Why can’t the cameras capture what we see how we see?  In most cases, my digital camera pictures don’t correspond well with what I am actually seeing.  For instance, when I look out the window, I can see the bright outsides as well as the insides fine with my own eyes. BUT when I take a picture, I’m either stuck with a blown out window or dark interior.

Why the f#@! is this, you may ask?  More technically in this case, it’s because cameras lack the dynamic range of our eyes.  More universally, it’s because cameras suck compared to human eyes (and we don’t even have the best eyes in the animal kingdom!).

My point is that cameras have a long ways to go before we can start capturing images that fall within the standards of what we actually see everyday.  Isn’t that the point?  I feel like we got stuck with the limitations of technology, and seem to have forgotten the whole point of reproducing how and what we see.  Yeah, cameras are getting better all the time, but not fast enough and not close enough yet.

So what are some “parameters” of the camera we can improve?  There’s been a lot of research in optics, vision, perception, etc., but I’m writing a blog and not a research paper (thank goodness it won’t be boring — hopefully).  I’m going to only talk about the following parameters:

• Resolution
• Focal length
• Dynamic range

There’s definitely more, and I found a nice link here with interesting data.

As for human eye resolution, it is about ~600 mega pixel resolution.  Man, cameras are not even close to that!  Sure, you can create a panorama, but I’m talking about doing this in a single shot (or at 30 fps!).

Focal length wise, the article puts our eyes at about 16-22 mm.  Basically, our eyes can see a lot all around.  Do a simple test: put your hands out straight, wiggle your fingers, then start to move your arms to the opposing sides while looking straight.  I can see to about 180 degrees horizontally.

Finally, let’s talk about dynamic range.  This is the whole problem of the images above.  We’re only stuck with 0-255 per RGB channels.  This means that we need to describe the brightness of what we see — from dark shadows to sunlight — within the integer range of 0 to 255.  Even RAWs don’t cover it since the dynamic range needed to describe what we see could be 0-1,000,000.  Yes, cameras suck.  There are high-dynamic range imagery, and I will talk more about that soon.

These things basically mean, to me anyway, that our typical camera lenses are not wide enough, we need a lot more resolution, and needs a lot more dynamic range.

Are there more parameters we can hope for?  Of course!  What do you wish for in the next gen camera?