Real world scenes may exceed contrast ratios of as much as 1,000,000:1 between the brightest highlights and the darkest shadows. Many existing image acquisition devices such as built-in cameras on wireless handsets are only capable of reproducing contrast ratios of at most a few hundreds to one. Thus, many existing cameras are not capable of taking advantage of the fact that display systems may now be capable of supporting high dynamic range (“HDR”) image formats and permitting rendering images of contrast ratios of a few thousands to one or better.
Many existing cameras do not support HDR because of the high costs associated with HDR image acquisition under existing approaches. For example, image sensors that are capable of producing discerning responses to a wide range of luminance levels are expensive to manufacture. Even if deployed at a high cost, a large volume of image data that would be generated, requiring expensive processing power to process the image data responsively. The shortcomings as discussed above would become more pronounced in stereoscopic cameras as image sensors and data volumes would be doubled in these cameras. As a result, for small footprint devices such as wireless handsets, it would be neither economically feasible nor technically viable to support HDR image acquisition, much less to support 3D HDR image acquisition.
Recently, we have seen low-end cameras, such as the Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D W3 10 Mpixel digital camera, that allow capturing stereoscopic images. Consumer camcorders capable of capturing 3D are now available, such as the Panasonic HDC-SDT750. Furthermore, manufacturers have introduced professional 3D broadcast video cameras, such as the Panasonic AG-3DA1. It is the purpose of this invention to disclose new methods that allow using such cameras to capture 2D or 3D HDR pictures with minimal additional processing.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section. Similarly, issues identified with respect to one or more approaches should not assume to have been recognized in any prior art on the basis of this section, unless otherwise indicated.