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How many times have you taken a photo and later found it was out of focus? Probably more times than you can remember.In many situations, only part of the picture will be in focus, and in many other situations, it is the wrong part. If a new Silicon Valley startup has its way, those days are over. Enter Lytro, the first free-focus camera. Lytro is the brainchild of Ren Ng, a Stanford Ph.D., which was first proposed in his graduate thesis. Dr. Ng received accolades for his work, which has now led to $50 million in funding to bring this product to market.
The science behind this is very unique. The basic idea is that in every scene you see, there exists a light field which is the amount of light traveling in every direction through every point in space – it’s all the light rays in that scene. The Lytro captures all of those rays. Then, since it has collected all the information about the scene in every way possible, you can decide after the picture is taken, which part of the picture should be in focus as well as adjusting other parameters like the light levels and intensity. Even cooler is that all the information remains available, so later, if you want to change the focus to another part of the picture, you can. Head over to the Lytro Website and check it out. You can zoom, pan and refocus on and around an image, post capture. You can also ‘play’ the functions with one click.
It’s genius, really. This video explains it all. If it works the way they say, I bet you’ll see this sensor licensed by most camera manufacturers and in every phone.
From the Lytro Website “Shoot now, focus later. That’s just the start of what you can do with a Lytro camera, the camera that captures the entire light field. A Lytro can also help you remember more of what happened at that party last weekend. And, it may also clue you in on the identity of that dude offering free jailhouse-style tattoos.”
NY Times Art & Design
Interestingly enough, I’m hearing rumors that Lytro doesn plan to license the tech but intends to only sell their own cameras. I can’t confirm this, but it is sad if it’s true. It would be good to see innovation driven by competition. Also, Lytro could make so much more money and would just have to focus on improving the light field camera system and not marketing. At some point, peoe will expect a certain level of features and it will be hard for a new company to get it all right out of the box. We’ll see, I guess.
Forgive the typos. Or at least let me blame the iPhone keyboard.
I was wondering why Lytro was even making their own cameras. I agree with you. Licensing would be great for everyone. Perfect for Iphone and mobile cameras. Plus, the big boys have so much money they can rally against Lytro to make people think the camera is not very good. We’ll just have to wait and see, and hope the camera isn’t too pricey.