Light Field Acquisition using Programmable Aperture Camera

We propose a new device, programmable aperture camera (PAC), to capture 4D light field in a camera. PAC can adjust the shape of the aperture in each exposure. This allows us to capture the angular information of the light field, which is lost in regular photography. Although multiple exposures are needed to obtain a light field, the total exposure time remains the same as that of taking a single regular photograph at the same image quality level. As opposed to previous techniques that seriously reduce the spatial resolution, PAC captures the image at full spatial resolution and allows adjustable angular resolution. Also its manufacturing cost is much lower than previous techniques. We describe the PAC prototype and demonstrate how digital refocusing is made possible by using the captured light field.