Oliver Petrie - Week 6 Digital Camera Technology

Digital Camera Technology

The introduction of microchips has allowed a range of new technologies today, but has also replaced a variety of technologies that used tubes or valves, such as those in cameras. Digital cameras have replaced still cameras, allowed for web-cams and are gradually replacing CCTV systems.

While most still cameras are digital today, many large budget movies are still produced with analogue film, many arguing that it is still superior to digital methods in terms of quality. This, however, is starting to change as the digital technology becomes better at reproducing images.
One of the reasons the issue of quality is raised in digital cameras stems from the underlying problem of capturing light.

The majority of digital camera technology uses an array of four sensors for each pixel, one red, one blue and two to capture green light (due to the human sensitivity to green-yellow light), known as the Bayer Filter. This method can therefore be disputed because it isn't technically accurate, being bias toward one part of the colour spectrum. The basic problem in this model is, how do you split a square pixel into three equal colours. There have been many similar arrays created with this technique, some with a white pixel to measure intensity, or advanced patterns which introduce other colours or shapes of array.

Another method known as the Foveon sensor uses three coloured filters in a layered arrangement, each layer capturing just the wavelength of light it is design for and allowing other wavelengths to pass to the next layers. This method has its own problems arising from allow light to pass between layers and of course cost, as each sensor is in essence a microchip.
There are also a wide variety of other issues that come into play in looking at the quality of digital camera that can arise from how much light can be captured, how many pixels, the size of the sensor and the calculations used to transform that information into an image.

Human Vision

To understand how to adapt digital cameras for use in architecture we also understand on some level how our vision works, and that it depends on multiple systems of brain function to decipher colour, motion and shade to form an image. How we perceive the world relies heavily on how the data is processed in conjunction with memory, natural assumptions and approximations to form a view. Evolutionary changes and world interaction have driven these cognitive effects, many of which we do not fully understand. We unintentionally assume objects are lit from above and that objects have mass rather than being hollow. We group objects and colours together and our vision is bias toward particular colours over others. This colour spectrum shows where the sensitivities of human vision lie, with the peak being in the green-yellow wavelengths, especially at night time.

Camouglage

We have become accustomed to seeing the world through the internet, and will often sacrifice a real world experience, to instead view it over the internet, such as in site visits. The lack of privacy that comes with this technology causes a desire to hide or disconnect from this. CCTV cameras use some infra-red wavelengths of light to enhance the image in low lighting levels. There have been concepts invented that us a method of camouflage by using bright Infra-Red LEDs to overload these sensors in CCTV cameras. This is one example of something that humans would not physically see in reality, but which CCTV cameras would pick up. This method can both camouflage an object from security cameras, but could also be used to draw attention to something in the digital world that would remain seemingly anonymous to us in reality.

Invisibility and thoughts

Architecture, in a traditional sense, deals with the built form rather than with digital reproductions or creations. The line between real and digital is becoming increasingly blurred. So then, should architecture try to combat this move toward digital experiences over real, or embrace the digital world as another totally different experience? Can the digital realm become the primary experience of the project?

This then throws into question of what a real experience is in architecture. As we have seen with the Blur Building by Diller and Scofidio, the building envelope separating interior and exterior can be broken down creating a totally new experience. In 2007 scientists were able to create an artificial material, an electromagnetic meta-material, with a negative index of refraction for visible light, meaning that the material was able to bend light around it, in essence becoming invisible to humans. Although this happened on a microscopic scale it does open up a range of possibilities for both the physical and digital world. In decades to come it will be possible, in theory, to create a building that shows up on some cameras but is invisible in reality.

If architecture deals with real experiences, then it may be in our interest to seek to hide buildings from digital views, to camouflage in order to draw a greater audience to seek the real experience. On the other hand there is the possibility that we use the digital view to seek another dimension to architecture.