We’ve all heard of Web 2.0 and some of us even know about HTML5 and CSS3. None of these are quite as revolutionary to the internet as Lytro‘s light field camera is to photography.
Take the picture now. Pick which cat to focus on later.
This camera allows you to take a picture without focusing. You never have to worry about missing that perfect moment because you captured it out of focus. This light-field camera allows you to focus the image after the fact. Normally, technology like this requires a room full of cameras, special optics, and a super computer, similar to bullet-time technology used in the Matrix. This ability to focus on different points is also critical to depth-perception in the human eye; in practical terms, this means that the image captured can be made 3D. Given the rise of 3D movies and television, this is a convenient by-product. At the least, it’s cool to click on the image to the right and refocus it at will.
The camera is extremely small, too.
On the outside, the Lytro looks different–a smooth, two-tone elongated box 4.4 inches long and 1.6 inches square. At one end is the lens and at the other is an LCD touch-screen display; along the sides are power and shutter buttons, a USB port, and a touch-sensitive strip to move the F2 lens through its 8X zoom range.
There are three models–the $399 cameras with “electric blue” and “graphite” exteriors whose 8GB of built-in memory is enough for about 350 shots and the “red hot,” 16GB camera that can record 750 shots. They’ll go on sale, through Lytro’s Web site only, in the first quarter of 2012, according to Chief Executive Ren Ng.
It has no shutter-lag and it claims to not need any flash because of the technology’s low light performance. It has a constant f/2 aperture and can capture 11 megarays worth of data.
With such a new technology and at a price that’s not much more expensive than some high-end digital cameras, there had to be a catch: resolution and accessibility. First, you aren’t going to get something at the same level of resolution as from a digital camera. That makes sense considering how much data it’s taking in at one time and the size of the camera. On the other hand, most of us don’t print pictures anymore — we share them on the web. And when you share pictures online, you end up significantly reducing the resolution by 90-95% anyway, whether it be over email, on social networking, or on a website. Given that’s how the majority if users interact with photos and also how the majority of users don’t really photo edit their photos, it seems like a relatively minor tradeoff. On the other hand, Lytro’s file format is proprietary and you can’t easily send the file to someone else unless they also have Lytro’s application installed. Doubtful that Flickr and the like will be adopting this anytime soon. Lytro’s answer to this is free hosting on their website that you can then share with other people. On the other hand, this is neat because you can interact with the photo and refocus it yourself at will. And, while you lose the interactivity, you can always flatten the image and turn it into a regular jpeg to share.
It’s really amazing that this breakthrough, revolutionary technology fits in your pocket. As with all new gadgets, the tech-savvy early adopters will be the first ones to get in on this and will likely be the ones to get the most out of it. At this stage, the computer application is only for Mac and — let’s be honest — you have to be dedicated to manually focus forty birthday party pictures on your computer. Most casual users will want a camera with an intelligent autofocus system to be content. For those that are thirsty for a bit more this camera fills a nice little spot.
If only it was being released before the winter holidays.
