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Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

techcrunch.com

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Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#81

Post by bunderbunder »

bwang29 wrote: post #6

Lytro has really cool technology but never really found a good use case for consumers. I owned both the 1st generation and 2nd generation camera, as much as I hated the UI of the software and usability of the hardware, I can clearly see the team has tried really hard to make it usable. They tried building an editing app, a community, a community 2.0, multiple hardware batch revisions. I wonder why they didn’t stop so…

1st gen owner here.

They absolutely tried hard, but I feel like they missed out on doing the one thing that might have really let the product take off: Releasing APIs (or at least protocol specs) for interacting with the camera over USB and wifi, and releasing a spec for their file format.

That might have given them a chance to really take off in the DIY and hobbyist market. After unboxing mine, I pretty much immediately wanted to use it to do the sorts of things that Google seems to want to do it. But without an easy way to dig into it, I lost interest pretty quickly.

Taking off my hacker hat and putting on my consumer hat, it just wasn't going to take off. My cell phone is even more portable, takes higher resolution images, and makes sharing them much easier. Getting to refocus after the fact wasn't that great a trick, because my cell phone camera already does such a good job at autofocusing.

Taking that one off and putting on my hobby photographer hat, same thing. Decades of taking pictures has left me with enough of a sense for where I want to put the focal point and what I want to do with the bokeh that I'd just as soon do it when I'm taking the picture. There was some initial fun of playing with a new toy, but ultimately I realized that doing it after the fact took what has historically been one of my favorite parts of photography and turned it into just another editing chore. That, and, even when I'm not 100% sure what I want to do with the focus at the time I'm taking the photo, my mirrorless's burst mode can accomplish essentially the same thing.

But if I could have strapped that sucker onto a robot and played with using it for 3D scene reconstruction or something. . . that would have been fun.

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#82

Post by michaelbuckbee »

Stratoscope wrote: post #21
bwang29 wrote: post #6

Lytro has really cool technology but never really found a good use case for consumers. I owned both the 1st generation and 2nd generation camera, as much as I hated the UI of the software and usability of the hardware, I can clearly see the team has tried really hard to make it usable. They tried building an editing app, a community, a community 2.0, multiple hardware batch revisions. I wonder why they didn’t stop so…

I discovered Lytro at the Maker Faire when they had their "borrow a Lytro" demo. It was a great bit of marketing: take a Lytro around the Faire for an hour (where are there are always plenty of interesting subjects) and afterward they put all your shots in an online gallery for you. I got a fun shot or two that day and promptly bought one of their first cameras. But it wasn't a very good camera, and they completely m…

The Vimeo link above goes to an astoundingly effective video essay on focus pulling, focus racks, etc. I'm not in any way doing video related work, but it was fascinating and I just wanted to recommend it.

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#83

Post by jonbarker »

Light field cameras always fascinated me because they are the example of the literal opposite of evolutionary biological inspiration (this is not an insult by the way). The first biological 'eyes' were probably light sensitive spots on skin with no lenses or shape, which then became cavities for directional sensing and then lenses and retinas developed to enable image recognition.

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#84

Post by StavrosK »

PaulHoule wrote: post #80
StavrosK wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you see past occlusions?

A stereo camera array can see past occlusions in the sense that some things are occluded to one camera but not to another. With a larger and more distributed camera array, cameras could be pointed everywhere so that every point in the field has a certain level of coverage.

The GP said you can see past occlusions with a Lytro and not with stereo, and that sounds exactly the other way around to me (as to you).

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#85

Post by mseebach »

Jtsummers wrote: post #79
mseebach wrote: post #77

I tried to click around on Lytro's website, but it left me pretty baffled. What the f... is it?

Lytro makes light field cameras. A single sensor can be used to capture enough information to do a lot of computational imagery work like the somewhat gimmicky example of changing focus. But you also have enough data to do things like accurately apply filters to parts of an image based on depth information. A good simulation of viewing the image through caustics or other distortion effects. And, to me the most intere…

Thanks!

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#86

Post by lern_too_spel »

nradov wrote: post #2

Well that was the logical outcome. Their technology was interesting but it clearly wasn't viable as a stand-alone compact camera. Everyone expected it would eventually be integrated into smartphones.

They tried to build the whole ecosystem around light field photography themselves. To do that, they would need to raise Magic Leap levels of capital, which they decided not to do.

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#87

Post by Robotbeat »

watersb wrote: post #4

When I saw Google's spherical-photo capture bot -- basically an array of Lytro cameras -- I figured this would happen soon.

No, they were regular GoPros frame-synced and spun around to act as even more cameras.

You can, in fact, do this with a single regular camera (with a wide-field lense) if you're patient enough and have a multi-axis motorized (and encodered) mount.

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#88

Post by fudged71 »

bb88 wrote: post #55

I thought the future of light field cameras would be to replace the bulky DSLR's and their lenses. If you can do that, then autofocus systems go away completely. What you're left with is the shutter and zoom, and the computer's ability to make beautiful bokeh from any image.

The problem is the sensor cost. You are sacrificing pixels for information/depth, meaning you need more pixels for the same result. Most people aren't willing to go back to a 2MP camera when much better image quality cameras are on the market.

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#89

Post by nbush »

Stratoscope wrote: post #51
angrygoat wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a Lytro, and haven't used it for years, for many of the reasons you articulate. To my mind their mistake was not having an open source library that could work with their capture format, including basic support for focusing and producing an output image for display. Pretty much every new photography tech has had a community of amateurs and professionals spring up around it and (hopefully) innovate. They misse…

> To my mind their mistake was not having an open source library that could work with their capture format, including basic support for focusing and producing an output image for display. Oh, now you are making me wistful for what might have been. If they'd had any kind of library or API, I could have played around with my Ken Burns idea by writing a few lines of code! I've seen this same mistake over and over again…

Reading your parent comment and the replies has me kind of dumbfounded at the wasted potential. Did they ever address these ideas directly? Would opening up the format in even the most limited ways (like focus) have exposed the IP?

Re: Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

#90

Post by electrograv »

jonbarker wrote: post #83

Light field cameras always fascinated me because they are the example of the literal opposite of evolutionary biological inspiration (this is not an insult by the way). The first biological 'eyes' were probably light sensitive spots on skin with no lenses or shape, which then became cavities for directional sensing and then lenses and retinas developed to enable image recognition.

The compound eyes of some insects are very similar to how a lightfield camera is optically structured.
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