"Pupil reflections in photographs could help investigators solve crimes"

[TopWargamer]

http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/27/5248442/university-of-york-pupil-reflection-study

 

 

The eyes are more than windows to the soul, thanks to technologies that can reveal reflected faces in pupils of photographs. Dr. Rob Jenkins of the University of York's Department of Psychology published a study that showed how pupils in photographs of faces can be "mined" for hidden information.

 

The study simulated crime photos, in which victims are photographed by attackers, to examine the reflections in the eyes of those being photographed. Jenkins and co-researcher Christie Kerr of the University of Glasgow's School of Psychology photographed eight people who were looking at four other individuals behind the camera. By zooming in on the high-resolution photos, Jenkins and Kerr were able to recover bystander images that were then accurately identified by the eight individuals photographed, even if the image quality was poor.

 

That's insane. It's amazing what technology now a days can. If the police and whoever can actually use this to crack down on criminals more efficiently, I'm obviously all for this.

[wng_kingsley7]

Nice.. I don't know how it would benefit everyone but hope mobile phone also get this and DSLR's and cameras in general. A bit far away from perfection but I like it.

[Askew]

"Even if the image quality was poor"

 

I'd like to hear what he defines as poor.

[Guest GRRigger]

8k camera?

[DudeWazap]

I guess taking pictures in 4k might now be necessary.

[1funnygame]

hah good luck with that

[Damikiller37]

Oh I bet all shops will now spend tens of thousands to install 4k/8k cctvs to put on their shops so that the police can look into your eyes and make them a nicer to steal for bandits... yeah no.

[Puppet]

This made me giggle, the "mined" part had me in stitches.

 

Since when did criminals go around getting portraits taken of themselves?

 

Resolution isn't so much of a factor, it's more to do with lighting and lens sharpness that will give well defined reflections in the eye. You arent going to get decent reflections out of a wide shot no matter what resolution it is, the sharpness of the lens will always be a let down, it would need to be a relatively tight headshot.

 

I must be missing something here, what are the police going to do? Trawl peoples Facebooks for reasonable quality portraits taken at the scene of a crime? Because I fail to see how this could equate to evidence that could be used to prove that someone is guilty of something.

 

Might be able to prove association, but the amount of crimes that this would cover are extremely slim and then you would have to have the associated person around at the time. There is no technology that can "mine" images out of peoples eyes, its a sensor that picks up different values for pixels, what you see is what you get, if you have to mess about with it its no longer evidence.

 

Bullshit of the highest order here.

[Beskamir]

With current resolution cameras this is almost impossible and will result in barely recongnisable pictures.

[SSL]

I guess taking pictures in 4k might now be necessary.

 

Most cameras have had more than 4k resolution for years - it's only around 8 megapixels. At this point the optical resolution of the lens is going to be the most important factor, anyway.

[brownninja97]

Maybe they could do this with my dslr, our Canon 5d mark 2 could hopefully pull it off but that is a £2000 camera and thats not even the lens.

[ForsakenLive]

CSI has been doing this for plenty of years now.

[Linus_torvalds]

if only atacker has nokia 1020's 41 MPIXEL camera. but what if he/she has galaxy s4?  

[mully006]

This is some blade runner shit.  We only need voice controls and we can zoom and enhance to our hearts content.  

 

[SSL]

Maybe they could do this with my dslr, our Canon 5d mark 2 could hopefully pull it off but that is a £2000 camera and thats not even the lens.

 

According to the article, this was done with a 39 megapixel medium-format camera, which will in theory have considerably more resolution. It'd probably be possible with your camera given the right circumstances, though.

[Imaginaerum]

CSI has been doing this for plenty of years now.

I thought we could already look into the reflection of the eye to see the reflection of the window to scan the person's fingerprint from the reflection of the silver coin glinting in the sunlight.

[ShiverMePenguins]

I guess taking pictures in 4k might now be necessary.

oh, you mean 8.3 megapixels? jesus, when will cameras have that.

[DudeWazap]

oh, you mean 8.3 megapixels? jesus, when will cameras have that.

I don't know but I hope soon.

[Puppet]

Maybe they could do this with my dslr, our Canon 5d mark 2 could hopefully pull it off but that is a £2000 camera and thats not even the lens.

 

if only atacker has nokia 1020's 41 MPIXEL camera. but what if he/she has galaxy s4?  

 

It doesn't really matter what camera you have got.

 

The lighting is the biggest hurdle and obviously distance as well. Its a balancing act between the exposure of the subject (the eye) and the person in the reflection of the eye. If they are of equal or even slightly greater exposure on the person in the reflection that person should show up. i.e the person in the reflection would need to be exposed as good as if not better than the subject.

 

Test:

 

Put a headshot of someone full screen on your monitor and put your own face about a foot away. Dim the lights in the room so its pretty much the monitor light exposing your face and get someone to take a tight shot of yourself. Because its the same light source and the distance isn't that great the exposures should be balanced and you should easily be able to crop out a reflection of the face in the monitor from your eye. Hardly ideal.

 

Now stand across the room and raise the ambient light levels above that of the monitor and get someone to take a correctly exposed tight headshot of you again, you will probably notice that the monitor isn't even visible in your eye as there isn't enough light from the monitor to register as an exposure. Okay so dim the lights and expose to the monitor, you may get a reflection in the eye now, but who goes around taking incorrectly exposed images of themselves and leaving them as evidence. Also at this stage you will notice the reflection has become significantly smaller and things like resolution and more than that lens sharpness will be a major factor here in whether or not you were able to crop the image from the eye. You may also find that the lighting may not be good enough and in most circumstances it won't be and the image will be too noisy to pull anything out of it. Again hardly ideal.

 

Now create a real life scenario and get a wide shot of yourself in the same circumstances and you will find that it is pretty much impossible to get anything out of the refection in the eye.

 

 

I don't know if I have explained this well enough, but basically unless they are in a studio environment with roughly the same exposure on the people behind the camera as the subject in front of the camera then the reflection isn't going to be exposed in the final image. Doesn't matter what camera you are using.

 

The distance is self explanatory, the further away they are the smaller the reflection will be, obviously making it harder to crop a useable image out of the eye.

 

I have a 5d3 and sure I could get a properly exposed reflection of someone in someone elses eye, but it would require a decent amount of thought, its not going to happen accidentally. Criminals aren't going to be going around setting up these perfect lighting scenarios to incriminate themselves.

 

Its just not going to happen. This is stupid.