plenoptic op• Data kinds: lightfield × table → table
• Call: import fullseye as fs; fs.ledger.plenoptic_refocus_depth(lf, system, slope) (to call the implementation directly, import plenoptic; plenoptic.plenoptic_refocus_depth(lf, system, slope); from the registry, opsoptics.get("plenoptic_refocus_depth"))
• GPU: none (CPU reference implementation only)
Convert light-field refocus slope(s) to object distance in metres.
*slope* is in the unit of lightfield.lf_refocus and lightfield.lf_depth_from_focus on a field from plenoptic_decode: decoded spatial samples (lenslets) of parallax per view step. Zero slope is the main-lens conjugate of the MLA plane and maps to the configured object distance.
Paraxial model of the unfocused (1.0) camera, in the geometry plenoptic_capture traces. plenoptic_decode samples U views across one lenslet pitch, so one view step moves the exit-pupil coordinate by dX = (pitch/U) * xp_radius / (microimage_diameter/2). A point imaged delta behind the MLA plane, with the exit pupil D in front of it, shifts on the MLA by dX * delta/(D+delta) per view, hence slope = (dX/pitch) * delta/(D+delta); Newton's equation of the paraxial main lens turns the image position into the object distance.
Before 2026-11-04 the image shift was slope * angular_step * pitch with angular_step = pixel_pitch/mla_to_sensor -- a factor 1/angular_step**2 (~3000x for the PoC camera) too small, so every measured slope mapped back to the focus distance. The relation is now gated against rays traced forward through the prescription (tests/test_plenoptic.py): rel. error below 1e-6 for an ideal lens and 2e-4 for the PoC's three-element lens.
Sign: follows plenoptic_capture's non-inverting pixel-to-pupil map, which is the opposite of a physical lenslet; negate real-sensor slopes.
Limits: it is paraxial. Spherical aberration of a real aperture moves the best-focus slope of the full pupil away from the paraxial one -- for the PoC lens at F/3.7 the decoded 1.0 m plane sits at slope -0.029, not 0 (measured in examples/poc_plenoptic_camera.py). depth_resolution_m is half the depth span of a slope change of +-1/(U-1): one decoded sample of parallax across the full angular baseline.
Raises ValueError: *lf* not (V,U,H,W), V != U (one slope cannot describe two different per-view pupil steps), fewer than two views, a focused (2.0) system (its MLA is not at the main-lens image plane, so slope means something else), a non-finite slope, or a slope whose image point lies at or beyond the exit pupil (slope*pitch/dX >= 1).
Every optics op validates its input before computing (nothing slips through silently):
• Units are baked into the argument name — _mm / _um / _deg / _mrad. Confusing mm with µm does not crash; it yields a plausible-looking wrong answer, so the name prevents it. Nothing here guesses the unit from the magnitude.
• Strings raise ValueError — float('50') succeeds, so an unparsed configuration value would slip through as a length (measured: thin_lens('50', '200') returned a plausible 66.667 mm). bool is refused too, as the implicit promotion True == 1.
• complex / masked arrays raise ValueError (real-valued slots only; silently dropping the imaginary part or peeling off the mask is refused). NaN/Inf raises ValueError on every input. Exception, declared: the u_map of bottle_fit_from_pattern takes pixels that could not be measured as NaN (infinity is still refused).
• Division by zero and its relatives are refused by name: focal length 0, radius of curvature 0, refractive index <= 0, a fully opaque aperture (all zeros, so the normalisation is 0/0), a PSF whose sum is <= 0, a Stokes vector with S0 = 0, and an object sitting at the front focal point (the image is at infinity).
• Only two ops return a non-finite value, and both state it as a contract: depth_of_field returns far_mm = inf beyond the hyperfocal distance (that is what the hyperfocal distance means), and gaussian_beam returns wavefront_radius_mm = inf at the waist (the radius of curvature of a plane wavefront). Both also return a finite companion (far_is_infinite / curvature_per_mm). Any other silent NaN/Inf is detected internally and raises ValueError — "float64 overflowed" and "the answer is infinite" are different claims, so the first is never returned wearing the face of the second. Exception, declared: bottle_background_map returns NaN in u_mm for pixels whose ray is unusable (total internal reflection and the like), together with a valid mask and the counts.
• Size caps: generated grids are capped by optics.MAX_GRID (4096); supplied fields/PSFs/apertures by optics.MAX_FIELD_ELEMENTS (2^24); ABCD element chains by optics.MAX_SYSTEM_ELEMENTS (1024); Zernike by MAX_ZERNIKE_TERMS (512) / MAX_ZERNIKE_ORDER (40) / MAX_ZERNIKE_BASIS (2^25). This closes, fail-closed, the paths where a small argument triggers a huge internal allocation (measured: n_max=40 × 4096² needs 108 GB).
• Physically impossible states are refused too: a Stokes vector with degree of polarisation > 1, negative transmittance, negative intensity, and invalid Zernike indices such as n-|m| odd.
• Sample-data catalog (download URLs / licences) — 2-D uses skimage.data (BSD/public domain) plus synthetic images; 3-D lists download URLs for real data sources (Stanford, PDS, …).
• Operator provenance and references — the sources of the research/methods this op family came from.
• The canonical algorithm (author, year) and its uses are named in the family usage guide above.
• poc_plenoptic_camera — py -3.11 examples/poc_plenoptic_camera.py
table as input)abcd_matrix · wavefront_stats · sfr_from_edge · paraxial_trace · seidel_coefficients · spot_stats · tolerance_analysis · wavefront_from_opd
plenoptic)mla_surface · plenoptic_system · plenoptic_capture · plenoptic_mla_calibrate · plenoptic_decode
*Provenance: plenoptic.py — OPTICS operator registry. This per-op note is generated by tools/opdocs.py md (do not hand-edit).*
© 2026 Kazufumi Furuse — Fullseye operator documentation. Licensed under Apache-2.0.