Turning video clips to still images (images)

This is a typical hazy image of Washington's Mount Rainier. However, Microsoft researchers have found a pretty unique way to cut through the fog.

At this week's TechFair in Mountain View, Calif., Microsoft researcher Neel Joshi showed a technique that uses video clips and burst-mode photography to create surprisingly sharp still images and panoramas from a blurry source.

This is what a typical photo-editing program might be able to do to remove the fog from a hazy image of Mount Rainier.

Click on the next photo to see what Microsoft Research was able to do using a video clip of that same hazy view.

By using just a short video clip of the hazy mountain, researchers were able to come up with a surprisingly sharp image.

Capturing moments like jumping off a cliff can be difficult, making one more likely to take a video instead.

Researchers show how a pretty dramatic still of the jump can be created using the video.

This panorama of Building 99, home to Microsoft Research, was created from a rather wobbly video pan of the building.

These cranes are hard to see in the still image.

However, the cranes and the background come into better view when the image is de-hazed and de-noised from a variety of frames taken out of a video.

Here's a typical shot of downtown Seattle, fog and all. Click the next photo to see what Microsoft researchers were able to do to clear things up a bit.

Once again, using the multi-image method, researchers are able to remove much of the fog from the shot.