The Lytro cam is probably my favourite piece of tech that has come out in the last couple of years. You never have to worry about a photo being in focus. Well according to The Verge, who interviewed Lytro’s Director of Photograpy Eric Cheng, a video-capable Lytro cam is totally possible.
Cheng said there are hundreds of possible applications for the light field capture technology that the Lytro uses. When directly asked about the possibility of video, Cheng has the following to say:
Yes. Absolutely. Because light field capture is still single frame, and the entire light field is captured in a single shutter open and close like in a traditional system. sBecause it’s all frame based, there’s no reason why we can’t build a light field based video camera. Things that would potentially be bottlenecks would be processor speed and things like this.
That sounds exciting. I want this like tomorrow. Lytro please make this happen. [The Verge]
Pete
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 2:41 PMI’d settle for these being made available in Australia. Love the tech.
Stew
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 5:41 PMI tried understanding how “light field” works and still came away scratching my head just as vigorously as before I started.
Adam
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 9:54 PMWooo sounds amazing!
It took me a while to get it too, I had to wade through the PhD thesis to try and figure it out!
The simple version is this:
Normal cameras use a lens assembly to project 1 image onto a sensor for capture, of a single focal length. This light field camera uses a custom lens that splits the incoming image into say a dozen images of different focal lengths. Obviously they’ll be a lot smaller if they’re going to fit onto the sensor without overlap – say a 16 megapixel sensor could capture 16 x 1 megapixel images in a 4×4 array. Apply some fancy maths and software and wolah – the Lytro :)
Zeruel
Friday, January 13, 2012 at 12:08 AMMy understand is that using the additional stored info, that lightfield business. Allows for focus and depth of field to be adjusted AFTER the photo is taken. Like on your computer. Something out of focus…you can fix it!