Travel Photography - Light Field Photography - an exciting new development in digital imaging

A California-based startup called Lytro (http://www.lytro.com) has introduced a pretty exciting new imaging technology that allows images to be e.g. refocused after shooting.

The company is promising consumer products during 2011 so we should see the first results pretty soon.

The science behind the product seems legit, as the founder and CEO of the company has won several prices (including the ACM award (http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases-2007/internal/) for the best dissertation of the year). The dissertation is available through the company website, but for those who do not wish to read a 160 page treatise, there is a fairly approachable scientific paper available here (http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/lfcamera/lfcamera-150dpi.pdf).

The technology is in its infancy and cannot do miracles (there are limits to the extra DOF it can capture and resolution is sacrificed), but this is potentially one of the big breakthroughs in digital imaging. (And, yes, I do know there have been scientific papers about aspects of lightfield photography and plenoptic lenses since the early 90's, so there is no need to point that out. Most of the earlier research is simply not very practical.)

The demo images on the company website with shiftable focal plains suggest a pretty cool application: combine a plenoptic image (or even a conventional image with focus-stacking information) with an eye-movement sensor and you can create pretty fantastic "live" images that show different focal points depending on where one looks.

Cheers,
T.

I saw this a few days ago and the demo images are very interesting. Let's see if they can pull it off with a consumer product.

am struggling to understand the in-use benefit of the technology? Will it allow quicker shots, less composition worries, or is it purely something that is to be exploited in post-processing?

am struggling to understand the in-use benefit of the technology? Will it allow quicker shots, less composition worries, or is it purely something that is to be exploited in post-processing?

The company claims faster shooting time for several reasons: no need to selected focus point, no need for the camera to autofocus. This should be helpful in getting good action shots.

While the compositional advantages mainly manifest them in post-processing, composing pictures should be easier.

This technology should also reduce focusing errors.

Also, being able to shoot with a wide aperture while still getting decent DOF helps shooting in low light.

I would think the technology lets inexperienced photographers get better results with their exiting shooting habits (whether it can be argued that the tech encourages sloppy shooting, that it another matter). For more advanced shooters, they key point is the ability to be more experimental in shooting.

Cheers,
T.

https://www.lytro.com/camera
Looks like they are shipping. And the devices are small. f/2. Looks very interesting...

To paraphrase a lens guide I once read describing the main use of different types of lenses, when discussing a fish-eye lens:

Typical use of a light-field camera, to demonstrate what a light-field camera does.

Yes, you can capture a demo image, when you're way too close to one subject and too far from another, and recompose the image to focus on either one.

OK. Nice demo. How often do you do that in real life? Is is worth the tradeoff in quality

steer clear until Lytro makes improvements.
lifeless, tiny 1,080x1,080-pixel-resolution JPEG (that's roughly 1.2 megapixels, folks).
it will, even at its best, be no more than another accessory living in your camera bag.
Ultimately, though, we're not convinced that the Lytro either solves any existing problem or presents any compelling raison d'etre of its own.

Perhaps this will revolutionize photography. Or not. But this 1.0 version isn't it, IMHO.

Looks like they are shipping. And the devices are small. f/2. Looks very interesting...

I was at a party last night and one of the guests had one. Funny, after reading about them for months I was surprised. I somehow thought the thing was the size of a shoebox. :)