The new Hasselblad X2DII may be expensive, but it brings a number of technological innovations.
Credit: Hasselblad
LiDAR autofocus for consumer cameras has been around for a few years, but until now, DJI‘s only involvement with the technology has been the awkward, expensive, and only somewhat useful accessory called the Focus Pro. This week, Hasselblad, a high-end camera manufacturer owned by DJI, unveiled a world-first mirrorless camera with integrated LiDAR autofocus.
Let’s talk about exactly why that’s different, and what it means for camera tech in the future.
Fast and accurate camera autofocus is a harder problem than most people realize. After all, for a camera’s sensor to “see” a scene and adjust the focus accordingly, light has to have already entered the camera from that scene. (How do you stay ahead of motion if that motion has to have already happened?) Even worse, just seeing that an image is out of focus is only part of the job; if you know you’re 6 inches off of focus, how do you know whether you need to focus 6 inches closer to the lens, or 6 inches further away?
Modern mirrorless cameras have on-sensor technologies like “phase detection” to answer this question, but the results have taken years of development and still provide only partial solutions.
Below, you can see a user setting up an earlier version of DJI’s LiDAR autofocus system.
But what if the camera didn’t have to infer distance from the minute details of the image, and could instead interrogate the world directly, building a physical map of the space in front of it? That’s what LiDAR autofocus promises.
Put simply, the technology shoots low-powered, invisible laser light at the scene and performs time-of-flight calculations on any light that bounces back. It has a maximum range of a couple of dozen feet, but the camera also sports a regular autofocus system that can assist or take over when LiDAR isn’t usable.
There are a number of big advantages to this approach, especially for video.
One is that the LiDAR system’s refresh rate can be hundreds of hertz, which unlocks quick, responsive analysis of the scene that is totally independent of the sensor’s filming framerate; traditional video autofocus systems have suffered from worse performance at lower framerates due to the slower updates those frames provide.
Another advantage of LiDAR is the increased physical resolution, as the system can build a remarkably detailed 3D map of the objects in front of the lens. Not only does this increase the focusing system’s accuracy and decisiveness, but it also unlocks a remarkable new view-assist tool for manual focus work that provides a depth map showing the real, physical distances to objects in the scene.
Because LiDAR doesn’t collect passive light but rather light it produces itself, the system is also impervious to concerns about exposure; LiDAR autofocus can operate in pitch darkness or in badly overexposed outdoor scenarios.
We’ll have to wait a little longer for more in-depth reviews of the camera to arrive, with weeks or months spent with the new autofocus system. Though DJI has been working on this technology for years, this is the brand’s first time trying to work it right into a piece of consumer technology.
If the reception is good, the tech could be integrated into a wide variety of cameras relatively soon. DJI is in a business alliance with camera maker Panasonic, making it possible that future LUMIX cameras could integrate LiDAR autofocus as well.