
Lytro is winding down - herodotus
https://support.lytro.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001773952/
======
danso
IIRC, Lytro photos required special software (Flash/JS embed) in order to
provide interactive exploration of the light field data. But looks like the
specially hosted site, pictures.lytro.com, was shut down back in November 2017
[0], leaving users without a way to demonstrate the "Living Picture"
functionality other than using the Lytro Desktop software, then exporting to
GIF/MOV [1]. Anyone know if Lytro has mentioned plans to open source the
format/software? I see they have a Github org with a bunch of repos, but most
of it looks like forked libs and things related to devops:
[https://github.com/lytro](https://github.com/lytro)

[0] [https://support.lytro.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115001259712](https://support.lytro.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115001259712)

[1] [https://support.lytro.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115002733832](https://support.lytro.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115002733832)

~~~
jasonkostempski
I thought that name sounded familiar. I really wanted one of those cameras
when they came out, decided against when I saw all the software required to
make it useful was closed. I had hoped they or someone else would release
something but it never happened.

~~~
ISL
Same here. It was the lack of an open format that stopped me from pursuing it
further.

The Lytro founder's Ph.D thesis is extremely well written and informative on
lightfield imaging as a whole.

Thank you, Lytro, for existing and showing us a new way forward. May the
patents be licensed easily to keep the ball rolling!

------
danso
Anyone know whether this turned out to be an acquihire or not? Previous
discussion [0] and articles [1] said Lytro was being acquihired by several of
Google teams. But no exact price was mentioned ($25 to $40M).

Don't acquihire-closure announcements usually say something like, _" We're
proud to be joining the great team at Google, who shares our
passion/commitment for this technology and [vague promise that this will
somehow, at some point, benefit customers of the now-dead company]"_. But this
announcement simply says:

> _" We’re excited to see what new opportunities the future brings for the
> Lytro team as we go our separate ways"_

I guess that's the least awkward way to phrase the situation if only some of
the team got acquihired by Google?

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16705583](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16705583)

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/27/17166038/lytro-light-
fiel...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/27/17166038/lytro-light-field-camera-
company-shuts-down-google-hiring)

~~~
_pmf_
> Anyone know whether this turned out to be an acquihire or not?

I suspect a pure patent acquisition.

------
peterburkimsher
The Lytro Illum camera pioneered light-field photography.

"Instead of capturing it on a single plane, freezing an image in time and
space, a light-field camera also captures the direction in which light was
moving. Its processor then essentially renders a 3D scene, complete with the
knowledge of distance between objects. A light-field photo represents not only
everything in the scene, but a spatial understanding of the things in it." [1]

It's amazing from a technical perspective, but the image resolution was low
(only 4 MP), and the price was high ($1600). [2]

I'd hoped that the technology would help the camera market find a new selling
point to compete with phones, but apparently that hasn't happened. It's a pity
that Lytro is disbanding instead of selling off to Canon or Nikon.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2014/7/30/5949913/lytro-illum-
revie...](https://www.theverge.com/2014/7/30/5949913/lytro-illum-review)

[2] [https://petapixel.com/2017/01/12/look-lytro-illum-camera-
fut...](https://petapixel.com/2017/01/12/look-lytro-illum-camera-future-
failed/)

~~~
dannyw
The camera and software was also a buggy mess:

\- the camera itself crashes about once every couple of minutes, and that is
not an exaggeration. You literally need to keep putting the battery out and
back in, and that is not isolated: every reviewer also mentions the same.

\- the software generates a depth map from the light-field image. This depth
map is often generated wrong, with blotches of foreground content being
treated as the background, and vice versa. You have to manually export the
depthmap as a grayscale image, fix it up in Photoshop, and import it back.

\- when you share the image on lytro.com, it compresses this image and breaks
it up into a few layers (presumably for the JS viewer), which significantly
degrades the quality of the image

\- the perspective effect isn't real, and uses content aware fill. This means
that there are serious visual artefacts with this feature.

~~~
knolan
The two cameras I have, original and Illium were pretty stable. Very slow but
I didn’t experience any crashing whatsoever.

Ultimately Lytro will be a footnote in camera history. We’re already seeing
scaled back implementations in SLRs and smart phones.

~~~
auvi
Just wondering, which DSLR in particular?

~~~
knolan
The Canon 5D mk IV has what’s called Dual Pixel RAW. Here’s a video.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HcQ9MSRRvn4](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HcQ9MSRRvn4)

~~~
rounce
DPRAW doesn't use a light field, it's a stereo image.

------
helb
Last week on HN: "Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M"
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16635676](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16635676))

~~~
erric
So Google didn’t buy them? This always struck me as a tech Apple would want in
their phones, at 4MB though, apparently not.

Also for a very large company, $40 million isn’t a lot.

~~~
ipsum2
It was a acquihire. Buy the talent, kill the company.

~~~
sleepybrett
The reports I heard is 'buy 30% of the talent'

------
eecsninja
I got an offer from Lytro in 2012 but I turned it down to stay at Google,
where I still work.

At the time, I considered Lytro because it had real, substantial technology
behind it, and was not just some trivial social networking app. I turned it
down because assuming a $1B exit, my shares would still not have been that
much more than what I got from Google. Six years later, I am doing much better
(more earnings, more vacation, and probably better work/life balance) than if
I had joined Lytro.

Although I made the right decision in hindsight, I think about how things
might have been different if I had accepted that offer. It really calls into
question the dominant Silicon Valley culture and narrative that we should join
startups and change the world with new technologies.

~~~
jstandard
> It really calls into question the dominant Silicon Valley culture and
> narrative that we should join startups and change the world with new
> technologies.

This sounds like a non sequitur. The main reason you joined Google over Lytro
was money and quality of life.

There's nothing wrong with that. You didn't have as strong of a desire to
change the world by building Lytro's new camera technologies. Others who were
likely in similar situations balanced that equation differently.

~~~
s73v3r_
"You didn't have as strong of a desire to change the world"

That's a rather dickish thing to say. Especially because, as we've seen time
and time again, very, very few of these startups are actually "changing the
world". More and more, being asked to join a startup is just being asked to
overwork yourself for peanuts and then be screwed out of equity.

~~~
jstandard
Thanks for pointing this out, I can see where what I wrote could be
misinterpreted.

What I meant was the full sentence. GP specifically wasn't interested in what
Lytro was building strongly enough to take the pay cut.

Agree the "we're changing/disrupting the world" meme gets misused.

I'll make an edit for clarity. Disrespect was not my intent.

Edit: the edit window on my original post just closed.

~~~
s73v3r_
Ok, I understand what you mean now. I will still go on record as saying that,
regardless of how strong you believe in something, you shouldn't take pay cuts
to do it, especially given the record startups have for shafting employees.
One really only has about 40 years to earn all the money they're going to
earn, and that time can go by rather quick.

------
swiley
Oh wow! I had no idea anyone was actually making a digital lightfield camera,
I thought sensor resolution was too small currently! It's a real shame they're
shutting down but I guess there's no good way to view the images it captures.

Decades from now people will be writing blog posts about how lytro was ahead
of it's time.

~~~
andybak
This is only a few weeks old: [https://www.blog.google/products/google-
vr/experimenting-lig...](https://www.blog.google/products/google-
vr/experimenting-light-fields/)

------
andybak
So. I'm curious how much this is specifically about light fields. Google
released this a couple of weeks ago: [https://www.blog.google/products/google-
vr/experimenting-lig...](https://www.blog.google/products/google-
vr/experimenting-light-fields/)

But there's been very little information about how the acquisition fits into
Google's strategy. I read somewhere that the Lytro staff that are brought
across into Google will be dispersed across different departments. (obviously
not everyone at Lytro was working directly on Lightfield technology but
still...)

------
reeteshv
I am not into photography, but the idea of Lytro fascinated me! I distinctly
remember that when it was launched, there was a layperson explanation of the
concept along the lines of, "take a photo as you would normally do and, later
on, decide which area to focus on, which to blur, etc."

As the cliché goes, "don't cry because it ended; smile because it happened."

~~~
jessaustin
If I paid that much money and now couldn't even look at all the photos I took,
I might cry a little bit...

Maybe the photos are still viewable? There seems to be a bit of a controversy
on that topic, but no one willing to say anything definite.

------
transistor-man
As someone who owned a Lytro Illumn, it was surprisingly a wonderful piece of
hardware. Its massive and always gets interesting questions from onlookers. It
was clear a lot of effort went into bringing a Shack–Hartmann wavefront sensor
into the hands of a consumer. Sure it felt prototype-y, but it wasn't
vaporware. It'd be wonderful if they opened up the development environment for
the camera itself.

------
marssaxman
I really wanted to like my Lytro camera, and I was willing to put up with its
hardware limitations, but I could never really trust it as a means of taking
pictures I cared about so long as they were stuck inside Lytro's proprietary
ecosystem.

------
pulsarpietro
I wonder who will be next, we are right in the middle of a tech bubble, too
much fluff around.

The company wasn't making a lot of money and wasn't booming, otherwise it
would not have been sold out, I reckon.

------
burntrelish1273
Noooooooo

I want my pics.

------
woodydeck
I make lenticular artwork and owned a Lytro Illum before. The company was
quite hostile after ending support for the camera, and refused to open source
the web player, which was the only way you could make use of the living photos
features and refocusing.

It is sad, because the Illum was a very well designed product and worked quite
well for certain things. Unfortunately, Lytro was better at product design
than business, and making the best feature of a $1500+ camera non-functional
permanently was definitely a dick move.

------
gregjw
RIP

------
PedroBatista
Gotta love the "winding down" expression.

Did the employees went to "greener pastures"?

