Denoising vs. deblurring: HDR imaging techniques using moving cameras

New cameras such as the Canon EOS 7D and Pointgrey Grasshopper have 14-bit sensors. We present a theoretical analysis and a practical approach that exploit these new cameras with high-resolution quantization for reliable HDR imaging from a moving camera. Specifically, we propose a unified probabilistic formulation that allows us to analytically compare two HDR imaging alternatives: (1) deblurring a single blurry but clean image and (2) denoising a sequence of sharp but noisy images. By analyzing the uncertainty in the estimation of the HDR image, we conclude that multi-image denoising offers a more reliable solution. Our theoretical analysis assumes translational motion and spatially-invariant blur. For practice, we propose an approach that combines optical flow and image denoising algorithms for HDR imaging, which enables capturing sharp HDR images using handheld cameras for complex scenes with large depth variation. Quantitative evaluation on both synthetic and real images is presented.