introducing the Lytro camera

Imagine a camera where you never needed to focus. Ever. Where you could achieve the exact focus you wanted days, even months after you originally shot the image. Welcome to the future. Which is now. Introducing the Lytro camera.

I got an email from a friend today asking what I knew about the Lytro, and while I'd read some about it already, this seemed like a good time to actually put some research into this entirely new kind of camera.

So let's get this out of the way right up front - this is revolutionary technology. Disruptive. Game-changing. (pick your cliche). Ren Ng has developed an entirely new way to capture light, and I believe this will forever change how we take pictures.

So what about filmmaking..?

Motion pictures are nothing more than a rapid series of sequential pictures. Consequently, profound changes to photography should and will eventually impact our world as well. Hopefully it won't render our investment in high-end camera lens obsolete, but it's possible.

The Lycos uses a new kind of "light field" sensor which captures 11 million rays of light. Coupled with breakthrough software, this camera captures data in a different way than ever before, allowing photographers to achieve any desired depth-of-field later on. (for details on the science head over to Lytro's site)

As a quick aside, I have to say I was more than a little impressed that the Lytro comes with an 8x optical zoom and f2.0 aperture lens built right in. Good grief is that impressive for a camera of this form factor. The viewer on the back of the camera is a touchscreen and will allow you to preview different depth-of-field renders in-camera. Dang.

Moving forward there are a number of questions I'd have about the Lytro. For instance, what size resolution is actually possible? How shallow can the depth-of-field really be? How beautiful is the bokeh? What are the camera's real-world low-light capabilities? What if you want deep focus (which means photographic yards of viewable area, all in focus)?

I'm guessing that many of the answers to these questions are going to be related to the hardware/software power, rather than the image-gathering technology itself. The more I look into this the more excited I am about it. Sure, we're in the first generation today. But imagine this -

A camera where exposure and focus can be set and reset after the fact.

Thanks to technologies like the Lytro and RAW, along with the ever increasing low-light capabilites of newer large-sensor camera, that future isn't just possible, it's probable.

While we all wait for that future to arrive, feel free to check out this video from CNET of the Lytro in action...

So what are your insights or questions? Leave a COMMENT below and let's discuss.

Comments

[Rob Webster]

My thought is, it's neat technology, but won't be used much. People thought the Segway would cause us to re-design city planning. It didn't. The Lytro is pretty cool in that it lets you decide a focal point later. But it's really not that hard to shoot a picture with the focal point I want now. Ultimately, at some point, an aesthetic decision has to be made. Whether that's before or after the picture is taken doesn't seem that earth-shaking. Who would benefit most from this? Maybe photojournalists, shooting away in a chaotic situation without the luxury of framing and focusing a shot. Or people who are just bad photographers. But cameras are so good already, even in full-auto mode, at guessing what you'd want in focus, that I see this technology having limited broad application. (But watch me eat my words in 5 years when it's included in every camera.)

[Alex Schwindt]

Yeah, the two biggest immediate uses I could see would be more in the filmmaking world. For instance it woul be great to be able to correct inaccurate focus pulled when shooting documnentary work with a small viewfinder. I would also be great to pull perfect rack focuses after the shoot.

But of course, this technology is still a long way off from being applied the filmmaking world. At least I think it is...