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Lytro Light Field Camera

Posted by Jon



Lytro released its revolutionary Light Field Camera last week. Apart from its unique design, the camera uses a different type of sensor to capture light fields, allowing photographers to focus images after shooting them. It also allows users to capture three-dimensional shots with a single lens. Check out their picture gallery for a chance to see light fields in action.

I can see this technology being particularly useful in point-and-shoots and Blade Runner-esque “enhance” sequences, but I’m really interested in its creative applications. On one hand it takes away from the artistic choices available to photographers, but on the other hand it opens up a whole new set of possibilities. Either way it will be interesting to see what people come up with.

Lytro via All Things D

10 Comments Leave A Comment

1

Reinier says:

October 27, 2011 at 6:24 pm

I was wondering how long it would take before this got posted. These things are just gorgeous!

2

Tim says:

October 27, 2011 at 9:30 pm

I am wondering where else this kind of technology will pop up. It is game changing. It could be used to help blind people see in the future!

3

Jat says:

October 28, 2011 at 5:50 am

It’s really a great idea. I wonder how comfortable it is holding it. Maybe more ergonomic than other cameras? I’ll have to try one.

4

Chris says:

October 28, 2011 at 1:30 pm

What I want to know is can you export typical image formats from the Lytro software. I can’t seem to find this out. Anyone know?

Also, the form factor seems like it would be annoying and please tell me it has a lens cap.

I can’t wait for this to be put in a DSLR body.

5

fr says:

October 28, 2011 at 2:20 pm

this thing seems amazing and revolutionary, and yet I can’t think of how it could be used creatively in an interesting way. the rack focus effect examples they show aren’t really that compelling.

7

Jonne says:

October 30, 2011 at 10:41 am

It’s a 11 “megaray” camera, which seems to translate to 1 megapixel. I haven’t seen any examples with infinite focus points, which is worrying and in the end leaves you with no exact control of focus. More worrying is the format of the sensor. It seems to be of the tiny kind, which gives you pretty much infinite focus anyway, unless you’re really close up. I’ll hold on to my pennies for now.

8

massta says:

October 31, 2011 at 9:57 pm

I don’t think we’ll truly know how this device is going behave until artists get their hands on it. This is the best thing since camera tracking that took away shaky camera movements. Still waiting for that feature to be included with Adobe!

9

Rudolph says:

November 1, 2011 at 9:38 pm

Is this camera just capturing a large depth of field and using software to blur the rest of the image? This seems incredibly over-priced.

10

mike m says:

November 4, 2011 at 11:03 am

I don’t think this is going to take away photographers artistic choices, you’ll just be able to make those choices at a latter date.