Low-cost camera array for mitigating lighting range effects

Lighting is a constant issue for computer vision applications. The range of light in a scene typically exceeds what an image can accurately represent. Typically, multiple images are taken with each image at a different exposure level. These images are then combined together in order to display more detail than a single image at a single exposure. For computer vision applications using a mutli-view approach it would require a substantial amount of bandwidth to perform these routines on each camera individually. This work looked at using multiple views in a camera array to each capture a different exposure level and then used that information to mitigate the lighting issues in a central view. A weighted averaging approach and a radiometric calibration based approach were both implemented and compared. In contrast to existing methods, this work looked at handling depth planes that were not considered to be on or near the plane at infinity. It was found that much of the detail that was lost due to lighting issues could be recovered.