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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."
Is that IIIum, Illum, or IlIum?
The font slashdot uses makes it impossible to tell.
In a fast-paced environment like a concert or sporting event, the ability to literally point and click, and pull the best shots later, is a fantastic advancement.
I love my first gen Lytro. I've gotten some amazing shots from it.
Don't knock it until you've tried it.
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.
The megapixel figure is the comparable number. The Lytro not only has a Bayer filter, it also has another filter that uses multiple pixels to measure the direction of the light. So you take your raw sensor, that might capture 40 MP, divide that by whatever number you like for Bayerization to get colour, and divide that by some other number (about 10 for Lytro's products) for the directional sensing.