Lytro Illum Light-Field Camera Lets You Refocus Pictures Later

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."

Re:Meh

[brunes69]

- Yes it is $1600 and 4MP. Do you know how much the first DSLRs were with only 1MP? Technology evolves.

- Why do you need interchangeable lenses when you can focus on or apply lens effects on whatever you want after the fact? You would not care about lenses with this kind of technology at all - in fact, the elimination of lenses means this technology could result in large cost savings over the long haul.

Still hoping they make a movie camera

[Thagg]

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.

On the other hand, for movies shot using large-format sensors, focus is a huge issue. The amount of work spent following focus on a movie is significant, and it fails more often than you might think. Modern lenses are incredibly sharp, but they have such a tiny range that is in perfect focus that they are hard to use. Admittedly, the people who use these cameras and lenses are professionals with years or decades of experience, and they do well... ...But -- if we could focus our shots after the fact, it would be a true game changer for movie making. We could chose just what part of the scene should be in focus, and change that throughout the shot easily. Yes, this moves yet another part of the movie making process into post, but that's not a bad thing. As other people have suggested at other fora, editing/coloring/framing and visual effects are all done in post, and it helps make better movies. This would help too. Having the depth maps automatically generated would make visual effects easier and better as well.

I recognize that the amount of processing that goes on to make these images makes a motion picture camera a challenge, and the number of high-end motion picture cameras is probably a tenth of a percent of the DSLRs that are made, at most. Still, we could just capture the 40 MRays and do the processing later; storage and networks are getting faster and larger all the time.

Come on, Lytro! Make it happen!

Re:Still hoping they make a movie camera

[AK Marc]

Then they could finally do 3D right. I hate 3D movies because movies like Avatar make me ill. They are much more enjoyable in 2D. Why? Because directors (even 3D ones) still think in 2D. The scenes where the director has foreground shrubbery to help set setting and such, the plants are out of focus because the focus range is so small, but jumping out at you because they are closer. For 3D, if you are using 3D for depth, not just an occasional shark-jumping-out-of-the-screen moment, everything should be in focus. Let the 3D provide the depth, and let the viewer selectively focus. But forcing us to look at the actors because they are the only thing in focus, while forcing us to look at blurry plants because they are jumping out at us will always get a poor result.

3D will never look right if the same movie is watchable in 2D. But since everything is dual-D, none will be right for both. And that's a director problem.