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It’s the unicorn of underwater photography. Or is it the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?
Choose your own analogy. But regardless, the ability to change or select the critical focus point of an image after it has been taken is the holy grail in imaging (we’ll go with that metaphor).
We mayyy be getting one step closer to that. Sure, a few years ago Lytro created waves with their “light field camera,” but it never caught on for underwater photography and remained more of a novelty. But with specs leaking that the upcoming Canon 5D Mark IV will feature Dual Pixel RAW autofocus, it seems likely that this ability to alter the focus point in post-processing may finally make the leap to DSLRs.
The leaked spec comes from Nokishita, and may be the most underappreciated bit of news yet surrounding the Mark IV. Per the report, “Pixel RAW Dual : record both of one of the normal to the RAW file of the image and the parallax information.”
What this ability seems to suggest is threefold. First, it will allow photographers to make micro adjustments to the focus point in post-processing. You know, like when a whale swims by and your camera focuses on the bubbles of the diver in front of you instead of the animal. This dual pixel tech may be able to help you out.
It also may be able to shift the focus point in the image significantly, creating a Bokeh effect. Finally, the technology can help reduce ghosting and flare.
Since the camera is, in effect, taking two images at once, you can imagine the RAW files are rather large. In fact, the Dual Pixel RAW images will cost you 66.9MB of memory space—per image. The standard RAW image will average 36.8MB.
h/t [CreativeLive]
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