[BITList] light field camera

[x50type at cox.net]

                how about Lytro's new futuristic light-field camera?, and it's pretty darn cool........................!!
                ct

      Hands-On: Lytro Light-Field Camera Offers Flip Simplicity, Futuristic Features
      We finally get a chance to look at Lytro's new futuristic light-field camera, and it's pretty darn cool.
      By Tim Moynihan, PCWorld    Oct 19, 2011 3:45 pm 

      CEO and Founder Ren Ng introduces the LytroEarlier this year, camera start-up Lytro provided an enticing sneak peek of what their first product could do. Using a light-field sensor--the likes of which had previously only been seen in science labs and supercomputer-connected arrays of hundreds of cameras--the camera could record data about light travelling in every direction through 3D space. In practical terms, that means that the camera's photos can be refocused after they're shot. 

      It's the stuff of sci-fi. The only problem: Lytro only demoed the output of their light-field cameras. The device itself, its price, and the details about everything in between were all kept under wraps until today. 

      And it's looking good.

      Ren Ng, the founder and CEO of Lytro, took the lid off of Lytro's first "light-field camera for everyone" at an event in San Francisco Wednesday. The camera's physical design is as out-of-the-box as the light-field technology itself: The square, tube-like device measures just under four-and-a-half inches long, looking more like a miniature telescope than a traditional camera.

      Holding the futuristic LytroAfter some brief hands-on time with the camera, I came away impressed. This is certainly a device that has Flip-like potential to change a chunk of the camera market and make using a standalone camera rather than a cellphone camera an attractive option. As complicated as the technology behind the camera is, using it is dead simple. It's light, pocketable, and well-constructed; its user interface is straight-forward, and interacting with the camera's output by clicking different points to focus is a fun process. (There's a gallery of interactive images on Lytro's site.) 

      Similar to the process of recording 3D images and video, using the camera forces the shooter to think differently about how they're composing a shot. The physical depth of the scene and the distance between objects in the scene are more important factors to consider than the traditional "rule of thirds" method of shot composition. The camera's minimum focus distance is around two inches away from the lens, and when refocusing the images after they were offloaded to a computer, the camera was able to distinguish and refocus on objects about an inch apart.

      Its specs are also surprisingly high-end given the device's size. For one, the Lytro camera has an 8X optical zoom, which is roomy for a pocketable device. More importantly, the camera has a very bright, constant F2.0 aperture; normally, long-zoom cameras pinch down the aperture to narrower, less-effective light-gathering settings as they reach the telephoto end of the zoom. Ng says that the wide aperture at both ends of the zoom helps the Lytro take great photos in low light.

      Your average camera measures its sensor resolution in megapixels, but this Lytro camera does things differently there, as well. The Lytro camera has a resolution of 11 megarays, meaning that the camera's sensor is capable of capturing the data for 11 million rays of light per picture. And because the camera doesn't have to autofocus before it shoots--you focus after the fact--shutter response is immediate. 








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