A High Dynamic Range Light Field Camera and Its Built-In Data Processor Design

Traditional High Dynamic Range (HDR) techniques require inputs of multiple Low Dynamic Range (LDR) images with different exposure time taken in serial shots or from a camera array. These methods are either suffered from ghosting effects or very expensive when setting up the system. In this paper, we design a hand-held pinhole-mask-based light field camera and use it to capture all LDR data in one shot. We also propose a light-field HDR algorithm to process LDR data collected. Finally, a hardware accelerator for the algorithm is implemented to complete calculations within 0.3 seconds.