Game changing camera technology?
 

Lytro, based in the same neck of the woods as Google, is about to release their new camera that lets you, "shoot now, focus later and experience living pictures with Lytro." In essence you take a photo and can select where you want the focus of the photo to be within the image before printing and/or publishing it. You can play around with photos on their site - http://www.lytro.com/

This is awesome shit!

:thumbsup

Impressive!

impressive, just click on the object to focus!

Apparently the tech isn't new, it's that it's being minaturised and released as a consumer item that is. :thumbsup

The physics and math I'm sure has been around for a while. Actually taking that and putting it into a small hand held camera that works is a huge leap that they seem to have figured out. If you want to get your geek on you can read the CEO's thesis he did on digital light field photography at Stanford back in 2006 - http://www.lytro.com/renng-thesis.pdf

How does this handle fast moving objects. Is it the same in that you can just snap the picture, then focus it later so it looks like a high shutter speed?

Good explanations here

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikiped...4D_light_field

From what I have read it appears you can just snap the picture and focus it later as essentially everything is in focus. Scroll down to figure 4.14 in his dissertation http://www.lytro.com/renng-thesis.pdf

I almost thought of that, lol. Any idea of the size or price?

No info on price and the only thing on their site about size is - Travels light. Portable and stylish enough to bring along, from the beach to the bistro.

It doesn't look like they have an actual product yet, it kind of reminds me of a startup about 12 or 13 years ago that were going to offer a film canister sized drop in replacement digital backs for 35mm film SLR's. Was vaporware in the end and the tech got sold to Sony if I recall correctly.

It will be interesting to see where it goes. It sure sounds like they have a product almost ready to go and they have received $50M in VC.

It's kind of like the way I do depth of field in my 3d animation software.

found this , interesting read

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/22/te...2&pagewanted=1

That is pretty cool.

nice they will have a camera to market this year :thumbsup

Very cool info!

That is amazing, opted in to receive info on the price and where to get it when it becomes available.

From the NY Times article it looks they will be for sale thru their website and Amazon.

Solution in search of a problem. But hey, lots of Stanford kids manage to get 50 million or more to fuck with.......

very fucking cool :)

Photoshop has had the blur function for a while. Take any picture, select an area and blur it.

It's new.

Original.

You'll like it.

Welcome to 1992 - is this your first visit?

you're too stupid to live if you think this has ANYTHING to do with a photoshop plug-in nOOb. go back to your cave.

So what's it like, you know, to see the world for the first time?

Very interesting:2 cents:

new technology rocks.,

Yet I do see it as a simple filter. There is really nothing that can't be done in software that this isn't doing that is new.

The only aspect that I can see is new, is that it adds a z component to the picture which allows the software to know what to blur.

I do see it could be useful, if the lens is wider than a regular lens, which allows for more light to enter. Or if there is zero time to focus, since the focus is done later. But point source cameras also have zero time to focus....

This technology, or something very similar, will likely become the future of security and surveillance as well.

One thing is for sure - the line between professional and amateur photography is about to blur even further, very soon... selective focus, exposure, aperture settings, shutter speed decisions, etc., will all be calculated for you, so, like with so many other technologies, the next generation will not need to know the hows or whys - just "click here".

That means a lot of you can finally shoot porn that is in focus.

awesome!

You need to read up on depth of field - focus (or lack of) of an object varies depending on distance from the lens.

If you blur a background in photoshop it ends up looking very flat because the out-of-focus effect is uniform, which is not natural. Every object has a slightly different blur.

Anyway, this isn't about BLURRING an image after capture to make it look fancy, it's about ADJUSTING FOCUS...

Two Things about all the sample images:
1) low resolution
2) shallow dof, which I guess is kinda expected by the tech, but I am sure you can focus the image on more than one point if wanted...

Not so sure this is real though, there is not even a SKETCH of the actual camera.. Who knows if releasing this year is even feasable