Revolutionary "Light Field" camera tech - shoot-first, focus-later

Post by liuliu » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 8:54 AM UTC

ggchappell wrote: post #2

Very nice. But it leaves me wondering about a couple of things: (1) Given the info captured by the camera, can we, without further human input, create an image in which everything is in focus? (2) What the heck are these people thinking? Going into the camera business? That means that, in order to get my hands on this technology, I am stuck with whatever zillions of other design decisions they made. One product. No c…

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 9:09 AM UTC

wisty wrote: post #39

ggchappell wrote: post #2

Very nice. But it leaves me wondering about a couple of things: (1) Given the info captured by the camera, can we, without further human input, create an image in which everything is in focus? (2) What the heck are these people thinking? Going into the camera business? That means that, in order to get my hands on this technology, I am stuck with whatever zillions of other design decisions they made. One product. No c…

(1) - cameras already do this. Photography 101 - if you use a small apature, everything is in focus (minus diffraction and motion blur). Cheap lenses (like most cellphones) have low apertures, and don't really need to focus. Expensive lenses (like the iPhone 4 lens) often have high apertures, which let you take faster photos, and artistically blur stuff. Photographers don't like to do this, as blurring the background…

Post by rythie » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 9:24 AM UTC

revorad wrote: post #55

This sounds very exciting. To play the devil's advocate however, on most of the example photos on Lytro's site, you really only need two points of focus - roughly near and far. Clicking on those two shows you everything there is to see in a picture. If someone comes up with software to allow refocusing on two distance points with existing photos, they could eat Lytro's lunch. Can Picasa do something like this?

Post by newman314 » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 10:02 AM UTC

eridius wrote: post #41

sbierwagen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a piece of first-generation consumer electronics, made in small production runs by a new company that's already spent $30 million in R&D. While each camera will not cost much, they will be priced high.

Not necessarily. If the company is looking to recoup its investment soon, sure. But if the company is looking to get mass-market appeal then they'll price it more aggressively. The latter may be a good idea given the declining interest in dedicated cameras - make it cheap enough, while it's still novel, and people will actually buy the thing.

Post by tintin » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 10:32 AM UTC

rythie wrote: post #65

revorad wrote: post #55

This sounds very exciting. To play the devil's advocate however, on most of the example photos on Lytro's site, you really only need two points of focus - roughly near and far. Clicking on those two shows you everything there is to see in a picture. If someone comes up with software to allow refocusing on two distance points with existing photos, they could eat Lytro's lunch. Can Picasa do something like this?

If you have a photo that's all in focus (i.e. f15 aperture or something) you can throw parts out later with using masks in a photo editing tool, though it's time consuming. I'd suggest you could get a similar effect with a camera that had two or three lenses using different focal lengths. Fujifilm already released a camera with two lenses: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0809/08092209fujifilm3D.asp so it's just a softwa…