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The Lytro Camera: Impressive Technology and Some Big Drawbacks
waderoush writes "The venture backers behind Lytro, the Silicon Valley startup that just released its new light field camera, say the device will upend consumer photography the way the iPhone upended the mobile business. This review takes that assertion at face value, enumerating the features that made the iPhone an overnight success and asking whether the Lytro camera and its refocusable 'living pictures' offer consumers an equivalent set of advantages. The verdict: not yet. But while the first Lytro model may not an overnight success, light field cameras and refocusable images are just the first taste of a revolution in computational photography that's going to change the way consumers think about pictures."
Right now, it seems like the majority of Lytro pictures are technology demos, a fire hydrant in the foreground and a building in the background, or some equivalent, which just invites you to click both and move on. You can just hear the enthusiastic early adopter in the background of these pictures saying "OK, _now_ click the building! Whoa! Cool, huh?!". These shots are, to my mind, the photographic equivalent of arrows or spears coming out towards the audience in early 3D movies. Gimmicks which break the fourth wall, saying "Hey, remember, you're looking at a Lytro (tm) image, not just anything!".
I can't wait for real photographers and artists to actually find situations, styles and aesthetics where Lytro sorts of cameras can be used in a way that both effectively uses the new capabilities of the format _and_ produces something artistically and aesthetically wonderful. I think the technology has a ways to go, but right now, the biggest problem facing Lytro (and light field photography) is that it's a new medium that nobody has a clue how to use effectively.
Until we reach that point where people see a great Lytro picture and actually feel inspired, it's going to be tough to sell what is currently a low-spec camera with one big gimmick. So, if you want Lytro to take off, buy one for the craziest artist you know.
Seems Xconomy can't decide whether they like it or not:
The original title seems to have been "The Lytro Camera is no iPhone but it's revolutionary anyway".
going by the URL fragment:
the-lytro-camera-is-no-iphone-but-its-revolutionary-anyway
The current title is the less positive "The Lytro Camera Is Revolutionary, But Itâ(TM)s No iPhone" (Note: Not being an iPhone is a negative in a Stevebot's eyes.)
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Usually the first adopters.....
The capabilities of light field cameras have that fun 'technology indistinguishable from magic' touch to them that the impressive-but-evolutionary spec bumps of markedly superior conventional digital cameras don't(It's like playing with your favorite eccentric retro computer from before the Great Standardization: at this point, anything that old is a painfully limited toy; but it is different. Your top-of-the-line-screaming-monster of a PC, on the other hand, is brutally capable and impressively cheap; but practically point-for-point familiar to the p90 running Windows95, with all the performance related numbers bumped by a few decimal places).
Unfortunately, though, the move to release it at a (barely) 'consumer toy' price point really led to a product slightly too compromised to be useful: The optics you need for the light field capture eat so much of the sensor's available resolution that the resolution of the images you can get out of the thing is hovering slightly below 1 megapixel. Yes, the ability to spit out that paltry image at all sorts of focuses, after the fact, is damn cool; but for $500, you could get a high end P&S that could iterate through a series of 10MP shots at different focus points, at time of shooting in a few seconds, netting much of the benefit along with resolutions that wouldn't be ashamed to show up on a $20 webcam.
I'd love to see the same technology applied at a price point and form factor where the sheer sacrifice of available pixels wouldn't be so keenly felt.
DP Review has a review of this camera. It sounds like it has a long way to go. Due to the way lightfield works, the final resolution is fairly low, in this case only 1024x1024. I don't know if there's really a way around it, since they're substituting resolution for the depth of field focus feature.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
...that's going to change the way consumers think about pictures.
You're overestimating the average consumer: You believe they think prior to taking a picture. Having gone through enough cell phones left abandoned and dropped off at the lost in found before finally pressing 'm' in the phone book and calling their mom to say they lost their phone at my workplace... I can say with a fair degree of confidence most people take pictures of themselves, themselves with friends, more pictures of themselves and... (guys only)... pictures of inanimate objects that they never share or send to anyone. Ever. They're usually things like sign posts, car wheels (not actual cars, this would be too obvious), or random corners of buildings. From this, I can deduce that no actual thinking occurs for at least 95% of your everyday consumer's use of a camera.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
My first thought was that it could be great for video; no need to bother with precise focus while shooting if you can refocus when you edit. However, I'm guessing that it would require a huge data rate.
Given the resolution tradeoffs that are inherent in the design, I can see this theoretically "revolutionizing" camera phones or cheap point-and-shoots... perhaps. But I'm not sure I believe even that, given that people won't take a few seconds even now to crop their photos, sharpen them (even automatically), or adjust the white balance. Most people just seem to throw whatever photos they've taken up online - no editing, no triage, no nothing.
I can't see this making a difference with the higher-end market, in any case. People who are at least somewhat serious about their photography will almost certainly pick much higher resolution with the need to focus over an refocusable image that has just a fraction of the resolution.
#DeleteChrome
Stop adding to the clutter with your lame images.
The whole thing!
My first thought was that it could be great for video; no need to bother with precise focus while shooting if you can refocus when you edit. However, I'm guessing that it would require a huge data rate
My thought as well
I am curious to know if there is a site that can tell us how big the data rate we are looking at
Anyone ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
For those more interested in the technology, Ren Ng's thesis is available on Lytro's website (at the bottom of the "Science Inside" page). I read much of the thesis at it the other day after reading an article about the camera in the New York Times. It's a well written thesis and explains the technology in a few simple ways and more rigoroursly.
The best explaination to me was that the microlens array is effectively reimaging the lens onto a small array of pixels under each microlens. (The micolens is placed at the usual focal plane of the camera and the # of microlenses is what determines the resolution). Each pixel therefore sees only a small aperture of the lens. A small aperture gives a very large depth of field. You could just use one pixel under each microlens to create an image with a large depth of field, but you'd be throwing away a lot of light. You can be more clever, however, and reconstruct from all those small aperture images the image at any focus. At different focuses, the light from any location is shared among multiple microlenses. (i.e, it's out of focus - so it's blurred at the focal plane). However, it's not out of focus at the pixels, since remember each pixel only sees a small aperture and has a large depth of field. It's then just a matter of adding the right pixels together to create an in-focus image at any effective focal plane.
Many people have noticed in the online samples that you can't focus clearly on far-away objects; they sorta get sharper, but not anywhere as sharp as foreground details. So that awesome picture of you on top of a mountain? You'll be nice and sharp, but the background never will be. Kind of spoils it, when the whole point is to be able to click and have one or the other be super sharp, right?
Also, it needs absurd amounts of light according to Gizmodo, or image noise becomes horrendous. Which is not surprising, given how hard Nikon and Canon are pushing the edge of what's possible in their sensors + image processors, and how small the individual lenses are. Great for sunny places. Not so much for indoors.
Please help metamoderate.
My understanding is that this was used (the concept, not the camera) to film some of the 'bullet time' like scenes we see in movies now.
It might be one of those technologies that is just now coming into prosumer and consumer levels of affordability.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Seems like it has gimmick written all over it to me. It's got some optical problems like purple fringe (for example on the shot with the cup of water in the foreground), unacceptably low resolution, and it requires software like flash to view the photos. If they could get the thing into an SLR body so you could put decent optics on the front, and beef up the sensors so the final output resolution could be 10 or more megapixels, then they might have something. As it is, this reminds me of the 3d cameras that are around or even the kodak sticker cameras.
The worst part is the price tag is so high you're approaching the point where you could get a real entry level SLR for the same money.
Just because they involve a novel idea relating to focus does not mean they've created a good product.
Maybe they can get Vince Shlomi to sell it for them....
When will we get a light field display? It's only logical that you'd need both to truly leverage this invention. And seeing as you can get displays with >300 dpi resolution today, it's only a matter of time before displays have enough resolution, and computers have enough processing power to display light field images.
I'm not going to write this thing off yet, but the demos I've seen so far don't seem to match the claims of how "light field photography" is supposed to work. In fact all the demos are pretty much what you'd get if you put a camera on a tripod and took 2 or 3 photos of the same subject with the focus adjusted, and then linear-interpolated between them to make an animation...
Ridley Scott gave us a foreshadowing of *something* like this, exactly 30 years ago. If you were around back then, did you think what Deckard was doing was (a) impossible, (b) something nobody would ever want, or (c) a taste of the future?
http://criticalcommons.org/Members/ironman28/clips/bladeRunner3DphotoH264.mov/view
I wonder if Lytro drew any inspiration from the movie?
First off the way this new technology works is actually pretty awesome. Instead of detecting the light that hits the lens, this camera detects the polarization of the light that is hitting it.
IE: It records the light's angle as it hits it.
They should definitely increase the processing power on the camera itself, it needs to process these images into a usable file format on the fly. Also they need to create/collaborate on more powerful and nimble software. You can save an end result as a regular file, but together it is more like a .psd file.
This camera is very simple right now. With the right direction this could eventually be used in advanced video recording and other technologies. It could even be made simple (or complicated?) enough to be used in AI or robotics, even security.
Well whatever, I hope they succeed!
-zef
Part of what makes 3d movies look fake is that the viewer cannot focus on anything other than what is "in focus" as per the Director. I imagine it would be possible to use this technology paired with some sort of eye tracking tech (which also exists). This would move us a step closer toward a more realistic immersion.
The absence of a SD card slot is a huge drawback. Who's gonna fit a light field video stream of decent quality on 8gb of memory?
WTF is a prosumer? Fucking marketers are destroying the language.
P.S. You suck.
Why do we need "focus" at all? Why not have photographs where everything is in focus? Depth of field is an artifact of lenses, whether they're in your eye or in your camera. A light field could change the entire notion of a photograph, away from trying to imitate the eye to creating a visual record of a scene that actually records everything that is there. No need for depth of field at all.
As usual, when the artists get hold of this technology, they'll do something that has nothing to do with some 20th century film concept of "throwing focus". I could see this especially happening with very large arrays of sensors, creating ultra-high resolution images and allowing the eye to do the work instead of the camera lens.
Heck, for all we know, two dimensional imaging might become archaic altogether and this technology will be just a historical novelty like stereographs. They'll look back at 3D movies as a curious step toward true three-dimensional imaging.
Anyway, I get the feeling that this proof-of-concept product is just a come-on to get one of the bigger electronics companies to buy them out. I'll be shocked if we start seeing light-field cameras from this company on the market as commonly as regular digital cameras.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It would absolutely rule for news and performance photography I guess (or insect macros :D). I'd say it rather increases the opportunity to not miss shots or botch them, but I wouldn't hail this as some radical new medium just yet. I mean, this stuff is already possible with still scenes, a tripod and patience... setting the focus or getting all in focus is nothing new, to put it mildly, and anything that can be done with that is already being done -- but now you can do it on the move, or without knowing what to focus on before hand. Which is obviously great, but I wouldn't hold my breath for "inspiring Lytro pictures", mostly because, wtf is that even supposed to be. It might help people get non-blurry photos though, and it'll be awesome for pervs on the beach haha :P
The company is acting like Apple with their one-size-fits-all approach. News Flash: You're not Apple.
Wait for them to license this tech to other companies unless you're the gottahaveitnow type. You know who you are. The rest of us thank you for subsidizing our tech that's had all the bugs worked out and doesn't suck.
It's actually a useful portmanteau of professional and consumer, distinguishing an area of cost and feature above that of a typical consumer and below that of a professional. Usually used in reference to serious hobbyists.
The corner of a round room
Why do we need "focus" at all? Why not have photographs where everything is in focus? Depth of field is an artifact of lenses, whether they're in your eye or in your camera.
Focus can be used in composition to guide the viewer to the important elements in the story. Just as "left", "up","down", etc. define the field of view, so does focus.
Why would anyone buy one of these IN THEIR CURRENT mode? It's an idea in search of a purpose. I've been shooting photos for almost 40 years. Unless you are drunk, can't hold a camera steady, what's the use? If you are serious about photography, don't waste your time on this toy.
According to this Q/A session, a little larger than normal picture files. What that actually means, I don't know (could be mostly marketing).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Imagine being able to have a 3D image of the model that you want to analyse...Being able to focus on different sections, zoom in, discuss, zoom out and refocus on another section of the model etc...
To Share Is To care
Let's list some of the significant drawbacks of this first version which we can realistically chalk up as a technology demo:
* Camera is shaped weird and appears awkward to use. If form follows function, I'm not sure what the function is.
* Cheap last-gen LCD display.
* Output is only 1MP (1024x1024).
* Sensor is really small
* Lens is cheap
* Limited depth of field
* Raw light fields have to be sent to Lytro server for processing
* Only a handful of focus points can be chosen
* In focus range is limited
* Photos are converted into lame Flash animations
Now, let's re-imagine this as a serious photographers tool a few years down the road:
* It's a DSLR with real interchanegable lenses and huge hi-rez LCD display
* Let's say the camera can even magically switch from "classic" to light field mode with a toggle switch.
* Huge full frame sensor allowing light field output at 6+MP with high dynamic range and low noise at high ISOs
* Depth of field choices much broader and limited only by lens chosen
* Effective focus range is much improved
* Raw lightfield processing can be done on your local computer, allowing precise control over number and position of focus layers. Alternately, assuming processing speed is available, perhaps focusing points can be chosen in real-time within the finished image blob.
* Output as multiple jpegs, flash or HTML5, etc.
Now what?
Well, you still have these limitations if you use light fields:
* You're basically giving up some amount of image resolution for the ability to focus after the fact. DSLRs and even consumer cameras already have excellent auto-focus modes that when used properly generally nail focus in decent light. It's not the biggest or even second biggest problem I see in photos online. Bad composition and inadequate lighting are generally much bigger problems.
* If you chose the wrong focus point when shooting, sure you can fix your mistake, but if focus is off due to camera shake or motion blur, you're SOL.
* It's basically useless in images with large depths of field (think large landscapes where everything is essentially in focus)
* Makes no difference on a printed page, except you have one more tweak available during editing.
* Still gimmicky. After everyone has played around with a few of these photos interactively, they're bored and move on.
The Lytro camera has special optics that basically separates the light entering the lens from different angles. Knowing the rough angle of the light rays allows you to combine them in different ways to change the focal length of the image, as opposed to a traditional camera, in which they are permanently combined as the CCD captures the light at a set focal length. This comes with a trade-offs as light from each set of angles is essentially captured as a separate image, giving you say 12x12 sub images on the CCD, so the resolution of each sub-image is much lower than you would get using the full CCD for an image.
Since Ren Ng published his seminal paper making the connection between refocusing a light-feild and Fourier Slice theory, there has been additional work which shows that you can achieve the same thing using a simple filter, rather than a whole new set of optics. The benefit of this is that it is cheaper to manufacture, and you can easily switch out the filter to adjust the trade-off between image resolution and depth of field, but come with an additional cost of a slight loss of total light (due to the filter). Here is one of those papers.
There are two basic approaches. The first heterodynes the light (a filter acts as multiplication) such that light that enters at different angles is shifted to different frequencies. So with this approach you get "subimages" in the frequency domain rather than the spacial domain, which can be seperated and recombined in software. The result and trade-offs are essentially the same but with simpler hardware.
The other is based on refocusing as a deconvolution operation, but the filter modifies the point-spread-function of the camera, such that it's frequency response doesn't have any zeros, so you don't loose data at those frequencies like you would with a simple rectangular aperture.
Depth of field effects are considered part of the art of photography, much like amplifier distortion is part of the art of playing electric guitar. People pay a great deal for the capacity to get *narrower* depth of field: compare the price of Canon's 85mm f/1.8 and f/1.2 lenses. People most often buy the f/1.2 as a very very narrow depth of field portrait lens, rather than a very very low-light lens. Other lenses are known for the particular way that they throw backgrounds out of focus -- Nikon will even sell you one where you can choose exactly how the background is defocuses.
I think this trend in photography is overblown (I don't see the appeal of portraits where half of one eye is out of focus), but there's no doubt that artistic manipulation of depth of field is a big part of the art.
No technique ever becomes archaic; it becomes an artistic choice, like black-and-white photography. Same with focus, which probably won't ever go away since it's so intrinsic to how our eyes work. I agree that this could be a huge development once artists figure out what to do with it.
All the information is obviously there since you can "explore" the image. Clicking on any point in the image either brings nearer objects into focus or farther objects into focus. So, obviously, each point in the 2-d image is encoded with additional information that associates that point with a nearer focal plane or farther focal plane. So, why not computationally merge / stitch together a bunch of sharpened nearer areas with a bunch of sharpened farther areas to get an overall sharper picture? People may find that useful.
Imagine when cameras suck an entire event in it's full 3D life-like quality. So you have a dome of some sort, it has millions of high res cameras with full Lytro effect, kind of like a retina. And you can almost go back in time when you stick your head in the flexible LED chamber complete with eye movement trackers and brain control motive predictors. Or just use glasses and 3D earphones. Things will focus as you look at them. You could even insert keystrokes into a virtual terminal embedded into the stream. Not unlike tron or something because you pull all senses into the stream somehow, in any manner you know of to play back at some point when the technology can catch up. I've been tripping on how cameras are kind of like time portals - albeit only into the past, but they way they catch "reality" and hold it, is to me a little creepy.
Namaste
So, perfect for capturing images of stuff like textures for games.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Let's try these words then - amateur, hobbyist, enthusiast. "Prosumer" is an inane neologism created by marketing idiots that are too stupid to use a thesaurus.
You see, I think the main failure is thinking that this is something for the photography experts. No, this, to me, if for all those taking candid shots in a party, that later realize half og the pictures are out of focus because they see through a cheap viewfinder our a poor rendering from a cellphone's display and failed to see the pictures are out of focus. Professional photographers who know what to frame and focus and do it really fast through the viewfinder of a professional camera may not be the primary target of systems aimed at simplifying picture taking.
... Lytro porn! (And then there's Rule 34 ...)
The real problem with this technology is that there is no problem. For the most part portable compact cameras have sensors so small that your average happy snap is sharp across the range anyway. As for the other end of the spectrum, DSLRs have 50+ AF points and memory cards are so spacious that there's no reason not to re-shoot if you think the focus may be off slightly.
The technology is revolutionary, but it isn't solving any problem. People have been taking tac sharp photos for hundreds of years so why should anyone spend money on a camera that may allow you to refocus after instead of a camera that takes better sharper images, and simply does a good job up front?
Personally I don't see the point, and by comparing it to the iPhone I think the writer doesn't see the point either.
No, it's not. Our eyes have an amazing depth of focus to them, much more so than cameras do. Right now I'm looking through a range of about 30m and the difference in focus is minimal compared with what my camera would handle.
The technology is probably going to end up ending up like Foveon, never being perfected to the point where it's of use to the mainstream photographers. I'm sure that there are some neat things that can be done with it, but it does render much of what photographers do as moot. Plus, none of the images I've seen are acceptably sharp, which is especially problematic as they're presumably meant to show off.
It's now possible to make imagers with so many pixels that finding some way to use them is a problem. This is one way. Another way is to have more colors. There's a camera with around 100 different color filters, which is interesting for some scientific applications and for machine vision. 3 color sensing is a human eye thing. Some birds have 22 different spectral sensors, which is useful in picking targets through foliage. There's also interest in having more dynamic range, so that you don't have to worry about exposure or lighting as much.
The next thing may be image polarization, by having multiple polarizers per picture. This would be useful in eliminating glare after the fact.
"Amateur," "Hobbyist," and "Enthusiast" imply nothing about the level and quality (or "quality") of the involved equipment. Don't overload terms like "Hobbyist" to include connotations of having expensive, yet sub-professional-grade material. Unless you *want* marketing to win by implying "hobbyists" gotta buy expensive stuff? You're just objecting to "prosumer" for emotional reasons, not actual, practical ones.
There's going to be nothing beautiful about what this device is used for -- it's going to be used by surveillance "professionals" and paparazzi to further erode people's privacy.
The Lytro takes still pictures, and can take 350 pictures in the 8 GB model, and 750 pictures in the 16 GB model.
Video would be prohibitively large. Aside from storage, it's probably not possible for the camera to take and store 30 FPS of data at 10 M rays per image, which I would guess would be about 10x typical video data rates. They'd need faster sensors, faster RAM, etc., which would push up the complexity and price quite a bit. In comparison, look how much more HD camcorders cost than SD camcorders, and scale it up at least that much again, if not more.
Still, would be seriously cool.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
The way the eye focuses is very different from a camera - you actually have less visual resolution where you're "not looking" than in the center of your vision, and you automatically focus your eye to the depth of whatever you're looking at, so while it feels like everything is in focus, it's not all in focus at once, the center is sharp and in focus, and everything else is fuzzy until you look straight at it.
Theoretically the Lytro could do that as well, automatically focusing wherever you look, though of course, it would need to know where you're looking, which isn't something normal computers know. Clicking a mouse on the image to focus there isn't as automatic, of course, but it's similar to what we do naturally with our eyes.
I'd also point out that while you could capture photo's where everything is in focus - there are cameras that do that now, and the Lytro can do that as well - but the result is that the photo's are unpleasant to look at, because everything being in focus means that there's no visual focus of where to look in the picture. That's OK sometimes, but not normally...
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
The Lytro takes still pictures, and can take 350 pictures in the 8 GB model, and 750 pictures in the 16 GB model.
Yes. It's kind of ridiculous. Most consumer cameras on the market allow a user-supplied CF or SD card, and the differentiating factor between cameras is normally photographic capabilities/image quality, storage is cheap, and 8gb of flash memory is not $100; the "amount of storage is built into the camera" being fixed is highly irregular; it also means I can't use a card reader to easily transfer data -- hooking up USB cables and trying to figure out any driver requirements is quite inconvenient.
The minimum I use these days are 32 gigabyte cards; with only 16gb, it would actually be necessary to frequently delete pictures to make room for more, instead of just swapping flash cards.
Also, flash cards have limited program-erase cycles... which means the camera has a limited lifetime if used heavily. I suppose warranty will cover for some time storage failure due to heavy picture taking activity wearing out the flash?
The Nimslo system was another spectacular advance in consumer photography.
And it didnn't catch on. (I wonder why?)
As far as "professional" photographers go, sharpness of focus is everything in most cases. Pictures need to be pin-sharp at one particular point for product shots, Portraits need to be focussed around the eyes (doesn't matter if its wedding, social or formal). Record and architecture pictures need to be sharp in a particular plane (ever thought why large-format cameras need to be capable of all those odd contortions?). Landscapes need to have a focussed point of interest. Artistic photographers are taught to pre-visualise their image. Even if its an incoherent mass of colour or shapes, thats what they wanted. Being able to move an approximate point of focus through an image on a screen doesn't really help.
As for consumer applications, it'll be a 10 day wonder, then people will get bored with slightly fuzzy, achromatically distorted low res images best viewed on the screen on the back of their rather expensive fixed focus point and shoot camera.
The Lytro system is a technological box of tricks, thought up by people who are lazy about photography and don't understand it or the technologies and principles behind the control of exposure and image formation. Its just the worst excesses of digital image technology taken to their illogical conclusions.
I've always thought that it must be some wild animal related to opossum. Then I've found out that they're actually talking about me (which still does not conclusively contradict the first sentence, mind you).
Ezekiel 23:20
No, it's not, it's a useful word. It generally refers to a hobbyist who has the money/dedication to use genuinely professional equipment. For example, I don't play guitar for a living, but I do own a guitar and amplifier that would be more than suitable for a professional session musician. None of "amateur, hobbyist, enthusiast" conveys that. The marketing side of it is that companies have started to target those people as a sector in their own right, for instance Canon tend to make a range of cameras that have the same features as their high-end professional models, but with plastic rather than alloy bodies so not really suitable for a photojournalist in the field. Prosumer describes that quite nicely.
Yeah, you're right, iPhones had virtually no effect at all. Now crawl back under your rock.
It's a single photosensor. The lens array and maths are doing the hard work. Therefore, although the data processing requirements may be very data intensive, the actual image should be the same, or very close to the same, as an image taken without the lens array. The maths should be implementable fully in hardware such that all processing can be done on camera at video speeds, so there is no reason that this couldn't be done. The issue would be making a cohesive focal point between frames. Having to focus a film frame-by-frame would take a lot of time and would be something only film studios might be willing to do, but would be too annoying for consumers.
Interestingly enough, the number of features on a device is as follows:
prosumer feature > consumer features > professional features.
The professional wants as few features/settings as possible but he does want to equipment to be of high quality. I actually created an application called 'Boom Recorder' http://www.vosgames.nl/products/BoomRecorder/ to record audio in the field for recording dialogue in movies and TV or live performances like concerts.
I created it because I used to be a prosumer and worked on beauty pageant and such. So I designed Boom Recorder for the prosumer market. I failed. Almost no prosumer bought one, because there were to few features, you could only record with it. However the professionals, the ones who make Hollywood blockbusters and big TV production and handle large events, they are the ones who love it; because it has so few features it just works.
Another example are video cameras. The prosumer one has lots of features and settings, way more than a consumer camera. But if you look at a professional digital film camera, there are hardly any features on it. I think professional only wants two knobs on a camera, the shutter angle (which changes the look of the film) and the start/stop button, all other settings which changes the look are on the lens.
Theoretically the Lytro could do that as well, automatically focusing wherever you look, though of course, it would need to know where you're looking, which isn't something normal computers know. Clicking a mouse on the image to focus there isn't as automatic, of course, but it's similar to what we do naturally with our eyes.
Projects like OpenGazer
have yet to take off because of the lack of a real "killer app". But tie OpenGazer (or other webcam eyetracker) to this, and you'd have a rather cool tech demo.
Actually, I think they've really missed a trick. Isn't "3D" the big trend this year? Why not launch with a zoomless stereoscopic camera that you point about like a pair of binoculars (hence small LCD requirement), then power the PC end (yes, I know, this device is Mac only for no sensible reason) with eyetracking and 3D TV support.
A gimmick, yes, but one that ticks all the zeitgeist boxes and presses all the hot buttons. Think of all the column inches talking about "taking 2.5D to real 3D" or "unlocking the third dimension" or "tackling the hidden dimension". It would advertise itself....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
An alternative technique that could be done with a regular DSLR (with appropriate firmware, of course) could use the full range of focus at a wide aperture to generate a depth map for the image (not necessarily an easy thing to do accurately, but possible with a few tricks). You then take the image with a small aperture to maximize depth of field. Then you could focus the image however you like in post production.
An interesting observation. :)
It also explains why Unix is more professional than Windows
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
As others already explained this would give unusually 'flat' pictures where depth of field has disappeared and the sense of distance with it, a problem already observed with tiny phone camera's.
This camera seems to go midway with many lenses for groups of pixels, the smaller those groups, the closer you get to your idea.
What I like about this concept is that the software allows for refocussing, they might very well already have a mode for maximum depth of field, i.e. all in focus.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
And when that happens, I'll be waiting for the novelty to wear off. It'll get pretty old pretty quick.
Now I can see it being useful in some situations where the subject isn't cooperating by moving in a predictable manner - security, surveillance and perhaps some science & nature applications. That aside, I reckon it's a gimmick.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm no crazy artist, and I doubt my mundane snapshots will sway anybody (and I'm still eagerly waiting for my Lytro to show up).... I do think it will be important to consider the whole package, not just the lightfield refocusing aspect. You have to consider the square frame and relatively low definitioin -- and the unsuitability of cropping and editing. You have to consider the instant shutter snap, with no focus delay. It's a snapshot camera, like the old SX-70. Use it that way! It'll definitely be a different experience and viewpoint from shooting with a DSLR, and fill a different role.
I do think that the Lytro technology won't reach its potential until sensors get better. DSLRs are not crying out for more sensor density. The Lytro is!
Have you even looked at a photo of the thing, it does not look at all like a typical camera, it is a short square tube, lacking a card slot is the least of its feature problems.
I wonder what kind of effect this could have on a very high-resolution FPS video game on a very large display.
I'm a little bit concerned about the length of time it takes to refocus. Eyes refocus so fast. But if you turn your head very slowly, there is a tendency of the eye to "stick".
Anyway, it's interesting...
You are welcome on my lawn.
IIRC, it's an 11 megapixel sensor, to get a 1 megapixel image.
So, not TOO far off from 4k video, to get a low HD quality Lytro video.
What's really needed to take advantage of this technology is a light field screen. So that what your eye focuses on is actually in focus.
I'm not sure if that can be made, but it would be a huge improvement on stereoscopic-type 3d effects.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Because that would look awfully flat. Focus is one of the three main things your brain uses to interpret depth, along with stereoscopic vision and perspective. (There is also motion parallax and the effect of light scattering).
Perspective was mastered some time in the middle ages.
Stereoscopic images came not long after we could take pictures.
Accomodation, the depth perception we get from the work the muscles around our lens in the eye do, hasn't really been mastered yet. We can sort of fake it with focus, but you still get a flat image where something appears to be out of focus - once your eye tries to focus on the out-of-focus parts, it's immediately apparent to your brain that you're looking at something flat.
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Actually, cameras have been pretty good at this for a while, with eye tracking and autofocus.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Scene: Hank's Guitar Shop
Hank: "Hi, can I help you?"
Customer: "Hey, yeah, I'm looking for an electric guitar - I'm sort of a prosumer."
Hank: "Yeah, I can see that......please get out of my shop...."
Seriously though, when shopping for cameras, I've found the term 'prosumer', to be a useful term describing exactly what uglyduckling describes above.
Yes, the controlled dept of field (DoF) is very important feature for photographers. As good camera has three elements controllable
1. Shutter speed (from bulb to 1/4000 at least)
2. Aperture (from widest to at least f22)
3. ISO (from 50-200 to at least 6400)
And then the depending features
1. Lenses from wide angle to tele (7-600mm)
2. Depending glass, but best is if aperture is at least 2.8 but preferred is 1.2-1.8 and this isn't just for shutter speed but for shallow DoF.
3. Fast cache memory so user can take quickly multiple shots.
No pocket or compact cameras offers those and smart phones (even thinkin N8 or 808) ain't even close needed features.
A extra bonus feature: A tilt+shift for both ends, a camera back and objective, and this demands camera is big format architecture camera.
You have to take into account the format size, too. An aperture of f/1.4 on Four Thirds gives the same depth of field (at the same angle of view) as 2.8 on FX or film. This is in part what motivates the demand of these very very fast Micro Four Thirds lenses (there are 45 and 25mm f/0.95's); additionally, the normal Four Thirds system has very fast zooms and macros (there's a f/2 50mm macro, and f/2 zooms from 14mm to 100mm). This is to compensate for the greater DOF and worse low-light performance of the smaller sensor. No (small-format) compact camera offers this, as they've got crop factors of ~5.
No system will give you 7-600mm. The thing to worry about is field of view (or, equivalently, "35mm equivalent focal length") -- Four Thirds (2x crop) offers 14mm to 1000mm EFL, but there is an expensive 300mm f/2.8 you can teleconvert up to 1200mm EFL if you want. Canon and Nikon each have 14mm to 600mm.
On shutter speed, the portrait crowd actually wants 1/8000 so they can shoot at full aperture outside. I'm a nut and use 1/4000 and faster for hummingbirds in flight.
I'd imagine a big part of that is that there aren't any standard compression schemes available for the format so it probably has to store them raw or close to it. If you were storing 11MP pictures in raw format, you'd have approximately the same capacity.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
Combine it with a system that refocuses based on where you're looking and how your eyes are trying to focus, and you'll have a stereoscopic movie I'd actually want to see.
If it meant a person who has more money than sense, why does it get applied to equipment?
I'm sure there are some artistic photographers out there who will put the Lytro to great use. But then a good photographer can produce a compelling photo with almost any camera. Case in point: Lomo cameras. Forget technical specs, in terms of build quality the camera is total crap. And yet people manage to pull off some very cool photos with the thing.
However, that requires a good aesthetic eye and more technical skill than your average consumer possesses. Travel in Asia and you'll see guys sporting the latest and greatest DSLRs coupled to some outrageous lenses. But take a look at the photos they produce and they're all crap anyone could have shot with a cheap point-and-shoot. So it's not always about the specs.
However, specs do matter. Sure, people are producing compelling photos with something like a Lomo, but the nature of the photography limits it to a very narrow niche. From what I've been seeing of the Lytro image quality is decidedly subpar. Coupled with that is the fact that it isn't all that easy to produce a photo that looks good. Unlike most cameras where you know what you're getting the moment you shoot the photo with the Lytro you're mostly just guessing. It's very difficult to determine what kind of depth of field effect will work at the time the photo is being taken. So there's a lot of guess work involved. It's almost a step back to film except that even then you had a fairly decent indication of what you were going to get.
As far as I'm concerned, unless there are some huge leaps with the technology behind light field cameras this will always be a novelty, or at least only cater to a very specialized niche. My money on the next big thing is the new crop of mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras.
What would make it incredible is if it tracked your eye's focussing, and then adjusted the focussing of the picture, and some additional optics you viewed the picure through, to compensate.
When you looked into a picture, you could focus on near or further away objects. This would solve many problems with '3D' cinema.
Most flash cards are bottom of the barrel products with very inconsistent quality. Device manufactures end up getting blamed for problems that are actually caused by whatever cheap garbage consumers cram in to the flash memory slot. Not to mention, counterfeiting and outright flake flash cards are a huge problem.
You simply can't count on a flash card to have predictable or sufficient speed for a particular application. If your device is memory bandwith and performance sensitive AND a consumer device designed to be picked up and used quickly and easily then providing your own consistent, tested, high performance flash is a reasonable thing to do.
FYI, this the the real reason that apple doesn't have memory expansion slots, and the reason the new PS vita will only use special sony authorized flash chips. Yes, it provides price tiers too. But it's no the only reason you cynic ;) Need proof? Go read about buying and adding microSD cards for winphone7 devices.
If it meant a person who has more money than sense, why does it get applied to equipment?
I don't get the connection. But then again I have several grand worth of camera kit, and never plan on making a cent on it (though it would be nice). Why? Because I love the hobby. I know people who spent huge amounts of money on their cars, but will never race/drive professionally either. I know people, as well, who spent huge amounts of money on their computer and hardware, who will never use it for crunching data on anything more important than video games. I could go on, but won't. I don't see a lack of sense there.
There comes a point when pure consumer level stuff won't allow you to do what you want to do anymore, so you have to either quit or pony up some extra cash to get where you want. There is nothing wrong with this. And actually this has helped drive consumer level computer hardware for some time (enthusiast level chips and cards can be considered prosumer, to some extent).
In the future I can see myself spending at bit more on camera gear, when my skill eventually hits the hardware enforced limits, or I branch out into different areas. I have no problem with this, and I don't see it reflecting on my "sense", since I have the cash, and can spend it. If not on something I enjoy, then what should it be spent on?
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
(or insect macros :D)
Actually that would be awesome. I've been trying to get into macrophotography lately, and DOF is my biggest bugbear, than and most macro-lenses get nasty diffraction at apertures low enough to get a decent DOF. Most of the macro shooters I know (including the fellow Pentax shooter who was in NatGeo with his jump-spider shots), use software to stitch multiple exposures with varying focal planes. This annoys me, since I love my photos to be as spontaneous, and with as little post work, as possible.
Sadly this tech demo doesn't seem like it will quite get there, and if this is the market that they want to hit, I somewhat doubt we'll be seeing anything really useful. Also, it would require me getting a new camera (from what I could tell), and that would be annoying as hell with the current (and insane) investment people have in their systems (switching from brand/mount to another is a pain, and hugely expensive).
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Yes, this is beautifully described in http://steve-parker.org/articles/others/stephenson/holehawg.shtml
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
Same here :) Well, that and dust on the sensor. But yeah, I also doubt it will offer anything meaningful for that anytime soon, but who knows where it will lead to. That's the one application I might actually care about. Insects on flowers swaying in the wind, even with plenty of light, are such a bitch to take photos of ^^ I end up being happy with photos just because the focus is at least somewhere *near* the thing, compared to the 50 I deleted, and that just ain't right.
It's actually a useful portmanteau of professional and consumer, distinguishing an area of cost and feature above that of a typical consumer and below that of a professional. Usually used in reference to serious hobbyists.
I was always under the impression that prosumer was where high-end consumer and low-end professional markets overlapped such that a "prosumer" piece of equipment could conceivably be used by someone in either category. The Wikipedia article suggests that this may be the case according to some definitions?
For example, I might be wrong, but wouldn't the Nikon D7000 be a "prosumer" device by this definition?
Someone else said that in terms of features "prosumer > consumer > professional", i.e. prosumer is a high-end consumer device with more features than the mainstream model. I don't know if this is true, or if it was true but isn't now. I have the cheaper D5100 which is definitely in the "consumer" part of the spectrum, though not the bottom-end model, and includes some cheesy "Photoshop-in-camera" and gimmick features (which I'd rather not have personally). Maybe the definitions have changed recently as digital technology has made adding features to lower-end devices much easier?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
What type of situation requires that you take pictures from a fixed position but have no idea of what you need to focus on? The lighting issue would need to be addressed as pointed out by a previous poster that the image quality degrades substantially in poor lighting.
Since you can create a focal plane and move it forwards and backwards, causing everything in that focal plane to be in focus, doesn't that mean you could create a 3d model of the entire scene, with the models texture wrapped?
I'm picturing someone shooting a movie with a stack of 10x10 of these spaced about a half a foot apart each to get an effective resolution of around 5000x5000 pixels and an easy ability to convert the movie to 3D. You could also digitally pan and tilt the scene after the fact. So you could shoot an entire movie in bullet time, in essence.
My understanding is that this was used (the concept, not the camera) to film some of the 'bullet time' like scenes we see in movies now.
Sort of, but not quite the same thing.
The "bullet-time" effect was achieved by arranging hundreds of still cameras along a path that simulated a traditional tracking shot, with all of them rigged to fire at the same time. So in post-production, the "virtual camera" could be made to move backward or forward along that path, but which part of the scene was in focus couldn't be changed.
The light-field design allows the focus to be changed, and a limited amount of changing the perspective of the "virtual camera", but you couldn't take a snapshot of Carrie-Anne Moss from the front with one and then do a 180-degree tracking shot around her in software, because the image data wouldn't be there once you got far enough from the original point-of-view.
This could be used for some very interesting effects in video gaming. I'm thinking about a first-person shooter, but I imagine there are all kinds of ways a technology like you describe could be used in really cool ways for gaming.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Does this have implications for robotic sight? Being able to squeeze various depths into focus is akin to 3D digitizing no?
It might be like that for some equipment but not others. Look how many custom settings professional Canon cameras have compared to consumer cameras. You can specify where in the depth of field should be the focus point. I'd guess that pros liked your recorder because they just wanted the sound and would process it later while lower level consumers wanted more built-in processing so they didn't have to do it later.
Several years ago I read about a Canon TV lense that was 6-600mm I think. I know it was 100x zoom. They advertised that you could go from seeing most of the stadium down to almost filling the screen with the football.
Why do we need "focus" at all? Why not have photographs where everything is in focus
Because shooting at f-128 takes a hell of a lot of light? Because artistically depth of field is a tool, not a restraint? Sometimes the foreground or background is borring or distracting. Sometimes you want the bokeh or a soft focus. I've taken photos with near unlimited dof, from about 5 inches infront of the camera out to the horizon; in a hand made camera. Granted, that's a benefit of making a pinhole camera. Not to say I can't see uses for 'shoot everthing and pick the focus later', but I see more uses in personal history records and taking better snapshots, not artistic purposes. Focus stacking has been used for so long now, most people don't notice it. This may make that easier, but not until the resolution gets above vga.
I can't say that i've ever used Unix (as we all know GNU's not Unix), but extrapolating your statement implies that *nix is less professional than Windows.
I disagree.
BTW Google sucks. You can't google "*nix". There's no escaping.
I do understand why it needs to suck, but it still sucks...
Flamebait? Thanks for answering my question guys.
Google Street View is the only other light field camera I know of that I've actually seen sample pictures from. And I've tried looking through the article, but there were no samples, nor were there any links to any samples or any technology demos as such.
And if this type of light field technology demo supposedly allows you to click on a fire hydrant or a building, I wonder what it does after you've clicked on each one of those objects?
It's a restraint that has been turned into a tool by creative people. It's what they do.
When you don't have a choice, I consider it a restraint even if you have managed to take advantage of it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Actually one of the things they did was hand prototypes off to professional photographers to see what they would do. Some where rather pretty, but still in the 'tech demo' direction. Sadly I think a lot of the 'twue photogs' are falling over themselves to say how gimicky the tech is, so it will probably be the rank and file bored amateur playing with it that will really produce potentially interesting images.
I would put the lack of a card slot pretty high on its list of shortcoming. Form factor is not something all that important to me, I use cameras to take pictures, not be fashion statements.
Though it does look like a typical machine vision camera, so I am guessing that is the type they modeled the case off of.
Ugly:
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Nothing says success like a full 16GB memory card, and 5 keepers.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
You cannot plan unpredictable shots. But sure, lazy people will always have excuses ;)
But do you expect them to just ignore all the money Apple made selling internal memory in the premium model at a big markup?
Seriously. That's where I see the most viable commercial opportunity for light field cameras. Today, casinos use a heaping ton of individual cameras in order to be able to focus on a lot of people / tables / cards at once. Replace that same quantity of cameras with light field cameras, and suddenly the video footage could be reviewed with the focus on a different player.
The only (but big) market for such technology would probably be the intelligence community: when it's clear that you can revisit those innocent holiday snaps, where YOUR point of focus was clear, and be able to refocus attention, literally, to the bad guys accidentally caught on camera and, on a normal camera, out of focus.
look how much more HD camcorders cost than SD camcorders, and scale it up at least that much again, if not more.
The additional cost for HD camcorders vs SD has little to do with manufacturing and much to do with consumer demand. Right now manufacturers are gouging on HD equipment and they are probably only breaking even or making a loss on selling their old SD models. The only reason to buy an SD camcorder now is because u have been tricked by the salesman.
The data rate for a light field camera depends on the sensor, you just sacrifice resolution.
E.g. The lytro camera has an "11 megaray sensor" which is code for ~11mpixel. The final output resolution is 1080x1080 (1.2 mpixel)
So to capture 1080x1080 video using one of these you would need the readout electronics of the CCD to do ~ 3k x 3k at 30fps
Depth of field is affected by a number of factors, including the size of aperture you are using, the size of sensor you are using, the focal length, the minimum acceptable sharpness (technically the acceptable size of the circles of confusion or Airey disc), and the nearest distance you want to have "in focus".
Just considering the aperture (because it's about the only factor you can control :) ), the depth of field increases as you make the aperture smaller. There are problems, however: once you reach a certain point, you start to see diffraction - the image gets blurry due to diffraction. Also, making the aperture smaller means you have less light coming in, which means you have to: make the shutter speed slower (possibly introducing motion blur), or increase ISO (which decreases signal-to-noise ratio, increasing both luminance and chrominance noise).
To achieve a given level of sharpness is a balancing act between aperture, shutter speed, ISO.
You can't have "infinite depth of field" all the time. Asking for it just shows how little you know about the subject :)
Try reading about "hyperfocal distance". Wikipedia has an article about it which is mostly right :)
Yes, Photography's interesting, 'cause, you know, it's-it's a new art form, and a, uh, a set of aesthetic criteria have not emerged yet.
Google Street View pictures are not particularly comparable to Lytro pictures, GSV uses panoramic methods to grab the entire scene, whereas Lytro uses multiple sensors to grab everything in front of the camera, and sort the focus out later. The Lytro site has plenty of examples in their gallery, this is a particularly good one. I could not, however, find a picture with a fire hydrant and a building on their site.
"Actually, I think they've really missed a trick. Isn't "3D" the big trend this year? Why not launch with a zoomless stereoscopic camera that you point about like a pair of binoculars (hence small LCD requirement), then power the PC end (yes, I know, this device is Mac only for no sensible reason) with eyetracking and 3D TV support."
They've demoed the ability to generate 3D stereo pair images from a single 'light field' picture, so while it's not in the initial release, it's supposedly going to be added after launch, along with some other cool capabilities (e.g. they've also shown a Bladerunner-esque ability to shift perspective slightly to see behind things), and they've also talked about opening up an API or their file format in the future, once things settle down.
I think it's intially Mac-only because it's faster to develop on one platform. Perhaps they picked Mac because it's very popular with photographers, it's a good target market economically, or perhaps it was simply what their engineers preferred? In any case, they're going to release a Windows version of their software post-launch. So now Windows users get to feel a little of what Mac users run into all the time. :-)
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"Actually, cameras have been pretty good at this for a while, with eye tracking and autofocus."
Yep, I had a camcorder with auto-focus wherever you looked. It worked pretty well. The trick with the Lytro is that you don't need to track the eye for taking the photo, but for viewing the photo. And whil a few cameras do eye tracking, mainstream PCs don't. I've seen some tech demo's, and it'd be great if it caught on... :-)
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I agree that the market for SD vs. HD has split, with SD cameras selling as dirt cheap (under $100) toys for kids, or as expendible second cameras, while HD cameras ($2-300) have better optics, better sensors, etc., and sell for higher prices. That being said, the actual cost of making an HD camcorder has to be significantly higher than for SD camcorders; I know that the sensors cost significantly more, for example.
My point, though, was that using a Lytro to shoot video would cost a lot more than shooting stills, because you'd need faster electronics (to process and store 30 FPS instead of a few FPS). The Lytro already has a "supercomputer in a chip" to process still photo's - it would cost more, if it's even possible, to include 10x the CPU to keep up with a video feed. And storage bandwidth. And storage capacity. I'm not saying that it's impossible, but it certainly wouldn't cost the same as the current Lytro.
For example, let's just look at storage capacity. The $499 Lytro can store 750 images, which at 30 FPS would be 25 seconds. Let's imagine the wanted to store at least 2 hours of video - that would be 216,000 frames, or 288x as much storage. That won't be free. Then do the same calculation for CPU and storage bandwidth (faster storage costs much more than slower storage).
What it comes down to is that while I'd love to see Lytro-style video, the cost would be extremely high, and my guess is that it'd be too expensive for consumers, and not good enough for professionals.
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