Abstract
This seminar was given by Frédéric Guichard, Scientific Director of DxO Labs. Digital photography is based on an optical/software pairing, with software playing the most important role. In digital photography, it is possible to use software to undo the distortions caused by lenses and sensors: geometric distortions, chromatic aberrations, certain types of blurring, contrast enhancement and noise reduction. This is what DxO Optics Pro software does, as demonstrated by numerous examples.
This new approach is revolutionizing optics. Rather than designing expensive, multi-lens zooms with moderate but complex distortions, it will be better to design very simple, low-cost zooms with stronger but easily undone distortions. You can also make digital lenses with a large depth of field, taking advantage of the fact that you can make a photo sharp overall if only one of the three primary colors (red, green, blue) is sharp. Instead of trying to reduce the lens' longitudinal chromatic aberration, which causes the colors not to focus at the same distance, we increase it by using adapted materials, separating the hyperfocals of each color as best we can. The result is good sharpness from 20 cm to infinity, something impossible with non-digital optics.
