Lytro Illum Light-Field Camera Lets You Refocus Pictures Later 129
Iddo Genuth writes "Earlier today Lytro introduced a new light-field camera called Illum. This is the second camera with this innovative refocusing technology from the California based company founded in 2006. The new camera is a more advanced version of the first camera introduced in 2012. It has a much larger sensor with four times the resolution (Lytro still uses the term megarays instead of megapixels), a much larger and longer zoom lens with a f/2 constant aperture and of course the ability to refocus after you take a picture (the new Illum can refocus on many more points in the image compared to the older version). Users will also have more control of the camera, a larger screen, and the ability to create regular JPEG images or videos made from the refocused images they capture."
IIIum? (Score:5, Informative)
Is that IIIum, Illum, or IlIum?
The font slashdot uses makes it impossible to tell.
Re:Meh (Score:5, Informative)
In a fast-paced environment like a concert or sporting event, the ability to literally point and click, and pull the best shots later, is a fantastic advancement.
I love my first gen Lytro. I've gotten some amazing shots from it.
Don't knock it until you've tried it.
Re:Meh (Score:4, Informative)
It's mostly a solution in search of a problem.
I think you're right that most people haven't been searching for this kind of camera, but I think you could have made the same argument about digital cameras in the first place, as well as computers in general. Things were just fine before. Professionals who were used to doing things the "normal" way saw them as more trouble than they're worth. They were expensive and had technical shortcomings when compared to the conventional solution.
However, it allows you to do something new that you couldn't do before. I'd say there's a good chance the technology will be refined and you'll see this sort of thing become cheaper and better. People will find cool and interesting applications. Something neat will probably come of this.
Re:IIIum? (Score:4, Informative)
Illum
Re:2D resolution (Score:5, Informative)
The megapixel figure is the comparable number. The Lytro not only has a Bayer filter, it also has another filter that uses multiple pixels to measure the direction of the light. So you take your raw sensor, that might capture 40 MP, divide that by whatever number you like for Bayerization to get colour, and divide that by some other number (about 10 for Lytro's products) for the directional sensing.
Re:Meh (Score:5, Informative)
The resolution at this point doesn't matter, this is a demo product that will only by bought by future investors and camera heads (quite possibly myself included). The
rest of your lens woes don't really apply with a plenopitc camera, the DOF is calculated when the image is made, if they can get DOF with unlimited depth they can
get ultra thin just the same way. They also boast that you can use lenses with no aspherical elements which means making addon lenses would be very cheap on
future versions of this camera. A tilt lens is not required with a plenoptic camera, it captures all parts in focus and then calculates the distance and angle you pick for
a plane of focus, you could even have a calculated "surface of focus" that is wavy or bent.
If they make enough on this one their next camera should be photographer's dream.
you're limited in what you can do in post (Score:5, Informative)
The lens is F/2, so you can't get the equivalent brightness of an F/1.4 (though you might be able to get the depth of field in post-processing).
The lens is 30-255, which is pretty good range, but you can't swap it out to go wider/longer.
Tilt-shift type effects (angled focal plane) should be doable in post-processing, but it would depend if they've added that functionality to their software.
Re:Still hoping they make a movie camera (Score:4, Informative)
For still photography, focus isn't a terribly hard problem to solve. Autofocus works, and DSLRs let you compose, focus, and shoot manually as well. Easy peasy.
Depends on what you are shooting and what you are shooting with. Bird moving through foliage at low F value? AF is likely to grab foliage. Something really close to camera and moving randomly? That can be a problem too. Baby waving arms... make sure you get focus to the face: AF (esp phase-focus) is likely to get the nearest object rather than the correct one. Contrast focus (and phase focus on-sensore, as with Canon 70D) can add face / eye detect, but (except the 70D) at the cost of speed (so moving objects are a problem again).
Re:Meh (Score:5, Informative)
You seem to be confusing lenses and filters. Lenses are not used to 'apply distortions' (although a side effect of many lenses is distortion). Lenses are used to control what fills the frame of the picture.
I'll give you an example. Suppose you are on the sidelines at a football game, and want to take some pictures. One picture might be of what your eye sees - a good portion of the stands on the other side of the field, grass between you and the players, and the players. A better picture may be of only the player controlling the ball. A different picture may want to show mostly the stands, to show the size of the crowd.
A point and shoot camera, or a camera with a 'normal' lens is going to take the first picture. A telephoto lens would take the second picture (you could zoom in and get just the players face, including the sweat dripping from his hair), and a wide angle lens would take the third picture.
Now, why can't this camera elimate those lenses? Well, suppose you have a 10MP camera. In the wide-angle shot, the players face probably takes up .1% of the frame. If you are using all 10MP to capture the wide angle shot, your players face only uses about 10K of the pixels. If you try to blow the players face up to full-frame you have an extremely blocky picture with no detail at all. On the other hand, if you want to the players face to occupy 10MP, you need to capture 10 GIGA pixels in your wide angle shot.