Lytro Light Field camera – New technology that will revolutionize photography as we know it
Lytro unveiled earlier this year a camera that looks and behaves like no other in the industry. The Lytro camera is a point-and-shoot that looks like a giant lipstick case and take pictures capturing the entire light field. That is capturing color, intensity and direction of ALL the light in a point in space. This allows you to take pictures and set the focus on the picture after the fact. (Hint: if you did not went in awe mode after reading that sentence you missed the point). So no more worries about getting your picture in focus, just snap and focus in post production with a single click. You can set the focus in your computer or even right on the camera screen right after taking it. You just tap/click the area you want to focus in and like magic your photo is re-focused. Change your mind? Just open the picture and tap in the new area to focus! This is a very powerful technology here.
For its size the camera has some really good specs. So far we know it has an 8x optical zoom with a constant aperture of f/2 (that’s pretty good). A tiny 1.46-inch LCD display is what’s on the camera, so your best bet to review the pictures is to transfer them via the USB port to your computer. It comes in two memory sizes an 8GB and a 16GB which cost $399 and $499 respectively (to be available in 2012). As for the megapixels you may ask? Well we just don’t know yet as they haven’t said and seem to avoid the question. Some people speculate about 2MP. So it still unclear, but the fact that they don’t want to talk about it probably means is a low number and they don’t want to be compared against regular cameras. Which it’s OK because this is no ordinary camera and the truth is that there’s too much hype these days about MP and the misconception that the more MP’s the better which is not always true. Assuming is a 2 MP the pictures are more than good for the average user that will never print a picture and just post it online.
This is just the beginning but imagine this being done on pro D-SLR. You know those wedding pictures that were worthless because they came out of focus –well no more of that! Now, I don’t know if there are any other disadvantages on quality so far by doing this but regardless this is breaking technology and regardless of any imperfections it may have now I can see this being the standard of the future as long as we’re not forced to sacrifice the aperture.
Lytro is on a good path in my opinion. We still need to see weather the community welcomes the technology but I think they will. There is a big potential here, plus your friends will love the fact that they can interact with the Live images and change the focus of the images as the view them. That’s what Lytro calls “Living Pictures”. So pictures taking with Lytro will no longer be static but dynamic pictures that your friends can interact with.
Try the “Living Picture” below to see it in action by clicking on the different parts of the picture, then check the video review by CNET.