
Thoughts on the Lytro Camera (2013) - luu
https://nerget.com/Lytro.html
======
Stratoscope
I bought one of the original Lytros and agree with all the author's points.
The article mentions one thing that was a particular disappointment to me: the
Lytro website let you upload your pictures, but then it was up to people
looking at the pictures to click around to focus on different things.

Who wants to do that when they view a photo gallery? Anyone?

What I'd hoped for was a way that I, the photographer, could set up an
automatic "focus pull" to tell a story. For example, one of my Lytro shots was
a young lady walking her dog, who had his nose almost right up to the lens. It
would have been fun to start the picture focused on the dog's nose, and then
slowly pull the focus back to his owner.

But that would be something I would want to do to help tell a story, instead
of expecting the person viewing the photo to figure it out on their own.

~~~
randomfool
This was exactly my experience as well- browsing the photos was this point-
and-click exploration adventure where there were only a few places in a photo
that yielded good results.

I felt like I really had to plan my photos to have great Lytro experiences,
but these experiences only really popped if the viewer clicked on specific
locations.

------
jcims
One 'showerthought' I had a while back is that if you shot a film on a
lightfield camera, they played it back on a lightfield projector, flashlights
in the movie would create spots on the wall in the theater.

------
shagie
I too had one of the original Lytros... and, well, all the embeds on the pages
are dead.

It was a neat idea, but now the site is dead and the software won't run
anymore on my machine. No matter how neat, if the technology isn't something
that is sustainable with some standards that will live beyond the company it
isn't the right medium for storing those memories or pictures.

Going offline: [https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/6/16742314/lytro-focus-
phot...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/6/16742314/lytro-focus-photos-
support-cameras-illum)

Shutting down and employees going to Google:
[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)

------
olliej
Oh wow, I forgot I wrote this. (My amazing web design skills have meant I
haven’t ever really needed to update my “site”)

~~~
divbzero
No shame in plain HTML. [1]

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21840140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21840140)
"this page is designed to last"

~~~
olliej
Oh yeah, but the design is still bad (small text, the demos are all terrible
applications of low contrast text on dark grey, etc)

------
yummypaint
It's unfortunate the underlying technology hasnt seen much adoption since
then. I think thus far a key problem has been displaying images in a way that
leverages the new capabilities. Im still optimistic that video for VR might be
what drives light field tech in the future.

~~~
MartijnBraam
The lightfield technology is used in the cameras for the newer Google pixel
phones. They have way less pixels per lens (only 2) so it's primarily used for
depth mapping.

~~~
ipsum2
I think the the usage of microlens arrays on image sensors predates that of
Lytro/popularization of lightfield.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microlens#Applications](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microlens#Applications)

------
ortusdux
I forgot about this thing. I wonder if the images it captures could be viewed
in full on the looking-glass display.
[https://lookingglassfactory.com/](https://lookingglassfactory.com/)

------
colechristensen
I have a couple of the original lytros with many ideas for execution but only
a little progress. I managed to get a somewhat mangled image out of old Matlab
code but didn't get to the point of being able to reproduce the image
processing myself.

------
advisedwang
has anyone tried the Lytro Illum? It would be interesting to see how much it
has improved moving from proof-of-concept to fully fledged product.

~~~
frxx
Hello, I have tried the Lytro Illum some time back for a week or two.

Other than being very slow, the lens not showing the real focal lenght
(instead the equivalent focal length), I found the output lacking in both
sharpness and colour. The desktop app for editing was very, very slow (on a
quad core xeon), and the worst thing was... no one wants to click your picture
to see it animate. You could output a video with a focus pull, but then, who
would watch it?

At least for me, the process of taking the pictures, editing and the output
being ignored, made it uninteresting for me. Any other questions?

~~~
advisedwang
Thanks for sharing your experience.

