Brian Tong checks out Lytro’s new revolutionary digital camera, which has an infinite focus and a unique design.
Holy crap! An 8X optical zoom with a constant f/2 aperture (meaning it needs no flash in most situations) and infinite focus? For $399? I want one. I want one REALLY badly.
Lytro’s upcoming light field camera is expected to hit the market in early 2012.
oh nice, I want one too. Only question, does it do video?
With only 8 and 16 gigs of storage, why would you want to?
it most likely could if code was written for it but…planned obsolescence being what it is, that feature will probably be offered in later models
No. And it probably never will. Video cameras don't need this gimmick. In photography you only have 1 shot to express something and if you got the focus a bit off, it's a ruined shot. For video it's perfectly acceptable to seek focus. This thing would be even more gimmicky than 3D. At least 3D actually adds something extra.
To be honest, a camera in video mode does seek for focus, however it stil only chooses one object to focus on. Partially blurring objects in the background as the human eye would. An infinite focus would allow a video to capture every object in clear focus, which is better than human eyes, allowing us to look at various areas of a video and those parts be in focus.
Can you remove the depth of field effect and have everything in focus?!
probably not with a apeture of f/2
If nothing else you could save multiple versions of the pic with multiple focal points then stitch them with PhotoShop.
An example of this is found in the dissertation that is the basis for the technology. The example is basically two people at different distance from the camera, where both faces can be made to be in focus while the background is left out of focus so as to not distract from the face.
https://www.lytro.com/renng-thesis.pdf
check page 72 for the result.
your not getting the point dickhead, the image of the dinosaur was cm's the lens impossible to be in focus with the rest of the shot.
Holy crap, this camera is amazing. I wonder how it works when there are more than two focal points.
“so we’ve created this really amazing camera technology, let’s put it into production!”
“ok, but only if we give it a fucking terrible design so no one can figure out how to even hold the damn thing.”
Probably has to do with how the camera's new technology works.
f/2 means no flash in most situations? how would you know that without knowing ISO or shutter?
It's a toy, kiddies.
It is pretty much of a toy…a cool toy, but if I'm going to spend $500, I want a lot more control and features on a cam.