f-stops and exposure

The Spheron system is capable of capturing upto 26 f-stops of exposure in a single scan.

The system captures a thin slice (as opposed to a wide angle view) and stitches those slices together to create an true spherical, floor to ceiling image (180 degree by 360 degree capture).

This spherical image when exported as an equirectangular projection looks like the image below

f_stops_equirectangular_proj_baseline

In terms of ‘exposure’ within that image, if one considers the orange rectangular as our area of interest, 20 f-stops of exposure looks like the image below.

20_f_Stops_Preview

This vast range of exposure is the core principle of our ‘high dynamic range’ image (HDR), as at 32-bits of data, it contains more information than the human eye can perceive.

With such an image, we have effectively digitized (and captured) the environment in terms of:

  • luminance (light within that space)
  • environmental data

The native Spheron digital negative therefore provides:

  • an image of unprecedented fidelity
  • a digital negative that can be post-processed into a HDR (RADIANCE), TIFF or OpenEXR image file
  • A resultant HDR that can be utilized in image based lighting processes
  • A visual ‘immersive’ context image into which digital assets can be placed / tagged via Scene Center
  • a spherical, ‘immersive’ output opportunity (similar to QuickTime VR) that can be integrated into virtual (online / hosted) tours.