Snapshot High Dynamic Range Imaging with a Polarization Camera
Mingyang Xie Matthew Chan Christopher Metzler
High dynamic range (HDR) images are important for a range of tasks, from
navigation to consumer photography. Accordingly, a host of specialized HDR
sensors have been developed, the most successful of which are based on
capturing variable per-pixel exposures. In essence, these methods capture an
entire exposure bracket sequence at once in a single shot. This paper presents
a straightforward but highly effective approach for turning an off-the-shelf
polarization camera into a high-performance HDR camera. By placing a linear
polarizer in front of the polarization camera, we are able to simultaneously
capture four images with varied exposures, which are determined by the
orientation of the polarizer. We develop an outlier-robust and self-calibrating
algorithm to reconstruct an HDR image (at a single polarity) from these
measurements. Finally, we demonstrate the efficacy of our approach with
extensive real-world experiments.