
Lytro Announces New Light-Field Camera Photo Features - evo_9
http://allthingsd.com/20121115/with-new-features-lytro-aims-to-show-its-futuristic-camera-is-no-one-trick-pony/
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notlisted
So it's a TWO-trick pony. I was going to order one. Severely underwhelmed
after seeing the first images. The flash player requirement to view the
multifocal pictures makes them next to useless (can't share on social
networks, can't view on iPad, etc.).

The focus shift feature is nice, but after seeing 50, it seems nothing more
than a gimmick, and one that gets darn boring darn fast. This latest feature
is cute as well, perhaps more useful even, but again not earth-shattering.

It's just a matter of time before a Samsung simulates the same thing via
'focus bracketing' and storing lots of smaller pictures (they'd probably still
be bigger than the Lytro "resolution"), apply a little "focus stacking"
algorithm like Photoshop to determine "focal plane" hotspots, and load the
focal plane based on the selected hotspot. This little video shows a "fake
lytro" image created by taking 10 DSLR pix:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KozKofC01_Q>

This latest feature could possibly be "simulated" (equalled?) by slight
physical movement (circular/conical?) of the sensor in the focal plane.

The light field technology is rather ancient by Internet standards, e.g. see
this lovely video on the Stanford Light camera, from 2006 (!) which also
explains both features rather well:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=9H7yx31yslM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=9H7yx31yslM)

Finally, if you're still interested in experimenting with this, check out a
$10 solution: <http://web.media.mit.edu/~raskar//Mask/>

So, where does this leave Lytro?

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alanctgardner2
To my knowledge, accurately building and calibrating a stereoscopic camera is
a significant pain. Saying you could just wave your phone around and
extrapolate a 3D scene is easily 10+ years out, because people make terrible
tripods, and the requirements for planarity, etc. to do stereoscopic well are
pretty strict. That said, there are 3D phones with parallax screens and stereo
cameras; they're big and bulky and not that great.

The cool thing I saw about Lytro isn't their flash based player. Its the idea
of giving you another degree of freedom after a picture is taken. Like colour
correction, you can do focus correction, DOF correction, etc. I would still
export one flat image as a result, but gaining that flexibility without
carrying around a monopod to take 10 bracketed images is awesome to me.

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ak217
I'd love to have that freedom... combined with everything else that I've come
to expect from a DSLR. Lytro's cameras are nice novelty gadgets but it's not
clear to me if they're trying to move in the direction of working with a
sensor/DSLR maker to enable this. I think that's what they should focus on...

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alanctgardner2
I gave this some thought below, but unfortunately fitting a new, more
expensive sensor is probably not going to happen soon. The current 1.8
megapixel is a cheap commodity sensor, and it's still probably costing them
buckets to have them fabbed with their custom microlenses. Something like a
Kodak 8MP sensor would probably be 20x as expensive, and talking them into
making you a custom SKU would be much harder.

Edit: after a bit of digging, it looks like they make the micro lens array
themselves and buy the sensors without one. This obviously makes acquisition
easier, but as the pixel pitch decreases ( by an order of magnitude, to
compete with a modern SLR ) the complexities of building and attaching that
array increase significantly.

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tgb
As someone who works with robotics, I can imagine the applications of a real-
time, video version of this. Stereovision would become much simpler and more
reliable.

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maak
The interesting thing about Lytro is not so much it's current offering, but
the potential the technology unlocks.

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erikpukinskis
I would be more excited about a Lytro that would record a second or so of full
high speed video (1000fps would be ideal, but it'd probably still be useful
with much less), so that you could adjust both the focus and the exposure
after the fact. Eliminating the need to take a bunch of photos in a row to get
a "good one" would be a legit improvement.

That and fitting it into a phone. :)

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alanctgardner2
I would be interested in knowing if their tech could ever be phone-sized. It
looks like focusing the light correctly on the sensor is more difficult than
with a conventional camera ( their promo video looks to show about 8 lens
elements). The entire design is basically a big lens with the sensor and
screen on the back, that's why they adopted such a strange form factor. That
said, there is significant variability in size with traditional camera lenses,
so maybe once the market matures someone will figure out a way to produce
cheap plastic light-field lenses.

As far as the high-fps goes, they use a standard sensor with custom
microlenses. Procuring a new sensor, either for higher resolution or faster
frame rates, is probably more expensive and less likely than continued
software updates, and maybe even changes to the enclosure and lenses. I
suspect sensor acquisition is a significant part of these cameras high price.

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andrewcooke
people don't have to invent bullshit explanations of how they think this stuff
works - the thesis is here <http://www.lytro.com/renng-thesis.pdf>

it is more than a stack of images.

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notlisted
If you were referring to my post. I wasn't explaining how this works (I know
how it works). I was outlining how I think the current effects/benefits to the
consumer can be mimicked.

The current _output_ format, which is a stack of JPEGs with a depth map, would
cover 80% of the result with 20% of the effort/technology. Capturing this
stack of JPEGs (e.g. as high speed video frames) is not beyond the realm of
our current camera technology.

