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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

#101

Post by Stratoscope »

owenversteeg wrote: post #71
Stratoscope wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you still have the photo? I'd be curious to see it!

Now I'm curious to see it again too! But it seems to be long gone. I just checked the old machine I had the Lytro desktop software installed on, and then I remembered that I deleted the entire Lytro photo directory to free up space a long time ago and forgot to save the 2-3 interesting photos.

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

#102

Post by PaulHoule »

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…

How about the potential as a robotics camera, say to compete with the Kinect or with laser scanners for self-driving cars, etc..?

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

#103

Post by giobox »

majormajor wrote: post #99
bunderbunder wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 immedia…

How well did it work for action? That's where I find myself always hating autofocus (even on a fancy camera with focus tracking and motion detection and such).

How recent is your experience with "traditional" phase detect/contrast AF? There's been some ridiculously good improvements even in the past 12 months in cameras like the Nikon D850/Sony A7 XXX, to the point where fancy "lightfield" style setting focus in post like the Lytro is way lower on my personal wishlist than it once was. The eye detect AF in the Sonys is frankly superb when working with extremely shallow DoF. This stuff typically filters down range to cheaper models really quickly as well.

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

#104

Post by cmac2992 »

owenversteeg wrote: post #76
modeless wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are the mentioned light field images: https://www.blog.google/products/google-vr/experimenting-lig... They can only be experienced properly with a positionally tracked VR headset, but they are extremely cool if you have one.

HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Windows Mixed Reality headsets... and it seems like Windows Mixed Reality headsets are available for around $200 on Amazon. Wow, we live in the future. I guess the main cost here is the PC attached to them... probably costs about $500 minimum if I'd have to guess for something with the specs required. [edit] wow, you can get an Asus pre-built desktop for $440, damn! i5-7400, 12gb DDR4, 2TB…

What GPU is in that prebuilt? I think you'd probably want a 1070 especially for windows MR headsets.

Right now with gpu and memory prices inflated due to cryto mining, prebuilts are very competitively priced. If you want to build your own, definitely go with a motherboard gpu bundle otherwise you'll be paying $$$ for a gpu.

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

#105

Post by bb88 »

fudged71 wrote: post #88
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.

Maybe not the home user, but people are willing to pay lots of money for photography gear if it gets the results they want.

Broncolor, Hasselblad, Leica and Zeiss, all come to mind as specialty companies that make money from selling expensive gear.

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

#106

Post by rweba »

This should not be viewed as a failure.

This is the nature of startups, even if you do every single thing right, work hard, manage the cash flow, innovate, etc., there is a more than 90% chance you won't get that billion dollar plus exit.

The only unique thing here is that Lytro got a lot of hype and raised a lot of money, so people naturally expected a unicorn.

What I am saying is these guys don't necessarily have anything to be ashamed of. In the worst case they gained a lot of experience that they can apply to their next idea.

That said, I am curious: Will the founders get ANY money out of it? A comment claimed that they raised $200 million at $360 million valuation, so theoretically they may end up with nothing.

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

#107

Post by inuhj »

rweba wrote: post #106

This should not be viewed as a failure. This is the nature of startups, even if you do every single thing right, work hard, manage the cash flow, innovate, etc., there is a more than 90% chance you won't get that billion dollar plus exit. The only unique thing here is that Lytro got a lot of hype and raised a lot of money, so people naturally expected a unicorn. What I am saying is these guys don't necessarily have a…

My estimate is that the founders took money off the table during those rounds. It's doubtful they'll see anything from the sale. I wouldn't worry too much about them I'm sure they're sitting fine.

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

#108

Post by majormajor »

giobox wrote: post #103
majormajor wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How well did it work for action? That's where I find myself always hating autofocus (even on a fancy camera with focus tracking and motion detection and such).

How recent is your experience with "traditional" phase detect/contrast AF? There's been some ridiculously good improvements even in the past 12 months in cameras like the Nikon D850/Sony A7 XXX, to the point where fancy "lightfield" style setting focus in post like the Lytro is way lower on my personal wishlist than it once was. The eye detect AF in the Sonys is frankly superb when working with extremely shallow DoF.…

It's a recent camera but not top of the line (Fuji X-T2).

My problem is more that with animals, it's hard to make sure it's picked up the head vs the shoulders, say, and with shallow DOF that can ruin the shot. But then, I don't have eye detection, so maybe that would do the trick. :)

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

#109

Post by John_KZ »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #97

Hasn't Photoshop had this tech for a couple years now? I remember seeing on HN a video of Adobe demonstrating it at a conference.

Lytro captures true depth information. Sure, you can blur things in Photoshop, but it simply doesn't look like the real, depth-of-field based blur on real lenses, or the calculated one of light-field cameras. Re-focusing on photoshop is just a gimmic to fake the real thing (and if you're experienced in photography you can always tell)

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

#110

Post by jmalicki »

kypro wrote: post #73
neves wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it is the 59 patents...

The fact many of the employees seem to have been given severance would imply that to me.

Are they not even keeping the computational photography engineers? I can see jettisoning the rest, but I presumed this might be an acquihire of some great minds in computational photography to beef up the Pixel Camera team?
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