Lytro Light Field 3D Compatible Camera Begins Shipping

The world’s first consumer light field camera began shipping to customers in the US yesterday, a moment which the company hopes will start a revolution in consumer photography.

The futuristic looking device has been in the works for several years and is built from an extruded anodized aluminium skin and features just two buttons – an on/off button and a shutter button. For playback, there is a glass multi-touch screen.

The Lytro Light Field camera features an optical 8 times zoom with a consistent f/2 aperture across the entire zoom range which allows for maximum light capture. The inbuilt sensor can capture up to 11 million light rays (or 11 million megarays). Unlike a conventional camera, a light field camera captures the ‘light field’ of a scene. This represents the intensity, colour and more importantly the direction of every light ray of an image. This directional information is not recorded by a traditional camera which adds up all the points of light and records them as a single pixel of light. Lytro have created a new picture format called LFP which is compatible for online viewing on tablets and mobiles.

The megarays are not viewed directly by the viewer. They are projected from their '4D ray space' onto the 2D sensor. The extra information is always available but not always viewable – it is up to the consumer how they manipulate that data.

Lytro deploy sophisticated software algorithms to utilise the extra information to provide new features for consumers, the most famous of which allows for post re-focussing. For example, the user can refocus a scene on a person in the foreground or background years after taking a shot. Other benefits include faster image taking and better low light performance.

Lytro 3D Update

The extra information also allows the viewer to shift perspective of a scene to a small extent using the included software (you can see a demo of this in this video – http://allthingsd.com/20111019/lytro-demo-at-asiad-video. You will need to skip to five minutes in). Using two of the available perspectives, the Lytro camera will also be able to produce 3D stereo pair imagery after a software update due later this year. All pictures taken from a Lytro camera will be 3D compatible in the future which can be viewed in the usual 3D ways including glasses free 3D phones like the HTC EVO 3D and the LG Optimus 3D. The company claims that, if in the future people create a holographic display, there will be enough data in Lytro files to create a holographic picture.

The Lytro camera costs between $399 and $499 depending on memory storage and is only available in the US. There is currently no information as to when or if the Lytro camera will be released outside of the US.

For more information including interactive examples vist www.lytro.com

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