My day job is Professor of Industrial Mathematics at University of Helsinki, Finland. My constant wish is to combine photography and applied mathematics in a cool way.
I think it would be interesting to develop image enhancement filters tailored to certain kind of photographs. For example, digital sharpening of a misfocused image could make use of knowing if the picture is a portrait, a landscape shot or a city street view.
Developing filters for specific image types requires training material. My first set of sample images feature randomly arranged matches. Between each photo the matches are rearranged (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKmXhBxuLk0), so every photo is different but similar.
Here is one of the several match photos:
I used my Arca-Swiss 4x5 inch view camera equipped with Nikkor-AM*ED 120mm lens stopped down to f/32. Instead of film, the image was captured with a BetterLight Super 6K-HS scanning back delivering 6000x8000 pixels of precise information. Lighting was provided by five Olight X6 Marauder LED flashlights with luminous flux of 5000 lm each. Pure light power!
The amount of detail is stunning. See these closer crops of the above match image.
Finally, a self-portrait of the happy scientist-photographer: