Hacker News Reader

Comment by jakobe | Hacker News Reader

You are right. I made my statements in reference to claims in the article like "This technique (...) may some day provide a software alternative for those who can’t afford high-end glass". The technique can definitely improve the image quality of a given lens, but it will never allow a "cheap" lens to replace an expensive lens.

View on HN

Maybe I'm missing something, but most of your comments seem to be focused on limitations of the sensor, not on the lens itself. (It's hard for me to picture how a lens would behave differently at low light intensity than at high intensity: the light rays all bend the same way regardless, right?) Your point about diffraction-limited resolution is well taken, but for two lenses with the same aperture projecting onto identical sensors it sounds like this technique could make low-end products more competitive with high-end ones. (Let me know if I've missed your point.)

This method tries to correct specific lens errors. To do this, you need very good intensity resolution. If you have poor intensity resolution, information is lost and the lens errors cannot be corrected anymore. In low light, the signal to noise ratio will lead to poor intensity resolution, and the lens errors become irreversible.

A better sensor will only get you so far; since light is quantized (a ray consists of individual photons), there are physical limits to the intensity resolution possible at low light.

Once information is lost, there is no way to recover it. And that's why you just can't make up for a crappy lens with sofware.

Wouldn't the sensor be a little more important in this case than the lens?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com