A Wide Field-of-View Light-Field Camera with Adjustable Multiplicity for Practical Applications.

The long-fascinated idea of creating 3D images that depict depth information along with color and brightness has been realized with the advent of a light-field camera (LFC). Recently advanced LFCs mainly utilize micro-lens arrays (MLAs) as a key component to acquire rich 3D information, including depth, encoded color, reflectivity, refraction, occlusion, and transparency. The wide field-of-view (FOV) capability of LFCs, which is expected to be of great benefit for extended applications, is obstructed by the fundamental limitations of LFCs. Here, we present a practical strategy for the wide FOV-LFC by adjusting the spacing factor. Multiplicity ( M ) is the inverse magnification of the MLA located between the image plane and the sensor, which was introduced as the overlap ratio between the micro-images. M was adopted as a design parameter in several factors of the LFC, and a commercial lens with adjustable FOV was used as the main lens for practicality. The light-field (LF) information was evaluated by considering the pixel resolution and overlapping area in narrow and wide FOV. The M was optimized for narrow and wide FOV, respectively, by the trade-off relationship between pixel resolution and geometric resolution. Customized wide FOV-LFCs with different M were compared by spatial resolution test and depth information test, and the wide FOV-LFC with optimized M provides LF images with high accuracy.