Just when you thought we had seen it all, along comes the Lytro camera. This
technological marvel allows you to focus the photograph, after you have taken
the picture, not before!
Countless articles have been written over the years,
including some here, on how to make sure you get pin-sharp pix, with or without
AutoFocus (AF). It now looks as if you can forget all that with the new Light
Field technology which is being developed by Lytro Inc in the USA.
This technology puts a whole new perspective on the genre of
‘point and shoot’ photography.
Focus foreground.
According to the Lytro Press Release, it is developing a
“light field” camera for consumers that will forever change the way people take
and experience pictures. Later this year, Lytro will start selling light field
cameras that can capture all of the light rays in a scene to offer photographic
capabilities never before possible, such as focusing a picture after it’s taken.
Lytro cameras will also create interactive, living pictures that can be
endlessly focused and refocused by both the photographer and the viewer,
bringing new creative possibilities to photography.
Lytro’s light field camera probably represents the most
significant shift in photography since the transition from film to digital in
1988. The light field fully defines how a scene appears, from the foreground to
the background and everything in between. Unlike conventional cameras, which can
only record a scene in two dimensions, light field cameras can capture all of
the light traveling in every direction through a scene in four dimensions. A
light field picture taken with a Lytro camera can be manipulated after the fact
in ways not possible with editing software.
“This is the next big evolution of the camera,” said CEO and
Founder Dr. Ren Ng. “Lytro is introducing Camera 3.0, a breakthrough that lets
you nail your shot every time and never miss a moment. Now you can snap once and
focus later to get the perfect picture.”
Background focus.
Since the camera doesn’t focus before a photo is taken,
people will no longer miss the decisive moment due to the conventional delay of
the lens autofocusing as you press the shutter button.
Lytro creates interactive, living pictures that will allow
viewers to immerse themselves in a living picture to discover and focus in on
new details by simply clicking on different parts of a picture.
By using all of the available light in a scene, light field
cameras can capture better pictures in remarkably low light environments without
the use of a flash.
Using the full light field, Lytro cameras provide an
immersive 3D picture that goes beyond the conventional stereo 3D by, for
example, controlling the perspective view of a scene.
“Lytro’s breakthrough technology will make conventional
digital cameras obsolete. It has to be seen to be believed,” said investor Marc
Andreessen, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
“Humans have a deep desire to capture the experience of their
lives and share it visually with others,” said Emmy-award winning multimedia
journalist Richard Koci Hernandez. “From early man’s cave paintings more than
30,000 years ago to the first people posing for daguerreotype photos wearing
iron collars to stay still in the 1800s, humans have gone to great lengths to
tell visual stories. Light field cameras are the next step in that picture
revolution.”
The digital still camera market is large and growing with
$38.3 billion in worldwide revenue in 2010 and expectations to increase to $43.5
billion worldwide by 2015. Visual storytelling is universal, with 60 billion
photos shared on Facebook in 2010, projected to reach 100 billion photos by this
summer.
Undoubtedly this computational approach to the reproduction
of images is the way of the future, the way forward. And equally as predictable,
will be the howls of rage from the ‘conventional’ photography bloc throughout
the world - the same group that pooh-poohed the digital camera as giving nowhere
near the same precision and clarity as the now long dead film cameras. However,
this light field technology should mean you will never miss another photo
opportunity gain!
If you would like to experience what is coming, visit the
Lytro Picture Gallery www.lytro.com/picture_gallery.
