Okay Geek Farm
Lytro - Wouldn't it be nice to refocus photos after you take them?
Brandon Davenport
When you understand photography, and start to treat it more seriously than something “fun” to do, you know how painstaking it is to get that perfect shot. One of the most important things to capturing the essence of what’s seen through the viewfinder is making sure the focus is spot on, and admittedly, that’s hard to do sometimes, especially if it’s an off-the-cuff shot. What’s even harder is realizing you could have focused on something else entirely to make the photo look way cooler, but missed that in your initial observation. Well, due to the power of technical advancement, none of this is a problem any more!
Lytro allows you and your friends to refocus photos
The idea of Lytro is simple — take photos on the fly, and refocus them later when you can think clearly, and see everything in frame. The Lytro uses the “Light Field”, which is the amount of light traveling in every possible direction everywhere in space at the point you snap a photo. The camera you have right now can’t do this, so Lytro is planning to build cameras that can do this.
“By substituting powerful software for many of the internal parts of regular cameras, light field processing introduces new capabilities that were never before possible. Sophisticated algorithms use the full light field to unleash new ways to make and view pictures.
Relying on software rather than components can improve performance, from increased speed of picture taking to the potential for capturing better pictures in low light. It also creates new opportunities to innovate on camera lenses, controls and design.” — Lytro
Where will the “art” in Photography be?
When you think about it, Lytro will definitely change photography forever, but will it impact how it’s perceived? Considering that now you don’t even need to focus properly with the Lytro makes photography seem even easier, maybe to a fault — but making sure a photo is in focus is only a small part of grabbing the perfect photo. It will be a long time before cameras can do everything perfectly for us, and we’re definitely excited to see what Lytro does for the future of photography, and how we can use it to aid us in the never ending quest for the perfect shot.
