Samsung Might Give Compact Cameras Shallower DoF with Second Lens

A compact camera probably isn’t the first thing someone would grab when looking to make a photo with an extremely shallow depth-of-field, since the small aperture and small sensor limit it in this regard. That might soon be different: a recently published patent application by Samsung shows that the company is looking into producing achieving shallow depth of fields with compact cameras by using a second lens to create a depth map for each photo.

By using both the normal photograph and the depth map, the camera can create intelligent synthetic blurring that’s based on actual distance measurements and therefore more realistic:

Whether or not compact cameras survive long enough for this technology to reach consumers is a different story…

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