OT: Next step in photography

I know this is off-topic but I had to post this because this here is the biggest photographic technology advancement since the invention of digital cameras. I cannot wait to get mine! And the design looks so 1960s!

http://www.lytro.com/

Cheers,
Vlad

Vlad,
it is very nice toy , but unfortunately out of main stream.
I suggest to create a new section for such things under "General Discussion". For example "New photographic technologies". It helps us to stay always on the top of knowledge .
What do you think about this?

Regards, Alexander

Hi Alexander, I don't mind people posting photography related threads in General Discussion from time to time.. If it get out of hand I can always make another forum section.

I do disagree with you about this not being mainstream, I think it will quickly become mainstream within next couple of years. They said the same thing about digital cameras that they're not mainstream ..

I don't think this camera will go over very big with the 'F64 Group'. Personally, I got tired of switching the focus back and forth on their samples pretty quickly, however it is intriguing technology that would be nice to have as an artistic option, when they can integrate it into a regular camera.

Regards, Bill

Hi Bill,

I actually don't care much about the switching the focus result, the most unique feature is that you don't need to focus at all. I would probably just take a picture, get the focus I want and save as JPEG, I think the interactive picture is a gimmick, it's the actual picture taking process that is revolutionary. I can see this this integrated into a mobile phone, you would take a picture, select focus point and post it to your album. Quality-wise it should beat any current phone camera hands down.

Vlad

Vlad if at list parts of what they promise are true than it's a great lip forward in technology if not a revolution!
The applications are enormous!! To understand it better it's like recording radio noise and then look for favorite song in it, only later, or it like get news from all radio stations at ones, on same recording. Amazing!!!. As I understand this technology, it like make pictures without lens and then put lens on the recorded picture to get the image or object what you interesting in.
Just imaging what you can do with this technology!!! - record instance then analyzed it for many years, or archive whole book on one picture without sacrifice quality of the each page, have microscope what can make true 3D pictures, find new words using Telescopes!! I can not imaging the fall out!!!
Thank you for find it !

1) Light vectorial photography is not new. Really in 1899 Mr. Gabriel Lippman has shown us the first mood to take pictures without any camera! simply showing the plate to the ambient to be photographed. The forerunner of Holography of Mr Gabor.
The first proposal of Lippman was to use a plate built by several small balls placed on a plane. Each of the ball is a lens where focus occur in the opposite hemisphere. The plate is compoed of balls. One hemisphere faces the subject the other one has the emultion
When one sees the developed plane of balls he sees only one point at the rear side of the ball Each ball see 180є in all directions. That way if you see the plate at an angle will see a differnt image if you see the plate at an other angle. It is exactly as you had registered the mirror image of the photographed ambient.
That is not all. If one resilver the emulsion side with a mercury bath, light entering each of the spheres are backward reflected showing by interference the exact colour of the object!

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2) This new digital camera uses three transparent CMOS placed in three different planes made to register three differnt focused images.
This way they create the registering of light vectorial.
The great aperture lens has no diaphragm ,instead a liquid bi polarized chrystal intended to obscure the light with no alteration of the estraordinary peripherical light rays. A simple program of enhacing two of the CMOS planes plus a sharpening system does the wanted selection of planes = of course image must be storaged in any media as a pendrive etc, You print on the focus you want. Now the focusing is done on printing in the difficult way. Easy techniques and long known, reunited and applied in a new product

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3) As you know Russians made several trials and reserch in optics.
in the '40 years they developed an special normal objective that gives focus at any aperture from 0.5m to infinity It was developed specially for Moskino to be used in some movies of the era.
It used a very light floating element that moves in its axxis.
a high frequency vibrator did the task. It is known that the lens transfers its maximum energy at the focusing point that way the film received several images and one in perfect focus. The floating element was so calculated that in all focused positions the image would have thesame size so halo could not be noted.
This technique is exactly the opposite of the camera in question where it is eliminated all light vectors and everything is pt in a real plane.

Regards
LP

Lippmann at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Lippmann

I have noticed with many of the Lytro sample photos that if the background is very far away, you can't get it into focus. For example the one with the water fountain ... can't get the bridge in focus, and the same with others that have far away backgrounds.

So, for example, if it is something that you wanted in focus and you just clicked and saved, later you might find that what you wanted to see was not available to look at in focus in your saved image.

Vlad, how many megapixels is the image. All I could find was "11 million light rays". Does this translate to 11 megapixels? I think the new IPhone has an 8 megapixel camera.

Regards, Bill

Luiz, this information is as astonishing as your knowledge on the subject matter! . I guess the principle is similar but a big difference that this new technology is digital and not analog like in these examples.

Bill, I've been following this technology very closely since a few months ago that it was announced. The principle is when you get the shot image to the PC, you will pick any few focus points that you want saved in the final file. So raw image would've contained the focus point on the bridge they just chose not to include it in the "rasterized" image.

Also regarding megapixels, the Lytro reps are dodging this question, just saying that the image result is geared for screen res, that means photo sharing services like flickr, facebook, twitter etc.. and that's it's geared for HD 1080P resolution display. If that is the case then this really is disappointing news for anyone above casual user which means the outputted JPEG is 1080x1080 - a measly 1.2 Megapixels. Even then I am more excited about the prospect of this kind of technology rather than the actual camera they just released. It's a very first model and price point of $400 maybe be a little bit out there... I am really looking forward to future developments in this field though.

Vlad

Having said that though look at Lomo lc-a+ for $399, it sells like hotcakes

If light-field technology go mainstream you should always be able get your money back selling this camera as collectable (just hold the box:).
If not then you can get fun with camera and still be able to sell it for half price as novelty item.
So it's win-win for anybody who buy first butch of cameras.
The only my regrets that light-field software available only for Mac by now. Company promised to make software for Windows some time next year, but that yet has to be seen .

That is a wrong marketing move I think making software available only for Macs, most of the world is on windows...

You are right, Vlad, but not the world of image processing, it is still a Mac-world

quote:

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Originally posted by Vlad

That is a wrong marketing move I think making software available only for Macs, most of the world is on windows...

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One kid uses Mac, another Linux, but me (as the majority) uses Windows. And although I am a semi-pro journalist. Like Vlad wrote, only a handful of real pros or dedicated use Mac...
But a very interesting topic, something I want to read here, as comments are "old school"

Best regards,
Juhani