Light-field Technology

Have you ever grabbed your cell phone, pointed it at one of those once in a lifetime moments and then captured the image in front of you - preserving it for all of eternity? Or maybe you just took a picture of your dog licking himself. Dunno. Don’t care.

The point is, most all of us have. Except for Lee; he is still etching his drawings on the cave wall ... did you get the picture of Lumley done yet?

If your like me, you've lost photos. A lot of them. And if your like me, you cringed when you saw the product of your efforts. You thought you were going to be the next Ansel Adams or maybe make the cover of National Geographic. But no dice. All you had was a blurry mess of pixels that got tossed in the digital trash-bin. Out of sight, out of mind.

A photo is made from light hitting a sensor (we used to call it film). The product of light hitting the sensor is a combination of silver-halide or sensor sensitivity, lens aperture (depth of field) and shutter speed.  Yes, I used to work in a photo-lab.
This combination of chemical, mechanical and physics, relative to light, has been the same for more than a century. It doesn’t matter if it is digital or if it is film, how light is captured to make a photograph hasn't changed for a very long time.

A new camera aims to change that – it is called the Lytro and it is radically different. For the most part, you just point and shoot. Later, from your computer, you can change the image to focus on different areas of interest. The subject can change with the simple move of a slider bar on the screen. So if you change your mind, no problem, change the area of interest again and watch the focus in the image shift. When your done, render a new photograph and post it on Facebook. Or give it to Lee to copy to the cave wall. Just expect to hear him complain about it first.

The Lytro Camera

How does this change photography today? You no longer have to focus on a given subject. The camera calculus photographers do in their head to get just the right exposure and depth of field goes away. Now you just point in the general direction and the Lytro device captures the entire light field surrounding all viewable objects. Everything can be a subject in the field of view. 

Here is the gotcha – this is not something in a lab or being tested. The camera will be available for a few hundred dollars and it will be available soon.

I could write all day about the disruptive nature of this technology ... let us just say, the playing field between sony, nikon and canon may change drastically.

From a usage perspective - this will change what we traditionally understand as photography fundamentals. It isn’t just about snapshots and portraits of the family and pets, this touches on everything where there is video and image capture as a part of our day to day lives.

So how could this new technology change the way we do things today, tomorrow?

How about the security camera of the future? It could be a light-field driven camera where decisions in the courtroom change because the participants in the case can quickly adjust focus-attention of a scene. One shift in focus and the story being told is from a completely different point of view.

How about cameras in the operating room and the types of surgeries that have visual aides on monitors to guide a surgeon’s hands – we’re talking about cameras with potentially a tenth of the footprint in comparison and can shift light focus.

How about instant replay on the football field??

And finally, how about the camera on your phone? It would be nice to keep that digital trash-bin a little emptier during the next birthday party when trying to get a photo of the birthday cake before the candles are blown out.