Earlier this year, French researcher Robin Lobel amazed a crowd of students at the University of Paris with footage from a camera that creates 3D images from 2D ones. The special camera is programmed to recognize visual cues in the perspective of the scene so it can extrapolate 3D renderings of the image. The video (it's in French, but there are still some good demo moments even if you don't understand the language) suggests that precise depth of field, direct compositing of 3D layers, and actually relighting the entire scene are the three big benefits of such a camera. The possibility of relighting an entire feature film is enticing — so enticing in fact that Hollywood already does it! Studios do their fair share of this sort of thing in post-production, albeit with equipment that probably costs way more than Lobel's gear. As it stands now, Lobel's 2D-to-3D trick is a bit redundant, but if the technology were to make its way into common camcorders, it could blossom quite nicely — if only to give everybody the power to create way-cool Matrix-y wraparounds from 2D images. — Elliot Black

Via TechEBlog