NOW THIS can be a total game changer--flexible image sensor

johnielvis · Jun 21, 2013

view camera movements or selective focus by flexing the sensor perhaps? OR correct the lens abberaterions--make a swirly "portraitpetzval" totally sharp over the whole illuminated field?
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1392&doc_id=264564

this is digital, but has anyone tried maybe stretching a piece of film say by warping it with heat or pouring a wetplate on a curved surface to shoot?

erikg · Jun 21, 2013

Well film is already flexible. All sorts of curved film plane cameras out there, especially in pinhole. Your imagination is the only limit!

LiamG · Jun 21, 2013

johnielvis said:
this is digital, but has anyone tried maybe stretching a piece of film say by warping it with heat or pouring a wetplate on a curved surface to shoot?

Isn't that how every rotating lens panoramic camera works?

Ambar · Jun 21, 2013

I've opened/dismantled three disposable cameras just out of curiosity and they all had curved film planes (concave). I assumed it was to correct or avoid distortion from the single plastic element they had for lenses.
I was quite surprised at how ingenious and elegant of a solution this was considering the product!

removed account4 · Jun 21, 2013

dude

the problem is that people have virtually no imagination ..
most images made with film or digital are about as interesting
as watching paint dry.

summicron1 · Jun 22, 2013

Ambar said:
I've opened/dismantled three disposable cameras just out of curiosity and they all had curved film planes (concave). I assumed it was to correct or avoid distortion from the single plastic element they had for lenses.
I was quite surprised at how ingenious and elegant of a solution this was considering the product!

actually the film planes in cheap cameras are curved to compensate for the fact that the lenses are so cheap they are not computed to project a flat image on film -- the curve compensates for that , not distortion.

Interestingly, most Minox camera lenses were also made to work with a curved film plane, which is why the camera clamps the film against the pressure plate for exposures and frees it up between exposures. Minox enlargers also use a curved film holder, not to achieve any particular sharpness advantage, but because they use the same type lens as in the camera.

Most recent minox cameras use a flat film plane and recomputed lens.

mrred · Jun 22, 2013

All this time and money spent keeping the film surface flat and distortion free.....it becomes art to step backwards... It's time to consider what art actually is. It's flat for me.

johnielvis · Jun 22, 2013

I mean curved in TWO dimensions--like spherical--not just cylindrical...that's what I mentioned heating the film or pouring over a SPHERICAL surface. That would provide full corrections around the view field.

but a sensor--or a whole bunch of pieces of film, say can be individulally manipulated in a camera back in out and tilted in two dimensions to give incredible LOCAL image control. not just over the single flat sheet, but locally.

we all know what's been done with single dimension curvature...I'm talking two dimensions curvature here--like the inside of a bowl, say or the outside of a basketball

Peltigera · Jun 22, 2013

That is how eyes work - we all have curved retinas! If cameras all had hemi-spherical films then we would not want to try flat ones. Hemi-spherical would just look too natural.

MaximusM3 · Jun 22, 2013

jnanian said:
dude

the problem is that people have virtually no imagination ..
most images made with film or digital are about as interesting
as watching paint dry.

Jackpot!

alanrockwood · Jun 22, 2013

johnielvis said:
I mean curved in TWO dimensions--like spherical--not just cylindrical...that's what I mentioned heating the film or pouring over a SPHERICAL surface. That would provide full corrections around the view field.

but a sensor--or a whole bunch of pieces of film, say can be individulally manipulated in a camera back in out and tilted in two dimensions to give incredible LOCAL image control. not just over the single flat sheet, but locally.

we all know what's been done with single dimension curvature...I'm talking two dimensions curvature here--like the inside of a bowl, say or the outside of a basketball

What johnielvis says here is key.... curved in TWO dimensions. A surface curved in two dimensions like a part of a sphere is what the boat-building people call a "non-developable" surface. That means it cannot be formed by simply bending a sheet of material, like a plate of steel in the case of a boat, or a sheet of film in the case of a camera.

Fitting a sheet of film to a non-developable surface would require stretching or compressing the film in addition to bending it, somewhat in the manner of a rubber sheet.

removed account4 · Jun 22, 2013

this can already do this sort of thing, now, with analog materials.
plastic can be shaped into any shape imaginable, coated with liquid emulsion
and printed. i was doing this in the 1980s ..

its like anything, without imagination its just another bad photograph or digital image
masquerading as something interesting because of how it was made.

E. von Hoegh · Jun 22, 2013

johnielvis said:
I mean curved in TWO dimensions--like spherical--not just cylindrical...that's what I mentioned heating the film or pouring over a SPHERICAL surface. That would provide full corrections around the view field.

but a sensor--or a whole bunch of pieces of film, say can be individulally manipulated in a camera back in out and tilted in two dimensions to give incredible LOCAL image control. not just over the single flat sheet, but locally.

we all know what's been done with single dimension curvature...I'm talking two dimensions curvature here--like the inside of a bowl, say or the outside of a basketball

Take a look at a Minox subminiature.

Bob Carnie · Jun 22, 2013

plus one

MaximusM3 said:
Jackpot!

johnielvis · Jun 24, 2013

the cheap cameras are curved like a cylinder not like a sphere--there is a HUGE difference.

minox is the same--curved like a cylinder--curved like a sphere is very very different.

They guy with the comment about the boat surface--he gets it.

I'm talking about like a solar dish--the homemade kind--where people use discoball mirrors on a parabolic surface of revolution--you can't put a piece of film on a surface like that without warping it--heating and stretching. The eye, yes--that's the same thing too--spherical surface. But if there's a way, say using air pressure or something to warp a surface on the fly, so it can be controlled, this can result in amazing image control.

a bunch of sensors on a flexible surface can be individuially manipulated...say to increase the angle of projection to eliminate cos^4 falloff. they can be pushed and pulled back and forth individually to change the plane of focus" AND angle of incidence. This is what's not been done before, sorry to say-except, perhaps, with astronomy--where they use multiple telescopes to make a composite image--that is similar.

Lenses are axisymmetric with spherical curvatures---they want to project an axisymmetric image focused on a surface of revolution with finite curvature--so the natural focus surface is approximated by a sphere, not cylindrical (cheap or minox) or planar (regular filmholder).

AgX · Jun 24, 2013

johnielvis,

I don't get your point. (And yes, I understand the difference between 1-axis, multi-axis and spherical bending.)

But as long as the substrate that sensor layer is fixed to is as much or rather as less flexible as our film base, I do not see any advantage.

With proper materials such flexibility beyond the above can already be achieved in the analogue world.

NOW THIS can be a total game changer--flexible image sensor

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