The Lytro Camera: Impressive Technology and Some Big Drawbacks 220
waderoush writes "The venture backers behind Lytro, the Silicon Valley startup that just released its new light field camera, say the device will upend consumer photography the way the iPhone upended the mobile business. This review takes that assertion at face value, enumerating the features that made the iPhone an overnight success and asking whether the Lytro camera and its refocusable 'living pictures' offer consumers an equivalent set of advantages. The verdict: not yet. But while the first Lytro model may not an overnight success, light field cameras and refocusable images are just the first taste of a revolution in computational photography that's going to change the way consumers think about pictures."
Of two minds? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems Xconomy can't decide whether they like it or not:
The original title seems to have been "The Lytro Camera is no iPhone but it's revolutionary anyway".
going by the URL fragment:
the-lytro-camera-is-no-iphone-but-its-revolutionary-anyway
The current title is the less positive "The Lytro Camera Is Revolutionary, But Itâ(TM)s No iPhone" (Note: Not being an iPhone is a negative in a Stevebot's eyes.)
Revolutionary? Yeh right. (Score:5, Interesting)
...that's going to change the way consumers think about pictures.
You're overestimating the average consumer: You believe they think prior to taking a picture. Having gone through enough cell phones left abandoned and dropped off at the lost in found before finally pressing 'm' in the phone book and calling their mom to say they lost their phone at my workplace... I can say with a fair degree of confidence most people take pictures of themselves, themselves with friends, more pictures of themselves and... (guys only)... pictures of inanimate objects that they never share or send to anyone. Ever. They're usually things like sign posts, car wheels (not actual cars, this would be too obvious), or random corners of buildings. From this, I can deduce that no actual thinking occurs for at least 95% of your everyday consumer's use of a camera.
Re:New medium awaiting new aesthetics and explorat (Score:5, Interesting)
My first thought was that it could be great for video; no need to bother with precise focus while shooting if you can refocus when you edit. However, I'm guessing that it would require a huge data rate.
Re:DPReview has a review (Score:4, Interesting)
DP Review [dpreview.com] has a review of this camera. It sounds like it has a long way to go. Due to the way lightfield works, the final resolution is fairly low, in this case only 1024x1024. I don't know if there's really a way around it, since they're substituting resolution for the depth of field focus feature.
But that's still high enough for the vast majority of people's snapshots. 1024x1024 yields a 5"x5" print at 200dpi, while most people seem to be satisfied with 4x6" prints.
It's certainly not going to satisfy a pro or serious amateur, but for everyday snapshots, even the current level of the technology is a big step forward since it can eliminate every out of focus shot (though camera shake is still an issue)
Read thesis (Score:5, Interesting)
For those more interested in the technology, Ren Ng's thesis is available on Lytro's website (at the bottom of the "Science Inside" page). I read much of the thesis at it the other day after reading an article about the camera in the New York Times. It's a well written thesis and explains the technology in a few simple ways and more rigoroursly.
The best explaination to me was that the microlens array is effectively reimaging the lens onto a small array of pixels under each microlens. (The micolens is placed at the usual focal plane of the camera and the # of microlenses is what determines the resolution). Each pixel therefore sees only a small aperture of the lens. A small aperture gives a very large depth of field. You could just use one pixel under each microlens to create an image with a large depth of field, but you'd be throwing away a lot of light. You can be more clever, however, and reconstruct from all those small aperture images the image at any focus. At different focuses, the light from any location is shared among multiple microlenses. (i.e, it's out of focus - so it's blurred at the focal plane). However, it's not out of focus at the pixels, since remember each pixel only sees a small aperture and has a large depth of field. It's then just a matter of adding the right pixels together to create an in-focus image at any effective focal plane.
Re:DPReview has a review (Score:4, Interesting)
But that's still high enough for the vast majority of people's snapshots. 1024x1024 yields a 5"x5" print at 200dpi, while most people seem to be satisfied with 4x6" prints.
With no ability to crop or zoom, though. Consumers don't frame their shots very well - so having tons of excess resolution helps pull a decent print out of a crap image. With the current Lytro it's hard to frame shots well.
The Lytro can't fix camera shake, either, and (a) the camera is an unusual, hard-to-hold shape with (b) a crappy LCD. If they took the lightfield guts, and packaged it inside a traditional SLR-style body, they could both make it easier to hold the camera steady, and add a large LCD and real viewfinder.
Better 3d? (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of what makes 3d movies look fake is that the viewer cannot focus on anything other than what is "in focus" as per the Director. I imagine it would be possible to use this technology paired with some sort of eye tracking tech (which also exists). This would move us a step closer toward a more realistic immersion.
Re:New medium awaiting new aesthetics and explorat (Score:2, Interesting)
Why do we need "focus" at all? Why not have photographs where everything is in focus? Depth of field is an artifact of lenses, whether they're in your eye or in your camera. A light field could change the entire notion of a photograph, away from trying to imitate the eye to creating a visual record of a scene that actually records everything that is there. No need for depth of field at all.
As usual, when the artists get hold of this technology, they'll do something that has nothing to do with some 20th century film concept of "throwing focus". I could see this especially happening with very large arrays of sensors, creating ultra-high resolution images and allowing the eye to do the work instead of the camera lens.
Heck, for all we know, two dimensional imaging might become archaic altogether and this technology will be just a historical novelty like stereographs. They'll look back at 3D movies as a curious step toward true three-dimensional imaging.
Anyway, I get the feeling that this proof-of-concept product is just a come-on to get one of the bigger electronics companies to buy them out. I'll be shocked if we start seeing light-field cameras from this company on the market as commonly as regular digital cameras.
Re:New medium awaiting new aesthetics and explorat (Score:5, Interesting)
The Lytro takes still pictures, and can take 350 pictures in the 8 GB model, and 750 pictures in the 16 GB model.
Yes. It's kind of ridiculous. Most consumer cameras on the market allow a user-supplied CF or SD card, and the differentiating factor between cameras is normally photographic capabilities/image quality, storage is cheap, and 8gb of flash memory is not $100; the "amount of storage is built into the camera" being fixed is highly irregular; it also means I can't use a card reader to easily transfer data -- hooking up USB cables and trying to figure out any driver requirements is quite inconvenient.
The minimum I use these days are 32 gigabyte cards; with only 16gb, it would actually be necessary to frequently delete pictures to make room for more, instead of just swapping flash cards.
Also, flash cards have limited program-erase cycles... which means the camera has a limited lifetime if used heavily. I suppose warranty will cover for some time storage failure due to heavy picture taking activity wearing out the flash?
Re:New medium awaiting new aesthetics and explorat (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:New medium awaiting new aesthetics and explorat (Score:4, Interesting)
Interestingly enough, the number of features on a device is as follows:
prosumer feature > consumer features > professional features.
The professional wants as few features/settings as possible but he does want to equipment to be of high quality. I actually created an application called 'Boom Recorder' http://www.vosgames.nl/products/BoomRecorder/ to record audio in the field for recording dialogue in movies and TV or live performances like concerts.
I created it because I used to be a prosumer and worked on beauty pageant and such. So I designed Boom Recorder for the prosumer market. I failed. Almost no prosumer bought one, because there were to few features, you could only record with it. However the professionals, the ones who make Hollywood blockbusters and big TV production and handle large events, they are the ones who love it; because it has so few features it just works.
Another example are video cameras. The prosumer one has lots of features and settings, way more than a consumer camera. But if you look at a professional digital film camera, there are hardly any features on it. I think professional only wants two knobs on a camera, the shutter angle (which changes the look of the film) and the start/stop button, all other settings which changes the look are on the lens.
Re:New medium awaiting new aesthetics and explorat (Score:4, Interesting)
As others already explained this would give unusually 'flat' pictures where depth of field has disappeared and the sense of distance with it, a problem already observed with tiny phone camera's.
This camera seems to go midway with many lenses for groups of pixels, the smaller those groups, the closer you get to your idea.
What I like about this concept is that the software allows for refocussing, they might very well already have a mode for maximum depth of field, i.e. all in focus.