Lytro: The Biggest Thing to Happen to Photography Since Digital
The Lytro camera may be the most diminutive object to start a revolution. With its simple, rectangular form factor, the Lytro looks more ready to bestow the user with a half-dozen Oreo cookies than a totally new kind of photography. But that's exactly what it promises (and without any trans fat).The Lytro is the world's first consumer light-field camera. Unlike conventional models, a light-field camera captures all the light information from all the rays in its field of view — not just color and intensity, but direction as well. The method has a number of novel applications, the most publicized being photos that the viewer can focus after the fact. Here's an example of one of Lytro's so-called "living pictures:"
The idea of using a camera to "shoot now, focus later" is what captured the world's attention when creator Ren Ng revealed his new company and its ambitions to the world earlier this year. Lytro said it hoped to have a camera for sale by the end of 2011, and although it's missed that deadline, the company unveiled the camera in October and customers can preorder it now. (One big caveat: it's only Mac-compatible.) It'll be in consumers' hands before spring 2012, according to the company.
How It Works
The Lytro requires a completely different approach to photography, but the device still needs to be fundamentally a camera — small and portable, not to mention easy to use. Lytro's engineers needed to achieve in a compact gadget what had previously been done with a room full of cameras and a supercomputer.
"We're capturing a different kind of image," says Charles Chi, executive chairman of Lytro. "Basic cameras capture a 2D slice of a scene. For us, we're capturing rays of light. It's important to capture the ray, but also the direction."
They started with the lens, which is an 8x optical-zoom lens with an constant f/2 aperture — and extremely large spec even by the standards of high-end DSLR cameras. A big aperture is necessary to capture as much light information as possible, and it gives the camera very good performance in low light, Chi says. The lens array is specially packaged with the sensor, and doing that properly with a mass-market product was a challenge.
"The lens array needs to be packaged with the sensor at a very precise distance," says Chi. "No one had ever done this before. Internally we had done it, but we had to refine it to ensure high quality and high yield. Perfection of the product took several months."
Once all the light-ray information is gathered and captured by the sensor, it's up to some sophisticated technology to process it. Enter the light-field engine. Proprietary software can take that data and, with a click of the mouse, repurpose the photo to change the focus or even create a 3D image.
The sheer amount of data and different way it's stored meant the designers needed to create an entirely new file format, called .lfp (light-field picture). Although that means light-field pics aren't compatible with services like Snapfish of Flickr, anyone who buys the camera will get unlimited storage on the Lytro site, and those pictures can be embedded on other sites with their full refocusing powers intact.
The Camera That's Not a Camera
All that novel technology needs a novel design, and Lytro didn't disappoint. The camera looks nothing like today's point-and-shoots and DSLRs, with an austere anodized aluminum exterior, a rubberized grip and just two buttons: a shutter button and on/off. A simple finger swipe along the casing controls the zoom.
Although Chi admits they company was definitely trying to stand out with a signature form factor, there were many practical considerations in the design. "It's very much about form following function," he says. "We put a lot of effort into minimizing the size of the electronics and creating a great user experience."
Chi explains that the shutter button is right on the camera's center of gravity. The designers made sure to ensure the two lined up so hand movement would be minimized, cutting down on any motion blur.
"We did a lot of ergonomic testing. When we were going through industrial design choices, we were looking at early adopters," he says. "We wanted to appeal to that kind of buyer, give them something they'd be proud to own."
The Future
The forthcoming camera only takes stills, but could we soon see a Lytro for video? Chi says that the company's looking into it.
"Video is possible with light fields. The issue isn't multiple exposures — video is typically 60 exposures per second. We can absolutely do that. The difference is the amount of data coming off of the image sensor. We capture images in full raw. If we have to do that 60 fps, that's a lot of data to process."
Besides video, light field photography could also lead to an inexpensive way to shoot in 3D, or further down the road, even holograms. In the here and now, though, Lytro is concentrating on bringing its first camera to market. The first Lytro camera should be here by April, and it'll be available in three colors and two capacities: The 8GB version comes in electric blue and graphite for $399, and the 16GB version only comes in "red hot" for $499.
Will you buy a Lytro? What's your favorite part of its design? Let us know in the comments.
