Lens Focusing

ALWAYS OUR VISION IN FOCUS

Next to lightning, focus is the essential storytelling tool for film. Focusing on film is an artistic, creative act. No algorithm can decide where the attention of the viewer should be directed at. 

The system, called Image+, uses a stereoscopic camera with over-and-under lenses spaced six or eight inches apart. This is a rather different approach to something like the widely-used Cinetape, which relies on timing echoes of ultrasonic sound to determine distance (and which is not generally used to directly control the lens). 

The key advantage of this is that it produces a complete depth image, not just a point reading. Qinematiq have used this to provide a touchscreen interface in which any object in the field of view can be brought into focus simply by touching it. The conventional, visible-light image is overlaid on the depth map.