Often times, when we whip out our smartphones in hopes of catching some rare or significant moment on film, we only have one shot at getting a quality photo. Whether it be your kid tearing into presents on his first birthday or your niece’s first soccer game, sometimes, because of movement or not allowing the camera to focus properly before snapping the photo, you end up with blurred, undecipherable images. Fortunately for the shaky-handed among us, Toshiba is in the process of solving this problem.
Toshiba is pressing full steam ahead to develop a new sensor for smartphone and tablet cameras. The sensor will not only allow users to spot-focus their pictures after having taken them, but also bring an entire blurry photo into focus after it has been snapped. Coming as welcome news for those of us who have an impatient or unsteady hand, Toshiba’s new sensor plan is obviously using the same premise as the Lytro camera, however, Toshiba notes that this particular sensor will surpass Lytro’s technology by working with videos taken on the device as well.
The camera sensor works because of its thousands of tiny lenses, layered one upon another, that allow lots of different images to be grabbed at once. The result is an image that can be focused and refocused after the photo has been snapped, just like using Lytro’s camera technology. However, unlike Lytro’s long camera body, this sensor will be small enough to be integrated into your smartphone or tablet and can be placed in your purse or pocket.
Even though Toshiba is already working on this technology and hoping to integrate it into smartphones and tablets very soon, the general public should not expect to see the sensor in use in any product on the market until at least the end of 2013. Whenever this technology arrives, it will be worth the wait for those who always seem to have a camera roll full of blurred or unfocused pictures.