SynthCam Helps You Click Like A Pro

The camera in mobile phones has become quite obsolete due to certain drawbacks. If you take a photograph with a standalone camera and compare it with that taken by your mobile camera having same megapixel rating, you will find that in the image taken by simple camera, the image is focused towards the area of interest, while in mobile cam image, all objects have equal focus. Secondly, the light gathering ability of mobile cameras is lesser than SLR cameras. This has given apps developers an opportunity to create mobile applications which will improve the image quality. Apps like HDR camera, TrueHDR, 360 Panorama, Autostich Panorama, Hipstamatic, etc. are already available on the Apple Apps Store. One major hurdle in improving the picture quality of mobile camera images is the camera’s design which limits the camera’s abilities.

Now, Marc Levoy, an apps developer and a professor at the Stanford University, has developed an application SynthCam, which enhances the capabilities of your smart phone making the camera even smarter. Marc Levoy resides in Palo Alto, California and teaches computer science and electrical engineering. This application developed by Levoy requires iOS 4.2 or higher and is an app for iPhone 4, 3GS and iPod Touch 4G. SynthCam software allows iPhone 4 to take images which appear as if they were taken using a bigger and better camera. Most of the standalone cameras have an adjustable focus. Focus can be varied in these cameras by changing the size of aperture. When the aperture size is kept maximum, the camera has a shallow depth of field which causes the object of interest to remain in focus, while all the other things become blurred. However, in a mobile camera this field depth is deep meaning that all the objects are focused equally. Levoy’s app improves the camera aperture size by taking a large number of images of the same scene and then superimposing the images to get a sharper focus on the area of interest. SynthCam rotates around Levoy’s research in computational photography.

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SynthCam Effect

For using this software, all you have to do is tap your iPhone screen where the object of interest is visible, then capture the photo by moving the camera in an imaginary circle around the required object. Now, the app will take n number of images when the camera is rotated. The algorithm will search for the desired focusing point in all the frames and auto arranges them in an alignment which focuses the desired object and blurs the remaining scene. The software also increases the light gathering capacity of the mobile camera which helps it take better pictures in dim lighting conditions. The objects which are not stationary are removed from the photo. This app is available on the apps market for only 99 cents gives full value for money.

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