Cameras are now being taken into a whole new level, leaving tiny, curved and even flexible cameras in the dust. Now, engineers from Columbia University have developed a new breed of cameras that can allow users to capture images with a flexible sheet.

Like Us on Facebook

This new elastic sheet camera is just a prototype however, it possesses radical imaging technology where it has the ability to be wrapped around objects.

According to project head Shree Nayar who is also a professor at the Department of Computer Science, Columbia Engineering, the team is exploring a different approach to imaging where they believe that there are so many applications for cameras in large format that can be also made very thin and highly flexible.

This breakthrough "flex cam" will require two crucial technological components, a thin yet powerful optical system and a flexible detector array. However, researchers still think that capturing good quality via an ultra thin optical lens system is not sufficient enough since lenses with definite focal lengths can produce an image with missing data in between.

The solution to this is a silicon adaptive lens array which can adjust with the sheet camera's bending capabilities which can prevent information loss in a newly captured image. With this new innovation, the team is hoping to produce a large format of the camera which can go well with a deformable lens array.

Researchers believe that if this elastic sheet camera can be made inexpensively, this can be greatly utilized for taking photos that a conventional camera cannot accomplish since this can be wrapped around many objects like street poles and cars, furniture and even around clothing.

In the future, this elastic thin sheet camera can even be used in almost anywhere, where users can keep them inside their wallets.

This new camera will be presented at the International Conference on Computational Photography next month at the Northwestern University in Illinois.