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Lytro Illum Light Field Camera

You may remember seeing the first Lytro light field camera here on the blog back in 2011. If its unconventional box-like shape wasn’t enough to catch your eye, the astounding technology that enabled photographers to adjust the focal point of the image after it had already been captured surely would have. Check out an example below, you can click to change the focal point and scroll to zoom in and out. There are more samples on Lytro’s Gallery page.

Well, now Lytro is back with the next evolution of the light field camera: the Lytro Illum. Physically, it appears much more in-line with traditional point-and-shoot cameras than its radical predecessor, with an angled display screen that gives the profile of the camera big points on both character factor and, I’d imagine, ergonomics. I’ve also read in some hands-on reviews that it feels remarkably light, weighing in at less than two pounds…yes, that lens that looks like a cumbersome beast apparently weights only half a pound.

As pretty as the Illum is on the outside, it isn’t until you take a look at what’s inside that you can get a sense for how revolutionary this camera really is. The Illum uses a patented micro-lens array that captures data about color, light direction and intensity, storing this data for later use. This is the key difference between light field cameras and other cameras, which generally don’t give you much control over the photo once it’s been taken. A special Lytro button enables a helpful UI overlay that outlines the contours of objects in the shot, giving a sense of depth and a preview of how the image’s focus will be able to be adjusted by its viewers.

Perhaps the biggest kicker of all is the price tag. Looking at a piece of technology as revolutionary as this, you might instantly assume that it’s going to run tens of thousands of dollars. Wrong. It’s being listed at around $1,599 USD, which isn’t exactly cheap, but in the photography field it actually is very affordable. In his original post, Jon finished it off by opening the table for ideas on how this technology could be applied to great effect. One can’t help but think of all the possibilities when you look at technology like this: how would you use the Lytro Illum differently than you would your usual camera? Or, which of your favorite photographers would you like to see use a camera like this?

You can read more on the Lytro Illum on Engadget and The Verge
Posted by: Alex Koplin via Mani Nilchiani

Tycho Awake Album Out Today

Posted by Scott 03/18/14

It’s been over two years since I released a new full length LP and I couldn’t be more excited for today’s worldwide release of Awake once again on Ghostly International.

If you’ve seen Tycho live you’ll know that I tour with a band comprised of myself on keys / guitar, Zac Brown on bass / guitar and Rory O’Connor on drums. When I set out to record this new record my goal was the capture that live sound and take the songwriting in new directions. There is a more driven, visceral energy to the live show and a stylistic diversity that Zac and Rory bring which I believe serves the music well. So this album was very much a collaboration between the three of us, and in many ways is the first true Tycho record. By approaching this record as a band, for the first time I feel I’ve been able to directly translate the ideas and sounds that I had envisioned.

We are collectively thrilled to share this new material with you as Tycho. Thank you for your support whether you discovered us last week or have been a fan for over a decade. We couldn’t continue making music without you. Hope you enjoy Awake and our sincerest thanks for listening.

-Scott Hansen

Awake is out worldwide today! Listen to a preview of the entire album on Soundcloud and you can purchase the record direct below:

· TYCHO / ISO50 SHOP (Vinyl/CD/Digital)
· Amazon.com (Vinyl/CD/Digital)
· iTunes (Digital)
· Your Local Record Store (Vinyl/CD)

Awake Tour Begins This Week

Awake Tour 2014 kicks off next Wednesday, March 19th at The Catalyst in Santa Cruz, CA. We will be touring through the United States, Europe and Canada and tickets are on sale now. Come say hello in a town near you!

$ – w/ Trails and Ways
# – w/ Sylvan Esso
% – w/ Gardens & Villa
* – w/ Gems

See you soon!

Footage from New Red Dragon Sensor

Posted by Charles 08/04/13

Here we have the first footage made public from Red’s new Dragon sensor. The new sensor is capable of 6K, which is 6144px x 3160px at a max of 100fps. That’s almost more than a 5D mark III which is 5760 x 3840, depending on how you look at the frame size. There was talk on the Epic previously that you could pull stills from the image, which I’ve done, but a 5D III looks much better. With the Dragon sensor this could actually be possible. Meaning any shot from a video pulled off at 21mp, that’s nuts.

There’s a lot going into this, it’s been hyped for a long time and delivery has been pushed back by over a year, but it does look to deliver on a few key things, like improved low light and better dynamic range. Then again, there’s spots that I see in the video where the image breaks apart and the low light looks not that great and the highlights have a less than desirable roll off. It’s a mixed bag at the moment, overall it looks like a big improvement over the previous outgoing Epic MX sensor, we’ll see how it shapes up against competitors like the Arri Alexa and Sony F65. I’d love to go into an analytic chat, but right now I’m going to hold off until I have one in my hand and get to push it around in the computer. 6K is a lot of image, so it’ll be interesting how user-friendly editing with it is. I got in line early for the Dragon sensor upgrade, so possibly some of the future Tycho video / visual stuff will be shot with it and I’ll do a full breakdown for everyone. Supposedly they’ll be doing the sensor swap upgrades in September, so sooner than later!

The notes on the images were baked in by the director, here’s some links to decode what’s going on in each.

Dynamic Range – It’s the amount of range between light and dark. Prior to this sensor, Arri’s Alexa and the Blackmagic cameras we’re at the top, it seems that the new Dragon sensor might be a little more than the Alexa. Then again it takes individual testing to see if that’s true.

ISO – Most digital camera sensors as of this year are native at around 800 ISO ( ASA Film ). The Canon C series of cameras can go all the way up to 16,000 ISO and still be usable. RED Epic used to be maxed out at around 1600 ISO and even then it’s questionable, they’re now trying to go beyond that and get into the DSLR range of ISO sensitivity.

Compression Ratios – Compression ratios on RED clips are the amount of data from RAW ( uncompressed ) it’s using. A clip that has a 4:1 ratio will be larger, but be very clean. A ratio of 18:1 will be smaller in file size, but also more compressed. Think of it as moving the the slider down on a jpeg when you save it for web, it might save file space, but you loose detail. I shoot between 5:1 and 8:1 on the Epic, any more and the image begins to look muddy in my opinion.

The director did a great job of pushing the image around in the short time he had the camera.

Watches In Fantastic Mr Fox

Posted by Scott 05/16/13

Wes Anderson has always been know for his nostalgia and attention to detail and his animated film Fantastic Mr. Fox was apparently no exception. According to a comment on the original post these are based on the following real-world watches: “Casio Databank, Rolex Submariner, Casio A158W, Timex Weekender”. And here is an image showing the watches next to their real counterparts.

Via Reddit

Geometry Daily: Buy + Download + Use

Posted by Jon M 01/29/13

Awhile back we featured a Tumblr called Geometry Daily by German designer Tilman, which has since then become quite popular among many of us that enjoy minimal-geometric designs. So popular in fact, that Tilman says he has been receiving quite a few requests for the use of his designs:

In the last months many people asked if they could use some of the Geometry Daily graphics. As a logo, a cover for their music release, desktop background, even as a tattoo. In fact so many that it became a pain to send it all out manually. And I love to get my graphics out and let them be used!

To cope with the overwhelming response and demand, he has decided to make available for purchase, download and non-commercial use (although you can pay more to use a design commercially) of his Geometry Daily source files, which will be released in monthly installments and set at €69 euro or roughly $100 US dollars.

You get the complete data of all the Geometry Daily posts of a certain month. For each graphic this is:

– A higher resolution JPG (1770 x 1770 px)
– The fully layered Photoshop file (.PSD, same resolution)
– The clean vectors in an Illustrator file (.AI)

To purchase, visit HERE.

Tycho LA + SD + SF Shows in January

Posted by Scott 12/05/12

UPDATE: Added another LA show and a show in Santa Ana.

We’re going to take a break from recording the next Tycho album to play a special run of shows on the west coast next month including two nights right here in San Francisco. Really excited to end off this past year of shows back home. We’ll be sharing some new songs and visuals and a few other surprises. See you soon!

The first 100 people to buy tickets for each show will receive this limited edition poster, so be sure to get your tickets soon as they’ll be gone fast.

Also really excited to announce that some good friends will be supporting for these shows. First up, Christopher Willits will be opening the Jan 18th date at the Independent in San Francisco where he will be debuting some new video work. All of the other dates will feature DOOMbird as opener, who just released an excellent EP.

Jan 13 – Los Angeles – The Troubadour – Tickets
Jan 14 – Los Angeles – The Troubadour – Tickets
Jan 15 – Solana Beach – Belly Up – Tickets
Jan 16 – Santa Ana – Constellation Room – Tickets
Jan 18 – San Francisco – The Independent – Tickets
Jan 19 – San Francisco – The Independent – Tickets

View all shows

Sky Survey

Posted by Charles 10/01/12

The Sky Survey, 5,000 Megapixel image of space. There really isn’t too much I can write about this, other than you should probably be prepared to set your status to “Away” for a couple hours. Before doing that, check out the story behind it on the site as well as the iPad app. I’d imagine, if you can hook your new Retina Laptop up to a 1080p projector and shoot that on a wall, it’s going to look pretty impressive.

A year and many sleepless nights later I had amassed over 37,000 exposures. Even then, the work of unifying all the photographs took three months to complete and many hundreds of CPU hours. The data crunching consumed four terabytes of hard drive space and nearly equal amounts of patience but the end result seemed worth the wait.

Here’s the link to the Interactive 360, make sure to full screen it and enjoy!

ColorVision: Videos That Must Be Seen

Posted by Jakub 08/03/12

Le Révélateur and Sabrina Ratté are my favorite audio and visual collaborators since we first saw them on the blog via Beamer. The proper way to see this though is live, they played in Brooklyn and I still wish I brought my camera with me to videotape it and share it with you. Data Daze is forthcoming on cassette on NNA Tapes via the Horizon Fears EP.

Michael Cina and Matthew Dear team up to show some amazing ways to introduce art and an upcoming album to their audience. You just have to watch it yourself.

TEEN on Carpark Records is a 5 piece girl band that has the outlook of bringing back where Stereolab left off with more of a pop sense.

I have no information about this video, absolutely none, and that’s completely fine with me.

If you haven’t seen any Nardwuar interviews then i’d suggest having a few hours to watch a handful, its great seeing the musician reactions to the gifts he gives them.