Lytro lets users focus on capturing the moment, not fiddling with auto focus.
Ina Fried over at AllThingsD has a great write up covering a California startup company hoping to change the way digital pictures are taken. The company Lytro uses a new light field sensor that allows digital cameras to record all the light that is moving in all directions in its field of view. The most obvious benefit is that there would be no need to focus before the pictures are shot. Once the image is captured, the user can select the focal point.
While this does fly in the face of photographic purists who believe in ‘capturing the moment’, the benefits to the vast majority of users are obvious. By essentially allowing depth and focus information to be captured the moment the shutter snaps, it means a lot less of those “oh wait, one more time” instances, which kill the moment in their own right. Another benefit is better low light performance, something that many mobile phone camera users would certainly love to get their hands on.
The technology is very similar to the tech demo using a plenoptic lens showcased by Adobe last fall. Basically, the way the plenoptic lens works is by being inserted between the main lens and the image sensor. The plenoptic lens then records the picture from multiple angles at once, and Adobe has shown of software theat
Instead of going the route of licensing the technology, Lytro has gone the route of releasing their own still camera ‘sometime this year’, along with $50 million in funding to help them along. While there’s no word on a video camera at the moment, the technology is certainly capable of it. As someone who works in post-production, the practical applications of the technology are just amazing.
To see it in action, by clicking on the image of the cat below you can instantly change the focal point (more at Lytro’s gallery), and check out the video that highlights some of the other capabilities that light field photography gives the end user..
