As a photographer, what I really want to know is what characteristics the light field imager has in terms of things like dynamic range, noise, color reproduction, and so on. If the Illum has a unique sort of "flavor," in the same way that Sigma's Foveon series (with its non-Bayer-patterned sensors) has a certain something that's fun for photographers to experiment with, I could see it catching on. Much more so if there are some weird, light-field-based parameters that you can adjust in a Lightroom-esque app from Lytro.
Otherwise, I can't see this thing riding on the appeal of viewer refocusing and tilting – that's just not going to escape the realm of gimmick. Unless the tech offers new creative opportunities to the pro / prosumer photographer, I see that market being less likely to spend $1600 on this than consumers were to spend $400 on the original.
As much as I dislike the stereotypical criticism on HN I agree completely. I still don't know what problem Lytro is trying to solve or what benefit it provides, and I've yet to hear about a successful application in the consumer space. Refocusing after a picture has been taken is interesting, but useless unless your camera/phone/whatever doesn't focus properly.
Depth of field is just one of many tools used to convey a photograph. For $1500 this camera better blow away other prosumer point-and-shoots like the RX100 Mk II, RX10, Ricoh GR, etc. Given the cost of light-field technology I suspect compromises in sensor sensitivity, dynamic range, and ISO will have to be made.
> Refocusing after a picture has been taken is interesting, but useless unless your camera/phone/whatever doesn't focus properly.
Ever try and take a picture of a kid? My Nexus 5's auto-focus can't keep up with my toddler at all. Getting this technology down into a compact shooter or cell phone sized camera would be a huge leap.
You will never get it in a camera the size of a cell-phone camera. This technology relies on the fact that each patch of their lens sees a different image of the subject; it's like stereo, but with a single lens, and many views rather than two. It fundamentally has to have a large-diameter lens.
You will never get it this small/big/fast/powerful/affordable is what has been said about a lot of industries/technologies in the past.
Question is, will Lytro be able to do it? Will they have the money&perseverance? With their financials they are not likely to move fast enough on this, 5mp equivalent in 2014 is not very impressive. I shelved my Lytro v1 after a couple of days because of the poor image quality, not because of the 'gimmick' disappointing me.
Pelican Imaging will be bringing out similar technology in cell phones this year or next. They're using a camera array rather than a single sensor + MLA.
I am not sure what you mean by each lens, since there is only one lens with this technology. The diameter of the lens has to be comparable to the separation between the two lenses in a stereo system. For meaningful stereo effect at distances we would find interesting (say, a few feet between you and your toddler), this has to be maybe an inch; I don't see a smaller lens being very interesting.
For a typical cell phone, the hyperfocal distance - beyond which everything is in focus with the lens focused at infinity - is maybe 6 feet; you can't get light field information, at all, for anything further than that. And it will be only a tiny bit of information for closer subjects; you can't take shallow depth-of-focus photos with a cell phone, and you can't apply this technology for the same reason. BTW, motion blur is likely a bigger problem for cell phone photos than focus.
Almost all DSLRs and I assume many point-and shoots have an automatic focus tracking mode for moving subjects. Canon's is called AI servo. That said, most people don't move beyond the "auto" setting on their high-end cameras, so I can understand the quest to simplify.
Autofocus in smartphones will hopefully get better over time, but if your options are an overall superior DSLR or an equally large camera that just gives you some flexible (albeit one-dimensional) focusing benefits then I think the choice is clear. Practice a little more with your DSLR and wait to see if Lytro can be implanted into a better supporting cast of parts at a reasonable cost.
I have a Canon T3i and 2 young kids. AI servo is the right idea in theory, but on even a lower-end DSLR it just doesn't help much. If a kid is running towards the camera, it will keep refocusing as the subject moves, but it's always focusing on where the kid was a split second ago.
IIRC the higher-end cameras have algorithms to track the subject and predict where the subject WILL be and focus accordingly. However, I have many friends with Mk III's and they say it's a very hard problem that even the high-end DSLR's don't solve. As you can imagine it's not actually a solvable problem with the present AF latencies as the subject can change course after the algorithm guesses. And when you're shooting shallow DoF even a small mistake will kill the focus on the shot.
The question is whether the Lytro can operate at 1/200 or faster to solve that problem. The specs say 1/4000 is max shutter speed, but IIRC the actual capture speed isn't that fast...
I'd guess that there's more benefit than just refocusing as a post process. This camera ships with a relatively wide aperture lens. Wide apertures are great for low light but they also have a very small focal range. I'd guess that with this type of sensor you could use the lens wide open but not be limited to a very narrow focal depth. This could allow you to take shots in low light that you wouldn't normally be able to get. Macro photography also has problems with focusing. You might be able to put a macro lens on here and take one picture completely in focus instead of combining a series of shots in photoshop.
I agree that focusing after the fact has limited appeal, but there are some interesting long-term ramifications of this technology.
Today, much of lens correction are done in hardware, by adding more lens elements, which makes the hardware larger, heavier and more expensive. Some corrections can be done in software these days (barrel/pincushion distortion, chromatic aberration), but not all.
What they've been able to do with this camera is move a lot of those corrections into software, allowing them to use a simpler, cheaper lens with a very large aperture. The constant F/2 aperture is unheard of in a lens with such a large zoom range.
Besides aberrations, there's another issue with using traditional large-aperture lenses: focusing takes time, and it's not always accurate. With the Lytro, I imagine that you can take pictures instantly without needing to focus, and you can get perfect focus in post-processing.
From what I've seen in the sample gallery, image quality isn't great compared to regular camera/lens combinations in the same price range. This camera might not be for everyone, but I really hope the technology continues to improve and eventually become mainstream.
I had a Lytro when it first came out and returned it a week later.
This was the exact reason why. The refocusing aspect sounded useful and appealing at first but the lack of other features quickly made the device lose real-world applications.
This new one looks much cooler/normal and offers more features hw/sw wise but with that price tag I am not sure who their target market is.
I'm interested in the technical aspects too. The Lytro website and Engadget article have very little detailed information. Plenoptic cameras aren't a new idea...so why don't Canon and Nikon have products in this category? As mentioned by others, the camera has an effective resolution of about 5MP, but I suspect there are other limitations. This seems like it might be a Foveon situation; cool, promising technology. I'm not sure why everyone here expects it to be ready now for adoption. It might be a bad business move to mislead people at this point with what is really a niche product.
Otherwise, I can't see this thing riding on the appeal of viewer refocusing and tilting – that's just not going to escape the realm of gimmick. Unless the tech offers new creative opportunities to the pro / prosumer photographer, I see that market being less likely to spend $1600 on this than consumers were to spend $400 on the original.