Just as we are starting to understand the ramifications of the digital era, along comes something new that is destined to change the entire world of photography. Some photographers will embrace it and make it part of their arsenal. Others may simply throw their arms up and groan with a collective resignation that what they had learned and practiced for decades, was over.

I do know this… you gotta be watching for the changes as they come. Take the information and know it, love it, hate it… it really isn’t even necessary to ‘take a side’ - but it is necessary for a hard look at how the changes could impact you. C-Net brings us a fascinating look at some incredible new technology that will turn traditional photography on its ear. And it is here now.

From C-Net:

“Think of it as digital photography 2.0.

In the last decade, photography has been transformed by one revolution, the near-total replacement of analog film cameras by digital image sensors. Now researchers and companies are starting to stretch their wings by taking advantage of what a computer can do with sensor data either within the camera or on a full-fledged PC.

Some elements of this new era, which researchers often call computational photography, are refinements of existing technology. For example, some cameras can wait to take the photo only when subjects are smiling and not blinking, in effect placing the shutter release button in the hands of the subjects rather than the photographer.”

and…

“Early phases
Depending on your definitions, you can argue the computational photography revolution already has begun.

For example, editing software can correct camera lens flaws such as barrel and pincushion distortion, which makes parallel lines bow outward and inward, respectively, or chromatic aberration, which causes colored fringes along high-contrast edges. But that’s generally a largely manual process.

At the 6sight conference in Monterey, Calif., last year Adobe’s Connor showed computational photography techniques that lets a photo’s depth of field be expanded or changed, or the photographer’s vantage point be shifted. You can see Connor give a demo of that in the video at right.”

Read the whole thing and give the information the attention you think it deserves.