2

I was just thinking to myself how weird it must be to have bad vision. Then I thought, I wonder if you could print a picture that would appear clear to someone with bad vision. That seemed unlikely to me, so I changed the question. Could one use a lens to blur an image so the bad eyes see the image clearly. That's a novel idea... Oh crap that's what glasses are...

So that leaves me wondering all the more, since glasses clearly work, is it possible to print a picture, or more interestingly, maybe create a computer monitor which displays images so that a person with bad vision sees those things clearly?

Based on my understanding of optics and light this seems possible.

Could it also be that this hypothetical computer monitor would only display clear images to the person with bad vision if they were sitting a very specific distance from the screen?

Qmechanic
  • 201,751
jheindel
  • 1,031
  • Glasses do not blur anything. A blurred picture literally contains too little information to be seen sharply. One cannot compensate for this in any way. – Danu Aug 25 '15 at 20:02
  • @Danu, Some kinds of blurring, including the blurring caused by out-of-focus optics, can be modeled by a mathematical operation called convolution. Convolution does not destroy information, it only spreads it around. Convolution is reversable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconvolution), but not with optics: It takes computing power. Also, it matters a lot what surrounded the subject. The results will be more satisfactory if the subject was isolated against a known background (e.g., an astronomical object against a pure-black background). – Solomon Slow Aug 25 '15 at 20:13
  • 3
    http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/661/ – BowlOfRed Aug 25 '15 at 20:15
  • @jameslarge I guess it's a matter of defining what blurring means, exactly. Note that the answer to the linked question also essentially makes the point I was making, though. – Danu Aug 25 '15 at 20:31
  • Not an answer to this question, but you can let people with blurred vision see a different image compared to people with normal vision, see here. – Count Iblis Aug 25 '15 at 20:48
  • Ahh, I searched and couldn't find anything on here that was similar but my question has been answered! I'm interested to read about Deconvolution though so thanks for that link! – jheindel Aug 25 '15 at 21:02

0 Answers0