Camera Start-Up Lytro Promises to Revolutionize Photography

How many times have you taken pictures only to find out that some of your pics were horribly out of focus? It happens many times to me, especially when attempting to photograph small items in super macro, or perhaps some wildlife on the move..

Imagine if you could focus the image file itself? Well, that's what this company is trying to accomplish with their efforts..

pcworld.com

With a new kind of camera, Lytro wants to remove the headaches of focus from digital photography.

Lytro, a start-up based in the Silicon Valley, hopes to revolutionize the camera industry by bringing "light field" cameras to the market this year. This type of photography captures the color, intensity and direction of individual light rays, allowing the user to refocus the picture even after it has been taken.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Lytro's founder and chief executive, Ran Ng, likened the technology to a multitrack audio recording, in which each instrument is recorded separately and mixed later.

Amazing stuff, hopefully it will be as advertised, imagine having a pic of some unidentified object in the sky, and being able to focus on that object?

reply to post by JacKatMtn


Very interesting. Although I think many UFO believers would be very disappointed to find out 90% of their blurry pics would turn out to be birds and balloons!

........but, the other 10% would be very interesting to study

Now if only they could de-pixelate censored images!

reply to post by CastleMadeOfSand


Even more, what happens when you try to focus in on a UFO and it remains blurry?

The theory is that the electrified environment surrounding the UFO will create a fuzziness/distortions that could be akin to a mix of heat mirages and Cherenkov radiation.

the latter would explain the glows seen associated with UFO's.

What is nice is this technology will allow for a more true and vivid capture of the environment.

Could this technology already be in use by Alphabet agencies?

I've seen enough movies and series were they are able to zoom into a blurry piece of video footage and enhance it to full sharpness. Though it are only movies, it wouldn't surprise me if software/hardware to do this is already existing in the "Black ops world".

But to implement it in consumer cameras is imo good, this technology will also replace the old CCTV perhaps, but that will be an expensive joke on tax payers money.

Maybe we will indeed see a revolution in the world of blurry videos on ATS.

reply to post by Grey Magic


Hadn't really thought of it along those lines, but who knows?

I was more excited to be able to fix the messed up pics that I often take

This is so awesome!
What a wonderful idea.

Here's another article on this technology..

A camera that couldn't care less about focus: introducing Lytro

...Lytro is the brainchild of Dr. Ren Ng, a Stanford Ph.D whose dissertation on light-field technology five years ago was showered with awards. Now, with the help of $50 million in funding, most of it from Andreessen Horowitz, Ng has built a company that's preparing to launch a focus-free digital camera later this year.

The basic premise of Lytro's technology is pretty simple: The camera captures all the information it possibly can about the field of light in front of it. You then get a digital photo that is adjustable in an almost infinite number of ways. You can focus anywhere in the picture, change the light levels -- and presuming you're using a device with a 3-D ready screen -- even create a picture you can tilt and shift in three dimensions. (I got a demonstration of the camera's 3-D photos on a laptop and was blown away.)...

It does sound like it is wonderful idea. I just wonder how it will work out since from what i understand it is new sensor technology that allows to play with focus via software later. Software correction for lens distortion works pretty good, so it might be a winner idea.

This is a wonderful development, especially for the authentication aspect of UFO photography.
Not only will it eliminate the blurry images, but I imagine the digital files would be hard to manipulate after the fact, and this would drastically reduce the hoax and fraud cases.

Still, what ever humans invent, we have always been able to corrupt and use the technology to scam others. I hope this will make it a lot harder.

Here's another article on this tech, with some examples of pics that you can "click to focus"

Lytro: The camera that could change photography forever

Have you ever taken a picture that would have been great if only it were in focus? Of course you have. So have we, countless times. But those days may soon be past all of us with the introduction of Lytro, an entirely new kind of camera that allows users to completely change the focus of a picture after the shutter clicks. And, according to AllThingsD, this next-generation camera will be available before the end of the year.

reply to post by JacKatMtn


Wow, just awesome to play with.

reply to post by Grey Magic


I think so.. it's about time that digital photography took a huge leap forward, considering all the recent advancements in other forms of visual technology..

I wonder though if there will be a huge difference in raw image files since this appears to be recording so much more modifiable information..

reply to post by JacKatMtn


Yeah that was what I was thinking too, those 3d images already take up quite some space, these must be even bigger files.

Thanks for posting those updates.

Deleted, double post

More info on this found here:

A Start-Up’s Camera Lets You Take Shots First and Focus Later

...The Lytro camera captures far more light data, from many angles, than is possible with a conventional camera. It accomplishes that with a special sensor called a microlens array, which puts the equivalent of many lenses into a small space. “That is the heart of the breakthrough,” said Pat Hanrahan, a Stanford professor, who was Mr. Ng’s thesis adviser but is not involved in Lytro.

But the wealth of raw light data comes to life only with sophisticated software that lets a viewer switch points of focus. This allows still photographs to be explored as never before. “They become interactive, living pictures,” Mr. Ng said. He thinks a popular use may be families and friends roaming through different perspectives on pictures of, say, vacations and parties posted on Facebook (Lytro will have a Facebook app)...

Here's another article on this innovative camera..

5 Coolest Lytro Light Field Camera Features

...If that got you excited about Lytro's potential, here's a look at 5 of the coolest promises Lytro is making about its new cameras.

Focus Later

If you played with the image above, then you saw how an image taken with a Lytro camera will supposedly let you change the focus from a foreground object to a background one or vice versa. But based on the images in Lytro's photo gallery, it appears the technology limits how many different points of focus you can choose by setting up clickable regions on your photo. It's also not clear if Lytro can clean up an image that is fundamentally blurry (a bad photography technique that I have mastered).

No Shutter Lag

Lytro says you can turn on its camera and be ready to take a picture in less than one second...

Originally posted by Grey Magic
Could this technology already be in use by Alphabet agencies?

I've seen enough movies and series were they are able to zoom into a blurry piece of video footage and enhance it to full sharpness. Though it are only movies, it wouldn't surprise me if software/hardware to do this is already existing in the "Black ops world".

But to implement it in consumer cameras is imo good, this technology will also replace the old CCTV perhaps, but that will be an expensive joke on tax payers money.

Maybe we will indeed see a revolution in the world of blurry videos on ATS.

I saw an advertisement on TV for this last night, and the first thing I thought is, "That reminds me of the movie Blade Runner".

As to the alphabet agencies, if it is not already in use, then I suspect that this company will receive some serious funding in order to further develop their ideas. As in, funding to incorporate facial recognition into their software.

Heck, maybe even some sort of mood/emotional recognition software, that way they can arrest an upset person on the HUNCH they MIGHT do something.

J.

reply to post by J-in-TX


just revisiting this old thread to say, they done it, the camera was released

www.lytro.com...#

theverge.vid.io...

Wow...that's great...This means no more blurry candid shots from the nudey beach!............Oh ,and of course the UFOs.