[HN Gopher] Show HN: BokehCamera - Blur webcam background photor...
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Show HN: BokehCamera - Blur webcam background photorealistically
using RealSense
Author : dheera
Score : 53 points
Date : 2021-08-31 16:52 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| teawrecks wrote:
| You're going to have photographers arguing that this is merely
| depth of field, and for it to be called bokeh you need light
| sources/reflections to bloom in the shape of the aperture. Which
| would be a super cool feature.
| dheera wrote:
| Yeah that would be cool! I guess that's actually not that hard
| to implement since I just need to do some sort of 2D
| convolution with the aperture shape, instead of just cv2.blur.
|
| The tricky thing is that in order to get different amount of
| blur at different depths, I interpolate between precomputed 3
| levels of blur, since that vectorizes well at -O3, I'm not sure
| how to compute a per-pixel varying blur efficiently without
| going to the GPU.
| underwater wrote:
| That's what I thought this was doing, based on the description.
| The reason that Meet backgrounds look fake is because they do a
| Gaussian Blur instead of simulating a lens. A physical bokeh
| will blow out highlights, whereas a Gaussian Blur will smooth
| out bright spots.
| black_knight wrote:
| Nice!
|
| If you are not on a budget, you can use a mirrorless camera with
| a big aperture (say f1.6), wide angle lens as a "webcam" by
| connecting the HDMI out of the camera to the computer using an
| Elgato Camlink. That will also get you a nicely blurred
| background.
|
| I do this, and a lot of people do a double take whenever I enter
| a zoom call. Best commment so far was "What is happening? Are you
| in a movie?".
| dheera wrote:
| Yep this is a neat trick too. Also I must say (as a hobbyist
| photographer myself) that even if you're on a budget, if you
| want to go the optical route, you can easily grab a cheap used
| DSLR like a Canon 60D which often goes for <$200 used, and slap
| on an old M42 Russian lens with a conversion adapter and get
| fantastic bokeh for video calls.
|
| The mildly annoying part is most DSLRs don't have an AC adapter
| input to allow them to be constantly on, but you can buy a
| "fake" Canon battery that sits in the battery compartment and
| wires in AC adapter input.
| black_knight wrote:
| > The mildly annoying part is most DSLRs don't have an AC
| adapter input to allow them to be constantly on, > but you
| can buy a "fake" Canon battery that sits in the battery
| compartment and wires in AC adapter input.
|
| Yeah, I left out that detail. One should also make sure that
| the camera has a clean HDMI output. I can't use my old EOS
| 500D for this since the HDMI output is grody with focus aids
| and stuff.
| Schinken_ wrote:
| I experimented with the old 550D of my dad. I got a
| successful clean picture using either USB (canon supplies a
| "USB Webcam Software", though the 550D is not officially
| supported it works. I also managed to get clean HDMI out
| using "magic lantern" (a firmware modification for some
| canon DSLRs which enables a lot of hidden features, allows
| clean HDMI, and on a beta branch allows "simulated focus
| bubtton press" to keep the camera from shutting down due to
| inactivity)
| azinman2 wrote:
| Also overheating. I don't know about the Canon but my Sony
| had to have a number of settings changed to keep the temp
| down, and even then on a hot day it'll shut itself off.
| lifeofpi331144 wrote:
| You don't need to do either. Canon offers a webcam
| utility driver for free, which offers a clean interface
| via microusb->usb.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I don't know about Canon, but the Sony one is lower
| resolution than the HDMI capture. I was able to buy a
| cheap Chinese USB-HDMI capture card for like $8 and it
| works actually quite well, and is driverless.
| brippalcharrid wrote:
| You don't even need to use HDMI or have a capture card; you
| can connect the camera with USB and use
| gphoto2/v4l2loopback to present it to the OS as a video
| input. With older cameras that have USB2, you will be
| limited to a lower bandwidth and resolution (200Mbps ->
| 1024x680), but it still looks fantastic, especially with
| high-quality lenses and shallow depth of field that enables
| video codecs to encode the out-of-focus-areas efficiently
| and concentrate on detail in the focal plane.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I would recommend a less wide angle. If you have the space so
| you can get a 50mm, you'll get much better bokeh than a 20mm.
|
| The thing with shooting WFO, you'll have tissue paper thin
| focal plane. Moving forward or leaning back could throw you out
| of focus.
| otterley wrote:
| A modern camera like a Sony A6400 (which I use) has facial
| focus tracking and deals with this quite well. I use a 16mm
| prime lens for my video calls -- 50mm would be way too close
| for my facial distance (about 2 feet from the lens).
| Version467 wrote:
| You probably don't even need to shell out for an elgato
| camlink. Most halfway modern canon cameras are supported by
| their webcam tool (iirc they expanded support to a lot of
| models during the pandemic) and I'm pretty sure that Sony has
| an equivalent as well.
|
| If you're on Linux there's a way to make this work with
| gphoto2, but it involves a little bit of fiddling and is less
| plug and play.
| vmception wrote:
| I have an A7sII, I might do this just so people think I have an
| OnlyFans so I can find out who is in the market when they DM me
|
| Honeypot!
| ezconnect wrote:
| I can't say it's a budget setup, that lens f1.6 is expensive.
| otterley wrote:
| I've got a Sigma 16mm f/1.4 lens (Sony E mount) and it costs
| about $350. Not _cheap_ but not ludicrously expensive,
| either.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I have a Sony rx100 that I do this with, which is just a
| point-in-shoot. It has excellent picture quality and bokeh.
| It looks much better than this.. the blur is the same
| everywhere in the background, which isn't what it looks like
| from my Sony.
| detaro wrote:
| a) the comment you are replied to said "if you are _not_ on a
| budget "
|
| b) if you presume "mirrorless camera" as a baseline, a prime
| 1.x at roughly 50mm (equivalent) is almost always one of the
| budget lens options.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Are there any readily available stereo cameras besides RealSense?
| Turning this into a product for video conferencing would be a
| huge hit, been thinking of it for a while.
| dheera wrote:
| OP here!
|
| Here are a few:
|
| - Structure Core: https://structure.io/structure-core Closest
| to RealSense in functionality that I've tried so far, but
| pricier. Software is in a private developer portal instead of a
| Git repo where everyone can submit issues and pull requests and
| comment, so it's not as easy to get help as RealSense when you
| run into issues.
|
| - Mynt Eye: https://www.mynteye.com/ From my understanding the
| S models eat into your GPU and the D models have on-board
| processing, but the D models seem sold out.
|
| - ZED: https://www.stereolabs.com/zed/ They eat into your GPU.
| No on-board processing.
|
| I'd be very interested to know about others, especially if
| there are more that can do on-board processing, since I
| typically need my entire GPU for other tasks.
| vzaliva wrote:
| Looks great, but my video conferencing setup is on Mac. If there
| is something similar for MacOS?
| itake wrote:
| seems like RealSense is winding down?
| https://www.crn.com/news/components-peripherals/intel-says-i...
| tim-fan wrote:
| Yes, although it's not as bad as it initially seemed; the
| stereo product lines will be continued.
| https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andersgj_i-can-share-this-mor...
| [deleted]
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