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‹ Photo Notes · 15 ledna, 2012
We all know it – tired eyes, no time to focus, not enough light or a confused autofocus, and then a sigh: „pity that precisely the best photo is focused somewhere else“. We can subsequently influence bad exposure, the contrast of a photograph and other shortcomings, but a badly focused, or rather differently focused, photo is an unsolvable problem from the very start of the photograph.
Or not anymore? Here is the Lytro Light Field Camera and it claims to know the solution. Judge for yourselves.
The Lytro camera looks like a strange spyglass, but it boasts a completely new „Light Field“ technology, which captures light waves in a completely different way than all hitherto known cameras (analogue and digital). As a result, at any time after taking the picture you can decide what should actually be sharp and what outside the depth of field. Moreover, as you can see below, these photographs can be shared on the internet while keeping the possibility of refocusing them. Click on one of the young ladies and you’ll understand what it is about.
Lytro technology may be in its infancy and needn’t be perfect, but it is in the world and that is what matters. The company of course counts on selling the technology to third parties, so if it catches on, we can expect its implementation in mobile phone cameras and in time perhaps in digital SLRs (lovers of analogue cameras will have to keep relying on correct focusing).
And quite possibly an exhibition hall awaits us in the near future where, instead of paper photographs, huge touch screens will hang on the walls and we will decide ourselves which part of a photograph we want to see sharp and what remains out of focus (it’s quite clear to me how visitors would refocus my photographs 🙂
You can find more information and pre-orders at www.lytro.com