Digital Imaging Technologies

Yes, Aggregate.Org does digital imaging! In fact, we're deeply involved in the University of Kentucky's Center for Visualization and Virtual Environments. For example, the image above was captured using a peephole as a fisheye lens for a digital camera.

How we got into digital imaging is a long story, but it started with a need to create high-resolution images for our cluster supercomputer video walls... digital cameras and sufficient compute power now are so widely available that some of our once exotic technologies have become of more general interest.

General References

Introduction to digital photography
a brief overview originally prepared for a free short course offered during Engineer's Day open house at the University of Kentucky's Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Homepage for the University of Kentucky's Digital Photography Club
not a very active group of late...

Research Products & Spin-Offs

Paper preprint (PDF) and slides (PDF) for Reprocessing Anaglyph Images
Presented January 26, 2012 by Prof. Dietz at the IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging conference; paper to appear in the proceedings
My lenses
An annotated listing of (most) lenses I'm working with in my research; there are over 100, mostly old lenses purchased via eBay
Slides on PSF and Bokeh (PDF) and Apertures and Viewpoints (PDF)
slides for two lectures Prof. Dietz gave in CS585 Computational Photography at the University of Kentucky, Sept. 28 and Sept 30, 2011
C-Mount Lenses for mirrorless micro 4/3 and APS-C?
an instructable about the use of C-mount lenses on cameras with sufficiently short flange distances, but larger sensors than the lenses were designed to cover... mostly reporting a negative result
Custom New Look for an Old Lens
an instructable about customizing/repairing the non-optical parts of old lenses
Use Your Camera To Capture "3D" Anaglyphs
an instructable about direct capture of anaglyphs using a reversible sub-$1 mod to a camera; although it does not require any special processing of the images, this is a spin-off of our computational photography work involving analysis and processing of out-of-focus image content
Cleaning Camera Equipment
a short overview of Dietz's take on cleaning cameras and lenses
Using Ultra-Fast Lenses on DSLR Cameras
an instructable about equipment lenses with f/numbers well below 2.0, e.g., Kowa 1:1 55mm
M42 Lens Aperture Control on Modern DSLRs
a little instructable about M42 preset, auto/man, and auto apertures
Technology Enabling Art
a dpreview challenge series attempting to encourage use of new digital imaging technologies
Old Film Camera Lenses On New Digital Cameras
discusses use of old film SLR lenses on new DSLRs
Big Old Camera, Tiny New Sensor
discusses use of an old 4x5 sheet film camera as a webcam
Capture Control Of Digital Cameras
a "work in progress" overview/survey of tethered image capture issues and techniques
Fisheye digital imaging for under $20
using a cheap digital camera with a door viewer peephole
RGB-NIR extraction from a single RAW image
a very simple linear technique using unmodified digital cameras
Accessories for exposure calibration
a really cool thing you can do with your lenscap to capture colors more accurately; this concept also is described in an instructable: Improve Color Accuracy In Your Photos
Color LCD Panel Subpixel Rendering (local copy)
about use of subpixel techniques for general image rendering, as implemented in VWLib; this page was last modified December 15, 1998
VWLib: Video Wall Library
a virtual frame buffer for cluster supercomputers and various tools using it; our group built the world's first Linux PC cluster video wall back in 1994, and VWLib was the portable library we later released for others to use

External Links (not ours)

English homepage of Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA)
CIPA Guidelines standardize how camera specifications are listed, etc.
http://www.dpreview.com/
A fairly technical site discussing digital photography equipment
http://www.imaging-resource.com/
A fairly technical site discussing digital photography equipment
http://www.pentaxforums.com/
A fairly technical Pentax-oriented site
http://www.dyxum.com/
A fairly technical Konica/Minolta/Sony-oriented site
http://www.mflenses.com/
A site dedicated to manual focus lens sample images, data, and reviews
http://www.camerapedia.org/
A free-content encyclopedia of camera info; for example, here is the longest list of M42 lenses I've seen thus far

The Aggregate. The only thing set in stone is our name.