Lytro Cameras: The Future of Photography

This week, I discovered a new up and coming technology company called Lytro where they are working on a light field capture camera which will change the future of photography. Everyone in the tech world seems pretty excited about this, investors have already raised 50 million dollars into the company and the product hasn’t even launched yet.

To understand why this will change photography, you first have to think about how photography is done today. When taking a picture, you have to set where you want the focus and wait for the camera to autofocus, which can take some time depending on the amount of light in the room and how far the object you are focusing on is. With this light field camera, you just take the picture and set the focus later. Light Field capture records all the light rays in the scene, from every angle, and puts it in the photo file. Compare this to normal cameras which takes all the light rays, adds it up to a single light ray which gets recorded in the file. With normal photo files, the focus is already set and you cannot change it later. With these Light Field cameras and this new “living pictures” file, waiting for the autofocus is a thing of the past. You can also take one image and create multiple images from that one picture, each with a different focus.

Today on Buzz Out Loud, the founder and CEO, Ren Ng, did a small interview and answered some questions about the camera.

We have no knowledge of how the cameras look but they are in existence, just locked away to avoid internet leaks. The cameras are of consumer form-factor, meaning they won’t be big and clunky, and they are consumer priced. When asked about specific price points, Ren Ng said they will be  “competitively priced”. These cameras will launch this year.

What’s interesting is that the light field technology can be used with any camera that has a lens, which means that video cameras and cellphone cameras could have this technology built-in.

Files: The files will be a bit larger than the normal JPEG. Ren Ng said the file size depends on the amount of compression. I’m guessing they will be more similar to TIFF file sizes rather than JPEG size. These files will be proprietary, meaning they will only work with specific software, to set the focus, of course, but they will be able to export to JPEG files where anyone will be able to view them.

Software: You will need a certain type of software, built by Lytro, to pick the focus and export to other more common file types but you will not need any type of special software to view these images. Basically saying that the photographer using this camera will need special software to import the files into their computer but they can send the pictures to grandma and she won’t need the software.

Speed: These cameras are instant on with no delay.  “You just click it” said the CEO.

Long Exposures: Don’t worry, pro photographers, all the things you can do with a traditional camera, like adjusting shutter speed, can be done with this camera.

Video: I said this before but I wanted to make sure this was clear: VIDEO IS POSSIBLE with this type of technology.

I strongly suggest you check out lytro.com to read more about this technology and the people behind this company. You can also play around with some of the “living pictures” and see the type of stuff you will be able to do with these types of cameras. You can also reserve a camera, though no one knows how long it will take to actually receive one since they have received many requests.