Lytro - Revolutionary or Marketing Hype? Next big thing?

[smooth]

Guys and gals,

Just been sent this link:

http://www.lytro.com/

At first look it seems to be all marketing hype... until I read:

In short, Lytro is developing a new type of camera that dramatically changes photography for the first time since the 1800s. Rather than just capturing one plane of light, it captures the entire light field around a picture, all in one shot taken on a single device. A light field includes every beam of light in every direction at every point in time. Experimentation in this field started in the mid-1990s at Stanford with 100 cameras in one room. Lytro’s innovation is making it small enough to fit in your pocket. Really.

As a result you can refocus photos after the fact, wiggle around the orientation, and even show the photos in 3D.

Changing the focal point after the fact!? WOW! If they can pull this off it will be simply amazing!

Article on the launch of the company: http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/21/ly...m-photography-with-50m-in-venture-funds-tctv/

And one with a bit more info on what they hope to achieve and an example of how you could change the focal point:
http://mashable.com/2011/06/22/lytro/

Incredible stuff. If true then Canon, Nikon and Blad must be seriously concerned...

Edit: Found this had been posted a few days ago without the example of what the camera could do: http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=342375&highlight=lytro

 

[Chris Primadona]

Yeah it looks pretty cool, I don't think it will be anything other than a gimmick for quite some time yet so Nikon and Canon etc won't be too worried! If they do manage to make it usuable and fast-ish the big companies will do their own take on the technology anyway.

 

[Ksanti]

16MP of sensors producing 0.1MP of images is what I've heard.

It's interesting, but let's just guestimate to get any usable print size images you'd be at well over 100MP of pixel sites. Now, given from what little I've heard it sounds like the images have to be shot at really tight apertures to keep everything in check, the amount of noise and sheer cost of developing something like this puts it right into gimmick for now..

It's fun to play with, but the consumer market compact users won't want to pay the premium for a camera like this and it will be along time before the sensor is good enough for professional use, if ever.

 

[DuncanDisorderly]

There was a feature on this subject in last weekend's BBC Click programme - you can watch it on the iPlayer.
What I didn't realise is that this isn't new - there is already another company selling cameras working on exactly the same principles - plenoptics
They are selling into niche industrial applications and don't have $50m worth of marketing clout behind them - but weird how they rarely seem to get mentioned.