Design and Fabrication of Faceted Mirror Arrays for Light Field Capture

Abstract

The high resolution of digital cameras has made single-shot, single-sensor acquisition of light fields feasible, though considerable design effort is still necessary in order to construct the necessary collection of optical elements for particular acquisition scenarios. This article explores a pipeline for designing, fabricating, and utilizing faceted mirror arrays which simplifies this task. The foundation of the pipeline is an interactive tool that automatically optimizes for mirror designs while exposing to the user a set of intuitive parameters for light field quality and manufacturing constraints. We investigate two manufacturing processes for automatic fabrication of the resulting designs: one is based on CNC milling, polishing, and plating of one solid work piece, while the other involves assembly of precision cut mirror facets. We demonstrate results for refocusing in a macro photography scenario.