Uncalibrated synthetic aperture for defocus control

Exaggerated defocus can not be created with an ordinary compact digital camera because of its tiny sensor size, so it is hard to take pictures that attract a viewer to the main subject. On the other hand, there are many methods for controlling focus and defocus of previously taken pictures. However, most of these methods require purpose-built equipment such as a camera array to take pictures. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a method to create images focused at any depth with arbitrarily blurred background from the set of images taken by a handheld compact digital camera moved randomly. Using our method, it is possible to produce various aesthetic blurs by changing the size, shape or density of the blur kernel. In addition, we confirm the potential of our method through a subjective evaluation of blurred images created by our system.