On October 19, 2011, Ren Ng and his team at Lytro ushered in a new era in photography with the introduction of the Lytro Light field Camera. What's so revolutionary? The fact that you can refocus the picture AFTER you've taken it.
If you visit the Picture Gallery page on the Lytro website you can play with some images to see how this works.
Initially the software that supports this revolutionary camera will be available for Mac only but a PC version is on the way.
Now the first releases are fairly simple to operate. With a fixed aperture equivalent to f2 in a regular camera, exposure is controlled by shutter speed through tapping on the touch screen LCD display. The shutter is instantaneous in exactly the way it is not in other point-and-shoot cameras.
The shape of the camera is also pretty different from other cameras out there – a square sectioned aluminum tube.
The ‘Red Hot' retails at $499 with 16GB of memory holding up to 750 images. The ‘Graphite' and ‘Electric Blue' both retail at $399 and come with 8GB of memory, good for 350 images.
The camera has an 8x optical zoom and produces an image of 11 Megarays resolution.
The Megaray is a new term for resolution and comes from the fact that the camera has an 11 million micro-lens array specially adhered to the sensor. This allows the Lytro to capture not only the color of the light, but also the direction the light is traveling in – the Light field.
Until now, cameras have recorded just the amount of light reaching the sensor or film. By capturing the direction of the light also, the Light field Engine, or software, allows the user to selective choose the focus point when viewing the image on a screen.
Now I'm still hazy on the sharing part. For sure you can download the images from the camera to your Mac and view them on the Mac. You can also upload them to your account on Lytro.com for viewing from any internet connected device. Lytro's servers will take care of the rendering while viewing. What's not clear to me at the moment is if linking to your Lytro.com account is the only way to share on Facebook, your blog or e-mail or if the actual image file can be loaded. In other words, other than on a computer with the software installed, you might only be able to view and share them through an active internet connection.
The question is, where will this technology take us in the future? It's a step closer to the Blade Runner scene where the detective is able to take a photo and use that to see around corners into rooms where only the open doorway is visible in the image.
One can imagine a video version for use in security settings – then the person of interest could be brought into sharp focus when viewing the playback. Or coupling with the approach of the Nikon 1 cameras that take a burst of images before and after you complete pressing the shutter so you can choose the ‘best' image from among 20 shot at 30 fps – no more having to re-shoot because your subject blinked. The fields of photography that may face the most threat from this system would be something like sports photography where speed and focus are critical. Just think, if you can focus after the shot, anyone would be able to get the cover of Sports Illustrated! Now sports photography is a very competitive and increasingly low reward profession. In a few years time with a stronger zoom, even sports photography could become a point-and-shoot market.
Whatever the future holds, I'm sure Light Field Cameras are going to grab an increasing share of the market. Now I just need to save $399 then steal my wife's MacBook Pro!
