How
many times have you taken blurred pictures or shots, which focus on the wrong
subject?
Smartphones
will replace digital cameras and HD camcorders in the future because they
duplicate their features at a fraction of the cost. Lytro, however, has other
plans. Yesterday it unveiled its pocket sized light field camera, which allows
you to focus your photos after
you take your pictures. Although professional photographers are saying that the
new device is an attack on their profession, Lytro’s camera is a compelling
alternative that may convince consumers to purchase cameras, separate from
their smartphones.
Typical
camera lenses focus on only one particular subject within a camera’s sight,
meaning that light from only one direction hits the sensor. Lytro, however,
enables light field photography, whose sensor captures light from many
different angles (“11 mega-rays” according to Lytro), which is almost like
taking many different pictures at the same time. Because the camera captures
depth, Lytro’s images will, aside from allowing you to focus after you take a picture, be
able to be seen in 3D when the startup photography company updates its
software. The camera will also have no shutter lag, will feature low light sensitivity,
and will have about two weeks worth of battery usage.
Before
Lytro, light field photography was available only with the help of expensive
super computers. Ren Ng, founder of the novel camera, compiled a doctoral
dissertation in computer science, which was given an award by the Association
for Computing Machinery, and which was used for Lytro’s light field development.
Even though the company brings something novel to the marketplace, it’s still not
certain how consumers will react. The technology is still expensive ($400 for
the 8GB version and $500 for the 16GB version) and many consumers may not want
to have to deal with manually focusing images. Each picture you snap will take
up 22 megabytes in an LFP file, which can be converted into jpeg format after
you select your focus. The final size of the jpeg may be smaller than what
consumers are accustomed to.
Despite
the camera’s expense and many consumers, who may want a “set it and forget it”
device, the camera will capture some market share based on its novelty factor
alone. The Lytro is also not bad looking: the camera is in the shape of a small
telescope, has only three buttons, and includes a small touch screen. For now, the
light field camera can be pre-ordered on Lytro’s website and will be available
for shipment early next year. The amount of press coverage Lytro has received and
the fact that Lytro’s website has claimed “high demand” for their product shows
that innovation can counteract tremendous market changes, exemplified by
smartphones, which have already replaced sales of PCs, cameras, and GPS devices.
