An Overview of Light Field Acquisition

Although the core principles of Light Field imaging were discovered more than 100 years ago, it’s only been the last ten years that this amazing technology has progressed to the point of commercialization.   Capturing light field images is extremely challenging, due to complexity and size of capture optics, photosensor arrays and data storage.   In this talk, Pete Ludé will provide an overview of the approaches being used, the major players and progress being made.   You’ll hear about the challenges to improving performance while achieving an affordable and practical system.   One of the early application areas is in production of tent-pole motion pictures, and we’ll look at the applications that are driving investment and innovation, as well as the challenges.

Pete Ludé,  CTO, Mission Rock Digital

Pete Ludé is a prominent engineering executive in cinema and digital media, with extensive experience in technology innovation. Ludé is currently CTO of the San Francisco-based Mission Rock Digital, where he is helping re-invent motion imaging system for cinema.  He previously served as Chief Innovation Officer at RealD, and Senior Vice President of Sony’s Silicon Valley R&D labs.  Pete has been involved with new LED display for movie theaters, workflow software for digital cinema production, stereoscopic imaging and 4K laser projectors for digital cinema. He is past president of SMPTE, and a SMPTE fellow. Pete is also was founding Chairman of the Laser Illuminated Projector Association, and is currently Chair of the SMPTE committee standardizing immersive sound for cinema.  He is a frequent speaker on the future of cinema technology, Ultra HD, stereoscopic 3D and laser displays.