Active guidance for light-field photography on smartphones

•We propose a novel active guidance algorithm for capturing light fields.•The method actively directs users successively towards recommended sampling poses.•A variety of light-field types with a large field of view are supported.•The light-field parameterization is computed from scene and camera properties.•An extension of the guidance algorithm allows collaborative light-field photography.

We present a novel approach for guided light-field photography using off-the-shelf smartphones. In contrast to previous work that requires the user to decide where next to position a mobile camera, we actively compute and visualize during runtime a recommendation for the next sampling position and orientation taking into account the current camera pose and required camera alignments. This supports efficient capture of various types of large-field-of-view light fields in just a matter of minutes and without specialized camera equipment. To further reduce the overall capture time, we describe an extension of our guidance algorithm to collaborative light-field photography by small groups of users.

Graphical abstractFigure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload high-quality image (448 K)Download as PowerPoint slide