Lytro Light Field Camera

Very interesting. Someone posted here they preordered it. What I've yet to see, is can you focus everything in the entire picture? I've only seen examples where you can select a single focus point.
 
I was quite excited about the idea in the beginning, too. Then I spent a while in the gallery and after refocusing a couple of pictures a couple of times, the fascination wears off for me. You get low-resolution pictures that are nifty in that you can refocus if you're online while they sit on Lytro's servers.

Regarding Nick's question, it looks like you can only refocus to a point; you can't get everything in focus without a lot of copying and pasting and focus stracking. Maybe their Mac-only software will let you do that, but I guess if it did, they would be advertising that feature by now.

In the end it's just a gadget, an interesting one, but one that doesn't serve a purpose for me.
 
Wait, wait wait... I assumed based on Greyscale's post that you can easily set focus to the entire picture. But rxmd says otherwise - or at least you can't do this without considerable effort. Which is it? I did spend some time on the Lytro site fooling with pictures months ago and didn't see the option for 100% focus... but based on Greyscale's post I thought I may have missed something. If you can't easily focus on everything (by default, really) this is not a very good photographic tool. Just isn't.
 
NickTrop said:
Wait, wait wait... I assumed based on Greyscale's post that you can easily set focus to the entire picture. But rxmd says otherwise - or at least you can't do this without considerable effort. Which is it? I did spend some time on the Lytro site fooling with pictures months ago and didn't see the option for 100% focus... but based on Greyscale's post I thought I may have missed something. If you can't easily focus on everything (by default, really) this is not a very good photographic tool. Just isn't.
Click to expand...

Well there is a lot of examples out there by now, but I have yet to see one where someone uses this camera to get everything in focus. I'm ready to be convinced otherwise, however.

I guess if it could easily do that they would have been advertising it by now. Admittedly this is arguing from silence, but the unique capabilities that they've been advertising so far only extend to being able to refocus after the shot and having no shutter lag.

So far it looks like this will lead to a lot of bokeh-type open-aperture pictures with some foreground and some background and you can refocus between them. I'm afraid the novelty of that will wear off rather quickly. Let's see what else they can do with the technology.
 
From the blog:

Can I choose depth of field?

Reply ↓

Lytro
on November 14, 2011 at 10:24 am said:
“All in focus” or selecting a range of items to be in focus are possible with light field technology.
Click to expand...
 
I love the concept. But, at this stage, i have two 'issues' with the product.
1. Resolution.
2. Form factor.

Correct me if i'm off-base here, but i'm sorta assuming the target audience for this technology is comprised of people who wouldn't care for a camera that looks and feels and operates like this. And, would also require higher resolution images.

Anyone who cares about manipulating focal point and having shallow DOF - we're not talking about the typical P&S crowd, which seems to be content with the small sensor, max-DOF aesthetic. What's going to make them suddenly want to go in and edit their pictures in this way?

I can see this being of interest to early-adopter techies. I think the science is fascinating. But, i don't want to use a square tube camera. Make it look like a Fuji X10, and it becomes compelling. And, in a year or two, when they can make one at 8-10MP, but in the size/form of something like a Contax T3/Canon S100 — well, there's the payoff.
 
From what I have been reading, the target audience of this first generation Lytro is for use with social networking and on-line photo sharing, where high-resolution is not necessarily a major issue. But it will be interesting to see how the technology evolves over the next few years. But I think that most of that "typical P&S crowd" would welcome the opportunity to easily manipulate DOF, I know that I would. Put a waist level finder on this little box and it would be a very nice street shooter.
 
AgentX said:
I parsed this wrong. I was expecting a "light" (ie, 3 lbs) "field camera."
Click to expand...

As was I, but I do find the technology intriguing. I recall reading about the possibility of making a camera like this a few years ago.

One of my non-photography interests is botany, and it would be great to be able to produce images of flowers that one could zoom in and focus on specific structures to study them. I also like the square format they've chosen.

I'll agree it seems mostly geared to the social-media crowd and not serious photographers; I don't see any listings of technical specifications, evidence of a tripod socket, or mention of accessories such as flash units.
 
CK Dexter Haven said:
I love the concept. But, at this stage, i have two 'issues' with the product.
1. Resolution.
2. Form factor.

Correct me if i'm off-base here, but i'm sorta assuming the target audience for this technology is comprised of people who wouldn't care for a camera that looks and feels and operates like this. And, would also require higher resolution images.

Anyone who cares about manipulating focal point and having shallow DOF - we're not talking about the typical P&S crowd, which seems to be content with the small sensor, max-DOF aesthetic. What's going to make them suddenly want to go in and edit their pictures in this way?

I can see this being of interest to early-adopter techies. I think the science is fascinating. But, i don't want to use a square tube camera. Make it look like a Fuji X10, and it becomes compelling. And, in a year or two, when they can make one at 8-10MP, but in the size/form of something like a Contax T3/Canon S100 — well, there's the payoff.
Click to expand...

I preordered one (they say it'll ship in the second quarter of 2012.) The technology for sure, but also because it doesn't look anything like a camera.
 
I think that the "low resolution" issue might be a software issue. The sensor is an 11 "mega ray" sensor, and saves the image as a RAW file. From what I have gathered, 11 mega rays equals about 22 megapixels. But the software (at least in the published images) compresses the image to a size optimized for sharing on sites like facebook. It would be nice to find out if the DOF can be manipulated at full resolution, then if the manipulated image could be saved in a format other than the proprietary one for higher resolution images, once you have the focus that you want.
 
Greyscale said:
I think that the "low resolution" issue might be a software issue. The sensor is an 11 "mega ray" sensor, and saves the image as a RAW file. From what I have gathered, 11 mega rays equals about 22 megapixels. But the software (at least in the published images) compresses the image to a size optimized for sharing on sites like facebook. It would be nice to find out if the DOF can be manipulated at full resolution, then if the manipulated image could be saved in a format other than the proprietary one for higher resolution images, once you have the focus that you want.
Click to expand...

This camera seems to have two target audiences. One (a very small one) is people interested in light field cameras from a technical point of view. The other (the larger one) is people posting Facebook snapshots for publishing on the Web. Neither needs high-resolution pictures.

From what I understand, the 11 "mega ray" sensor is more or less a conventional 11 megapixel sensor; what makes this a light field camera is (a) special microlens-type optics in front of the sensor (hence "rays" instead of pixels), and (b) special processing of this pixel data.

Transforming this into a clickable and refocusable image comes at a loss of resolution (at least it was like that light field camera technology demonstrators before it). I think what you see on Lytro's sample galleries is actually the final resolution of the pictures that this camera will produce. Again, I'll be happy to stand corrected if there is an actual high-resolution picture from this camera floating somewhere out there.
 
rxmd said:
This camera seems to have two target audiences. One (a very small one) is people interested in light field cameras from a technical point of view. The other (the larger one) is people posting Facebook snapshots for publishing on the Web. Neither needs high-resolution pictures.
Click to expand...

I still don't get it. Of all the people in my super huge Facebook friends list, i can't imagine a single one of them would have any interest in manipulating a "snapshot." And, if they had such an interest, it might be limited to something like changing it to B&W or applying an 'effect' filter or some such. But, certainly nothing as 'photographic' as changing the focus point. In fact, of all those people, only one has a 'serious' interest in photography. In sold him my Contax G2 a couple of years ago. He's expressed interest in the Lytro, but only as a technical matter. Even though it's a curiosity with us both, i can't see either of us using this technology for anything we'd want to post on Facebook.

This seems like one of those things - like the Pentax Q. A camera designed for people who care about certain semi-serious photographic matters, but crippled by other characteristics that appeal to people who have less critical photographic criteria.

I thought the idea and the initial demos were astounding. I'm a bokeh freak at times. I would LOVE a very small camera that had similar DOF control as a full-frame (or larger) camera. But, the more i think about this, the less interested i am. I don't think i've ever taken a photograph where i wanted to adjust the point of focus later. Except, of course, to FIX the focus. Like everyone else who shoots with film or sensors larger than those in the P&S digitals, we make a decision at the time of capture. Those are usually logical and common sense decisions. If you want alternative choices, you shoot a different frame. With digital, it can't be much more simple than that.

So, why this, now? I hope enough people buy and support this product that it allows the company to continue to evolve it. But, i can't be one of the 'patrons' at this stage.
 
Greyscale said:
From the blog:
blog said:
Can I choose depth of field?

Reply ↓

Lytro
on November 14, 2011 at 10:24 am said:
“All in focus” or selecting a range of items to be in focus are possible with light field technology.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Yes, I remember this already from the earliest light field technology demonstrators - it seems clear that from a technical point this is possible with light field technology, the question is whether this particular camera and its software will permit you to do this. So far the examples and advertising seem not to have mentioned this at all.

The example you posted, where was that from?
 
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