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."

Comments

Meh

[vadim_t]

It's mostly a solution in search of a problem.

Photographers choose what to focus on very intentionally, it rarely makes sense to focus on anything else. Of course it's possible to misfocus, but in that case it makes no sense to let the user play with it.

It's still going to be low res, because you get a small fraction of the "megarays" the sensor provides. The spec for this camera was 40, IIRC, so it might get around 4MP, which can't really compete with a modern DSLR. While resolution isn't everything, having some margin for cropping and large prints is a very good thing.

The control for the interactive photos is still clunky. I can't find a way to for instance get the whole image in focus, though that should be possible. It does it while changing perspective.

It doesn't fix the other problem that leads to blurriness -- camera shake. It's all well and good to be able to refocus, but most people learn to focus right pretty fast. The problem is with low light environments, and this isn't going to save you if you handhold and shoot at 1/10.

The sample images still looks low res and blurry.

It costs $1600 and doesn't seem to have interchangeable lenses -- what, are they insane?

Overall interesting toy, but doesn't seem to have a practical use.

Re:Meh

[vadim_t]

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

The problem is that physics get in the way of resolution increases, and the best modern DSLRs already have a sensor that can out-resolve most lenses.

Which means that a Lytro style camera is going to necessarily sacrifice quality.

You can make a larger sensor, but that costs serious $$$. This thing is in the price range of a full frame camera. If I'm guessing right, to compete in quality with a normal one it'd have to go with a medium format sensor, and those start at around $10K.

- 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.

Because lenses have nothing to do with focusing? All lenses can focus at all ranges. You can't put a f/1.4 on this for shallower depth of field and better low light performance, or a 10mm wide angle, or a fish eye, or a better telephoto lens, or a tilt/shift for architecture.

It could however be very cool for macro, but oddly enough they don't seem to be hurrying to demonstrate that. Which is a pity -- extreme macro is a huge pain to focus, and that's the one area where this thing could show some promise.

Re:Meh

[ceoyoyo]

No, you can't. The simplest tradeoff that you might switch lenses for is aperture versus focal length. A larger aperture is good for low light. A longer focal length is good for things that are far away. You can fake a longer focal length by cropping your picture, but that reduces resolution (something this camera already has a problem with) and requires a lens with much higher resolving power (which is ALSO something this camera has a problem with).

Proprietary image format

[gerddie]

I was considering getting the first version of their camera, but they use a proprietary image format for the original data and requests to open it are unanswered so far. Not even a SDK is provided to access the original data even though it was promised. Kind of disappointing and enough reason for me not to buy.