Light Field Photography and Bonsai

[fredtruck]

Here are 2 pictures of the same tree, a pinus thunbergii corticosa ‘Ondae’. The pictures were taken about 6 weeks apart. I used different cameras for each picture.

The camera I used for the picture on the left was a SONY DSCRX-100 mk III. The Sony is most likely the best point and shoot camera made. It has a one inch square image sensor that gives its final output in the range of 20.2 megapixels, astonishingly high for such a small package. The Sony produces a very crisp image with a lot of detail. The Carl Zeiss lens sacrifices some zoom for more wide angle. On a tall, narrow subject such as the Ondae, image distortion is on the vertical axis of the picture.

I used a Lytro Illum Light Field Camera for the picture on the right. Unlike the Sony and its Zeiss lens, which captures its image from a single point of view, the Lytro Illum captures its image from hundreds of points of view. It is able to do this because it suspends a sheet of lenslets, very tiny lenses, over the image sensor and makes many images simultaneously. The Illum then combines all this information into one Living Image, in its terminology. You can change the f-Stop, the focus and even the perspective after the fact and export it to your desktop as a jpeg.

With the Lytro Illum, rated by the Lytro company at 4 megapixels, detail is present, but it isn’t so sharp as it is with the Sony. On the other hand, there is no lens distortion. The picture on the right is a more accurate representation of the Ondae than the picture on the left.

You might be asking yourself why I’m discussing these two cameras and the images they make. I’m not touting one camera over the other. I’ve made many hundreds of happy pictures with the Sony, just as I expect to with the Lytro Illum. The Lytro Illum is clearly a different animal, but how can you tell from just the pictures?

Put your cursor on the whitespace in each picture. With the picture I made with the Sony, everything appears to be behind the cursor. Not so different, eh? Just a standard photo.

Now, place your cursor on the whitespace in the picture on the right. The tree actually appears to be in front of the cursor.

The Lytro picture is nearly 3D. You can actually export the image as an anaglyph picture. To see the 3D you need red/cyan glasses. Without the glasses, you can still get at least a 3D impression as you can see here.

With photographs like the Lytro Illum produces, we no longer have to worry about the tyranny of a flat, two dimensional image. You can see where that back branch actually is in relationship to all the others.

The Lytro Illum will have a steep learning curve for those who are not experienced photographers. Addtionally, mastery of Photoshop and Light Room are very helpful to bring out the most in these images. I’ve hardly scratched the surface, especially the technical surface, of light field photography, but I hope I’ve at least opened your eyes to another way of photographing your trees.

 

[barrosinc]

You should go easier on the sharpening slider. Both images look cutout with a chisel.
The image on the right looks distorted, actually more distorted than the one on the left, look at the shape of the pot one side seems a lot higher. Use a longer lens and stand further back and you would avoid that.

 

[fredtruck]

Actually Max, the tree really looks like the picture on the right. The Lytro Illum comes with fixed one lens, fixed at f-Stop 2. You can edit the f-Stop in the computer. I think the problem with the pot is the pot. It's handmade. I straightened the image, and that left side is still deeper, but less noticeable now in the shadow.

These are nice critical points, but I'm really more interested in how bonsai are photographed, to what end is this done, and what tools are used. I realize we are coming at this from very different points of view, but all the same, thanks for pointing out the problems with the picture.