Thomas K. Sharpless – Beyond the Lens – Panini, the software view camera
The Palmela 2011 Organization is pleased to announce Thomas K. Sharpless as conference speaker:
BA Biology Haverford College 1962
PhD Biochemistry Princeton University 1969
Have worked as:
- Freelance programmer in computer typesetting
- Cell biologist and diagnostic systems engineer in cancer research
- systems and software engineer in magnetic resonance imaging
- consulting engineer in LSI chip design
- Retired 2001.
Retired software and systems engineer who worked in cancer research, medical imaging and chip design.Got hooked on panoramic photography in 2004, when converted a document scanner into a rotating digital slit camera.Now mostly make spherical panoramas the regular way with a DSLR and stitching software. Develops open source panography software (Hugin, Panini). His current interest is exploring new ways of controlling wide angle photographic perspective, made possible by using software instead of lenses.
Thomas talk will be about early experiences with the software view camera.
The core operation of panorama stitching separates the image from the physical lens that recorded it. That represents a revolution in photography, because now we can create geometrically accurate photos with “software lenses”, including not only optically impossible ones, but also idealized versions of traditional lenses. Moreover we can mount these lenses on “software cameras” offering all the geometrical flexibility of the view camera, and much more. This opens many new possibilities for control of photographic perspective, that we are only just beginning to explore.
Thomas will illustrate some of those possibilities with selected images and a live demonstration of the new Version 1 of his own software view camera, Panini, which renders images in the stereographic/Pannini family of projections.
Perelman Center Atrium from North in USA
St. Francis Xavier Church, Philadelphia in USA
