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You are here: Home / Science & Technology / In Focus

In Focus

by $8 blue check mistermix|  October 20, 20117:51 am| 26 Comments

This post is in: Science & Technology

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If you want to waste a few minutes on the Internet, check out this gallery of pictures taken with the Lytro light field camera. Light field pictures allow you to choose the focus point of the image, and you can focus anywhere in the photo. Lytro introduced a new camera yesterday. It’s $400, looks pretty cool, and is dirt simple to use. It reminds me a bit of the Polaroid SX-70 — something completely new in photography, priced on the high end of impulse, in an elegant package.

In slightly related focus news, Adobe is working on a way to automatically deblur photos. The demos are impressive. (via)

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26Comments

  1. 1.

    jeffreyw

    October 20, 2011 at 7:59 am

    I’m down for one. They are saying delivery in Feb ’12. Hope that windows app for it comes out before I get it or I’ll have to buy a Mac to use it.

  2. 2.

    cleek

    October 20, 2011 at 8:01 am

    i’ll wait for v2. i’d at least want a tripod mount.

  3. 3.

    boss bitch

    October 20, 2011 at 8:01 am

    Cool.

    Word is Qaddafi/Ghaddafi is dead or captured. most likely dead.

    ETA: The pictures are cool. The pictures.

  4. 4.

    Ben Cisco

    October 20, 2011 at 8:03 am

    @boss bitch: OK, who’s going to be the first NeoConfederate and/or Ferengi media type to whine about it?

  5. 5.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    October 20, 2011 at 8:08 am

    What is this devil magic?!

  6. 6.

    JPL

    October 20, 2011 at 8:10 am

    @Ben Cisco: Awhile back a conservative friend questioned the foreign policy of the administration because of what was happening in the Middle East. I responded that freedom isn’t free and freedom is hard work. It does help to quote that famous statesman, GW Bush every once and awhile.

  7. 7.

    J.

    October 20, 2011 at 8:11 am

    The Lytro has captured my soul. Amazing.

    And think what the GOP could do with a device that can make anyone or anything look good with the click of a mouse.

  8. 8.

    Wag

    October 20, 2011 at 8:11 am

    Wow. I want one too

  9. 9.

    Wag

    October 20, 2011 at 8:11 am

    Wow. I want one too

  10. 10.

    Efroh

    October 20, 2011 at 8:21 am

    That looks fricking amazing. OT, but has anyone read this:

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/10/bank-of-america-deathwatch-moves-risky-derivatives-from-holding-company-to-taxpayer-backstopped-depositors.html

    Because, holy shit.

  11. 11.

    gnomedad

    October 20, 2011 at 8:27 am

    Very tempting. I thought it would be 4 figures and much larger.

  12. 12.

    boss bitch

    October 20, 2011 at 8:31 am

    @Ben Cisco:

    Here’s a pic of him at capture. Ugh.

    http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2011/10/20/1319113297803/An-image-captured-off-a-c-007.jpg

    saw on twitter. AFP image

  13. 13.

    Scott

    October 20, 2011 at 8:59 am

    That is a hell of a camera. I just got my first digital camera last year (I was a hardcore film fanatic ’til it became clear film cameras were going away for good), but I’ve always disliked the fact that I had to rely on the camera’s autofocus, which always seemed to lock on something I didn’t want in focus. This would definitely solve my focus problems, but I don’t know that I can go and get a new camera so soon after getting my current one… :/

  14. 14.

    Anon

    October 20, 2011 at 9:13 am

    @Scott: There’s nothing stopping you from manual focus on digital cameras (unless you get the crappy $100 models). And most decent recent film cameras also had autofocus capabilities.

  15. 15.

    Scott

    October 20, 2011 at 9:19 am

    Mine is apparently one of the crappy models, then, because I haven’t been able to find a way to manual focus it. :/

  16. 16.

    dmsilev

    October 20, 2011 at 10:12 am

    The ergonomics of that thing looks horrible. Almost exactly the wrong shape to be hand-held in a stable position, and uncomfortable to boot. Fine on a tripod, I suppose, but that shouldn’t be a requirement for any camera smaller than a medium-format beast. While the tech is definitely cool, I think I’ll wait until they introduce a model a little bit better suited to the human hand.

  17. 17.

    nickgb

    October 20, 2011 at 10:30 am

    The real problem is that you need to use an image sensor much larger than the resolution you want to capture (the light field crap is just marketing, it’s just storing several images at different DOFs and merging them). We wrote about that a bit ago, with more technicals.

  18. 18.

    jheartney

    October 20, 2011 at 10:38 am

    Having grown up with manual-focus SLR’s, I’m not seeing what is the big deal. Is their focus-point selection interface all that much better/faster than just twisting a focus ring?

  19. 19.

    nickgb

    October 20, 2011 at 10:39 am

    Hmmmm, it looks like your comment system ate my comment. Anyway, we wrote about the Lytro a while back. It’s a neat enough idea, but the resolution is always going to be limited. The “light field” concept really means they’re just taking four pictures at one and merging them with software to give you a wider range of focus. If you want to focus on a point between two of those images, it deblurs by averaging them, which is pretty lousy (adobe aside).

  20. 20.

    DaddyJ

    October 20, 2011 at 11:03 am

    @jheartney: I don’t think you focus at all; you just shoot. Presumably in the editing stage you could pick where you want your focus. Or you publish the pic in an html environment wrapped in an Adobe Flash shell that allows you to interactively click on areas to focus. In the latter workflow, it seems kind of like a gimmick.

  21. 21.

    catclub

    October 20, 2011 at 11:42 am

    @Scott: “‘til it became clear”
    pun intended?

  22. 22.

    Martin

    October 20, 2011 at 11:54 am

    @jheartney: Well, the big deal is that there’s no reason, in an age of digital photography to focus at all. Focusing was strictly a constraint imposed because you were immediately translating the optics onto a piece of film. When we moved into digital photos, that happened simply by replacing the film back with a CCD back, so it retained the constraints of film at the moment it replaced the film. That was done due to cost, but it’s not how you would have designed a camera if the film era never happened.

    This camera captures the optics and defers the translation to an image until you get home. Why not? Why force you to make that decision in the field when you can instead make multiple decisions later?

  23. 23.

    giltay

    October 20, 2011 at 12:34 pm

    @jheartney: The big deal is that the focus selection (supposedly) happens after you take the picture. (As others have pointed out, that’s not actually the case.)

    I got a DSLR recently, and I’ve used film SLRs years ago. I have to say, shooting with automatic focus is actually pretty nice in most cases. There’s really no point in selecting a focus area if you’re shooting handheld, since you can target the autofocus first in the centre, then swing the camera to frame the shot. The autofocus is crazy fast, faster than adjusting the focus ring. (However, the standard Canon lens sucks for when you do want manual focus; there’s no focus aids like ground glass or split image.)

  24. 24.

    cpinva

    October 20, 2011 at 1:46 pm

    gotta admit, that’s pretty cool. i have a canon rebel eos xs, which is a good, amateur camera (and i am, by god, a rank amateur!). one thing i always, always, always have problems with is focusing on the specific item i want to be the center of the shot. no doubt it’s my own ineptitude, but it would be nice if the camera helped out just a little bit!

    very neat idea though, i look forward to seeing these when they come out.

  25. 25.

    jheartney

    October 20, 2011 at 1:54 pm

    I see, you pick your focus point after the fact.

    @Martin: Focus points are inherent in any lens-based system, including our eyes. Theoretically you could do a trick somewhat like this with a film camera, if you had it take multiple shots by splitting the light from the lens onto different pieces of film at differing distances.

    @giltay: One advantage to doing it the old way is that the photographer can see what the focus point selection (not to mention a given depth of field selection) does to the whole image beforehand. With a preselected autofocus, you’re kind of guessing.

  26. 26.

    Don

    October 20, 2011 at 3:15 pm

    This camera captures the optics and defers the translation to an image until you get home. Why not? Why force you to make that decision in the field when you can instead make multiple decisions later?

    Because the quantity of light you need to capture to pull this off is a lot higher. It’s no coincidence that all those sample shots are fairly stationary things in high light situations. You will not be using this inside to take a picture of your kid blowing out candles.

    The ergonomics on it are so shitty because of those needs.

    Not that this thing isn’t really cool but don’t pretend this is some game-changer or that focus isn’t really necessary. This is an alternate approach that makes different tradeoffs.

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