Quanta Burst Photography

University of Wisconsin–Madison: In a dark room or a motion-heavy scene, conventional cameras face a choice: a quick look that freezes movement nicely but turns out dark, or a longer exposure that captures more light but blurs moving parts.

“That’s always been a fundamental trade-off in any kind of photography,” says Mohit Gupta, a University of Wisconsin–Madison computer sciences professor. “But we are working on overcoming that trade-off with a different kind of sensor.”

The researchers are using SPADs for what they call quanta burst photography — taking many images in bursts, and then processing those many images to squeeze one good picture from a poorly lit or fast-moving subject. The EPFL The SwissSPAD array from Edoardo Charbon's group used in the burst photography work is fast enough to record 100,000 single-photon frames per second.

“The result is good image quality in low-light, with reduced motion blur, as well as a wide dynamic range,” says Gupta, whose work is supported by the DARPA. “We have had good results even when the brightest spot in view is getting 100,000 times as much light as the darkest.”

The paper also compares the algorithms running on SPAD and Jot-based sensors:

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