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Math in photography

January 29, 2021 JimK 4 Comments

I received an interesting message today:

I am at the moment studying math and chemistry (to become a teacher) and am about to start with my diploma/master thesis.

I thought writing about a mathematical aspect in photography , and since you are one of the best educated people I know in that area, I wanted to ask, if you know any books that might help me.

I thought that some of you might be interested in the references I use. These are books that have served me well over the years, but there may be newer books that are easier to obtain or better. I will also include some web sites that I think relevant, but these links, though current at the time of writing this post, may be broken in the future.

 

Color

We’ll start with the area that I know best, color science.

The best place I know to stick your toe in the color science waters is Hunt’s Measuring Colour, which is now in its fourth edition. ISBN: 978-1119975373.

There are many good books on applying color to digital photography. Mark Fairchild’s Color Appearance Models is an excellent one. ISBN: 0-201-63464-3.

Also Giorgianni and Madden, Digital Color Management, ISBN: 0-201-63426-0

 

Printing

Robert Ulichney. Digital Halftoning. ISBN 0-262-21009-6.

Lens design

I’m not very strong in this area, but Joseph Goodman’s Introduction to Fourier Optics, now in its third edition, is a well regarded text. ISBN: 0-9747077-2-4

Camera and sensor design and analysis

James Janesick, Photon Transfer, ISBN: 97808194667225

Rastislav Lukac (editor), Single-Sensor Imaging, ISBN 978-1-4200-5452-1

Junichi Nakamura (editor), Image Sensors and Signal Processing for Digital Still Cameras, ISBN: 0-8493-9545-0

Emil Martinec, Noise, Dynamic Range and Bit Depth in Digital SLRs.

Image processing

Pratt, Digital Image Processing, ISBN: 9-471-01888-0

Jain, Fundamentals of Digital Image Processing, ISBN: 0-13-336765-9

Castleman, Digital Image Processing, ISBN: 0-13-211467-4

 

Plenty of math in all those books. Spending some time with some should keep you out of trouble.

 

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Comments

  1. Stephen A Ludlum says

    January 30, 2021 at 12:31 pm

    This would be more useful if I could copy and paste or highlight and right click search.

    Using Chrome browser.

    Reply
    • JimK says

      January 30, 2021 at 12:43 pm

      Works for me, using Chrome. Selection not particularly visible, but it’s there.

      Reply
      • Ilya Zakharevich says

        January 30, 2021 at 11:41 pm

        Jim, you already have a ⟨style⟩ element on this page. Why won’t you change the background of selected text to (say) red?

        Reply
  2. Brandon Dube says

    January 30, 2021 at 4:44 pm

    The Good Book is in its 4th edition, but it is a quite useless text for lens design. De rigeur for physical optics, but does not cover the geometric optics used to design lenses, figures or merit, or procedures for the work. Smith, MLD and MOE are contemporary texts for lens design.

    Reply

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