pattern - a bit of novelty when they're first introduced, then tiredness, and quickly - a clear consumer rejection.

    The amount of money tech companies have invested in 3D over the last century is staggering, and the consumer rejection has been consistent. I can't think of a better disconnect between producer and consumer.

    So here we are again. We're supposed to get excited over yet another 3D Next Big Thing. No thanks. Just like every example that's come before, I'm perfectly happy and even prefer the current state of my photography. I am an avid first-adopter, but I have absolutely no intention of ever adopting 3D photography.

    • by Chas ( 5144 )

      3D has been "The next big thing" for more than 150 years. Starting with crude Stereoscope viewers in the mid 1800's, a resurgence in the 70's with the first mass market 3D movies, an attempt at another resurgence in the 2000's, and a push by the industry for 3D TV's more recently. Each of these technologies has shown the exact same pattern - a bit of novelty when they're first introduced, then tiredness, and quickly - a clear consumer rejection.

      The amount of money tech companies have invested in 3D over the last century is staggering, and the consumer rejection has been consistent. I can't think of a better disconnect between producer and consumer.

      So here we are again. We're supposed to get excited over yet another 3D Next Big Thing. No thanks. Just like every example that's come before, I'm perfectly happy and even prefer the current state of my photography. I am an avid first-adopter, but I have absolutely no intention of ever adopting 3D photography.

      And you have pretty much summed up everything I was going to say (and probably in a more concise manner).

      I, frankly, don't understand this relentless desire to FORCE the consumer onto 3D.

      I mean, I could get kinda excited about a 3D holographic format. But you wouldn't be using that on a phone, tablet or laptop. And you wouldn't be using it as a primary interface for a desktop either. But, as an entertainment format I could see it being fun.

      But stereoscopic 3D on a flat surface is just a headache-inducing

    • by ruir ( 2709173 )
      Indeed. I remember all the brouhaha when cinemas were showing 3D movies, and even an old 3D movie was displayed on our national broadcasted channels. It was a MAJOR disappointment. A couple of years ago bought a small 3D TV for my bedroom. Numbers I have seen 3D movie? Two movies at all. One was horrible, and the other passable. I bought recently a TV for the living room, thanks goodness I did not worry about 3D.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Forget about 3D for media. The real gains will be cheap depth cameras for computer vision applications. There will be a sudden growth of 'learn sport X by directly matching theses movements', turn yourself into a digital rag-doll, put yourself in your video game, create 3D time-lapse models of your body to see how your grow and change over time, scan a room and put it in a video game, scan a room and digitally rearrange new furniture, virtually try on new clothing at home or at the retail store, smart mir

      • by Rei ( 128717 )

        Exactly *Real* 3d, not stereoscopy.

        I was fiddling a bit the other day with the NASA Ames Stereo Pipeline. Would be awesome if I could get it to work with series of screenshots from a moving smartphone as a cloud service. Wouldn't that make an awesome app, building *real* 3d scenes, and making the models available for export in a variety of formats and with direct-links for popular functions (editing apps, export to popular 3d printing services, etc)?

        • Wouldn't that make an awesome app, building *real* 3d scenes, and making the models available for export in a variety of formats and with direct-links for popular functions (editing apps, export to popular 3d printing services, etc)?

          Look into photogrammetry software like the cloud-based 123D Catch [123dapp.com] and the defiantly offline Agisoft PhotoScan [agisoft.com] - they'll turn loads of conventional photos into arbitrary 3D models. The former is probably closest to your request!

          I've been playing around with the latter software re

    • OTOH: I think a lot of people see affordable stereoscopic consumer VR as a serious market, at the very least for gamers. This time, '3D' may actually stick.

      Considering that most photos aren't shared face to face anymore, there might even be a reason to make '3D' photographs and movies.

  • Gopro has one [gopro.com] if you're into that sort of thing. It's essentially just two gopros stuck together and synchronizing their video. That might work reasonably well if you don't mind dropping $800+ on Gopro equipment. That's tiny compared to what some A/V dudes spend, but our Gopros are much more likely to not come back from any given excursion. I've lost one already, in the air over a couple miles of farmer fields and golf courses.

    There are some projects underway to adapt Gopro and other cameras to record 360

  • by KitFox ( 712780 ) on Sunday January 11, 2015 @11:52AM (#48787051)

    This is definitely a case of picking the worst summary of the source article possible. When I looked at the /. summary, I immediately thought "3D is going out in movies and TV, and haven't we been there with the HTC Evo 3D?". Obviously a lot of other people did too.

    So I clicked on TFA [vox.com]. Ahhhhhhhh... Now it makes more sense! From TFA:

    We're used to our gadgets being passive objects. They respond to typed or tapped commands, but we don't expect them to be aware of their surroundings.

    ... As our devices have more and better sensors, they're going to be increasingly aware of the world around them, and will interact with the world and with us in more sophisticated ways.

    So other than the really gimmicky "personal drones that can take breathtaking aerial shots", this is primarily talking about computer vision, such as gesture recognition, local environment evaluation, etc.

    • The internet of things becomes vision enabled 24/7 The internet of things hears and listens to you 24/7 The internet of things becomes self aware at some point in time The internet of things decides biological machines faulty The internet of things decides to delete biological machines The internet of things looked out at it's newly built world and felt all was good. So began the age when machines cast of flesh and were made perfect..in the image of The Internet Of things.
  • Can't find a home where people aren't wearing those uncomfortable glasses! You certainly can't find anything but the glasses-free 3D 4K curved LED TVs at the store. Yeah, I won't be buying one.

  • The Nintendo (New)3DS (LL/XL) has a 3D camera (and 3D viewscreen), so it's already been "out there" by the millions for years. It's just that the quality is bad. It would be great to have a camera that can take near-360 degree panoramas, 3D pictures and movies which you can view on your Oculus or other VR.
    • Yep. 3D stays off on my 3DS. Sales people and fanbois can holler that 3D is taking off but....it really isn't. Given a choice between 2D and 3D in a theater, I go with 2D every time.

  • No, they're not. But not only because 3D screens and purchasable 3D media need to become mainstream first, but because not even normal 2D video is "mainstream". Allow me to elaborate:

    If you're an amateur photographer with a camera, you have a multitude of free or low cost tools at your disposal (cameras/phones and software) that will make your photography suck appreciably less. Even if you're pretty serious about it and your photos are quite good, the average person that you show them to will swipe through

    • In reality the majority of owners of todays cheap cameras aren't using them to entertain you or anyone else. We are actually just snapshotting our own memories and the raw unedited result will be good enough for it's job - triggering our memory. The mainstream you think need targeting don't care, aren't sharing tedious slide shows or very much of what they take.

      Good editing solutions solve a problem almost none of us has. 3D in casual photography similarly offers something few care about. To succeed it need

  • by QilessQi ( 2044624 ) on Sunday January 11, 2015 @01:33PM (#48787627)

    Photoshopping a single image can be done easily in ways that make the edits virtually undetectable, even for the casual home user. But an amateur attempting to edit two nearly-identical images (e.g., to modify body shapes, or skin tone, or to get rid of unwanted parts of the scene) would almost certainly leave behind inconsistencies that simple image analysis could detect.

    ...Today, that is.

    There will probably be a niche for home-use 3D Photoshop extensions that perform activities like airbrushing, texture duplication, etc. on two images simultaneously in a manner that always results in a clean combination of the two by effectively performing the edits in 3-space. Heck, such technology may already be in use in movie studios that are cranking out 3D movies with live actors that must be composited with generated scenes.

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Photoshopping a single image can be done easily in ways that make the edits virtually undetectable, even for the casual home user. But an amateur attempting to edit two nearly-identical images (e.g., to modify body shapes, or skin tone, or to get rid of unwanted parts of the scene) would almost certainly leave behind inconsistencies that simple image analysis could detect. ...Today, that is.

      And probably tomorrow too since for the most part what they want is to look good on Facebook, not successfully forge forensic evidence.

    • by K10W ( 1705114 )

      Photoshopping a single image can be done easily in ways that make the edits virtually undetectable, even for the casual home user. But an amateur attempting to edit two nearly-identical images (e.g., to modify body shapes, or skin tone, or to get rid of unwanted parts of the scene) would almost certainly leave behind inconsistencies that simple image analysis could detect.

      ...Today, that is.

      There will probably be a niche for home-use 3D Photoshop extensions that perform activities like airbrushing, texture duplication, etc. on two images simultaneously in a manner that always results in a clean combination of the two by effectively performing the edits in 3-space. Heck, such technology may already be in use in movie studios that are cranking out 3D movies with live actors that must be composited with generated scenes.

      don't see why this can't be done, working on adding control points in some panoramic software auto adds the points in overlapping images in the right place with little need to tweak despite differences due to parallax error when I've shot with no panohead or attempt to rotate around the nodal point. Having similar functionality in photoshop would work well with many common retouching workflows like freqency sep, dodge and burn, local sharpening and so on. May get awkward with layer masking stuff due to ima

  • As much as I'd love 3D imagery everywhere, vox isn't a reliable source. As far as I can tell, their whole model is wild hyperbole to get exposure & eyeballs.

     

  • I have a fun book called "3D Hollywood" with dual-photo pages by silent film great Harold Lloyd (contemporary of Chaplin). Lloyd was retired by the 50's, with a huge home, "Greenacres", in Hollywood. He was a buff for the then-popular 3D film cameras and the photos are of film sets, Hollywood parties, including those of a 3D photographers club that included other famed actors of the time, like Dick Powell, Ronald Colman, Edgar Bergen - father of Candace, whose teenage coming-out party was shot with 3D port

  • ... has been such a big hit?

    Next new thing on digital cameras: Curved Screens. Just you wait. They're gonna be huge. HUGE I tell ya.

  • The 3d photo club at the local Art school is just as boring as ever. The focal point is annoying. 3d pictures and movies tend to be less immersive due to the fact that part of the screen is always out of focus. 2d shows let you forget you are looking at a screen. 3d shows always remind you of it. As long as we are still using 2d screens, 3d is a long ways from being mainstream.
    Also more feature creep. How bout making a cheaper phone or one with better battery life?
  • Until we get better HDR and color gamut that exceeds the RGB limits we've been all too used to since color began, 3D is pretty boring, we've had that sort of thing for about a century. It's been done (better than RGB at least), there are 6-color monitors and projectors, and presumably cameras that have been prototyped (I've seen the results, and it can be jaw-dropping), but we need them to go mainstream.

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