Lytro camera hands-on videos

By PR admin | Published: October 19, 2011

Here are few hands-on video of the new Lytro camera that got announced earlier today:

Related posts:

  1. Lytro shows their light field camera for the first time
  2. Lytro light field camera briefly appears in a promotional video
  3. Lytro light field camera caught with a hidden Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chip
  4. Startup company Lytro promises to redefine photography with computational imaging
  5. The first Lytro light field camera expected by the end of the year

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  • NanDub

    Based on the dof I saw it appears that the equivalent sensor size (as in a “traditional” camera”) is kinda really small, the dof only become visually meaningful when you have subjects both very close and very far from the camera. And for its targeted user – people taking snap shots of daily life (in which case there’s usually no concern of dof at all) plus people craving for shallow dof yet troubled by how to get sharp shots from current SLRs ( in which case the dof of this camera will be too large to be relevant in most scenes except maybe macro shots) – the lack of necessity of focusing seems not really a huge advantage compared with currently available P&S cameras, especially considering the lightening fast focusing speed of Nikon V1. And, how many of its targeted users will actually bother to do post processing, even if it’s just re-focusing the image? Many of them (including myself when I take a snap shot with my phone) will not even bother to upload that image to a computer… If they can make the screen larger or maybe put a projector into it so that it becomes a viewing device as well, then people wouldn’t mind touch the screen and re-focus the images. Otherwise, I really doubt how many people will like the extra post-processing step.

    All in all it’s a very cool idea and may have its very specific usage (i.e., paparazzi job or sneak peek on a beach full of bikini girls), I just can’t see the advertised greatness on it…

    • http://www.flickr.com/genotypewriter genotypewriter

      First thing’s first… I was a bit skeptical at first because the initial experiments were done on a DMF-sized sensor and it wasn’t clear how that would’ve translated in to a more affordable camera. But this guy has done a great job in turning the theory in to a final product with a decent price tag!

      From what they’re saying it doesn’t sound like they’ve done enough background research in photography and what people want. I really don’t think any viewer (person) wants to refocus a published image… unless they’re camera-junkies doing it for novelty. So all that interactive facebook integration stuff is just pointless in my opinion. Just as option for the photographer to “export” a light-field image as an ordinary raster image (e.g. JPEG) is all that’s necessary when sending their photos out.

      And what really shows that these guys haven’t done enough background research is the shape of the camera. I mean come on!!! Boxy things! Seriously!!!??? These are not the Kodak Brownies… these have a LCD on the back! And $100 more for 16GB of extra storage…

      It’s interesting how they avoided answering the megapixel question. Sure, it works a different way but it doesn’t mean you have infinite resolution. And in a closed system like this it’s quite easy to measure an “effective” resolution. As for the SNR, it’s not going to be any more than what you’ll get with an ordinary camera with a similar sensor size.

      • fred

        Yeah, they might have created a Brownie moment by putting the LCD on top, but they put it on the back, and you can see how awkward it is to hold.

        With the ridiculous low resolution, I might buy it if it shot video, but no.

        Development would have been better spent putting the tech into a $1500 DSLR with a mechanism to move the plenoptic array in and out of place.

  • http://simonleongdesign.blogspot.com Simon Leong Design

    Great for spy photography I’m suspecting. I wonder how it performs in very low lighting conditions. Also does this mean the photos are all square in format?

  • http://twitter.com/#!/ZDP189 ZDP-189

    F^3

    form factor fail

    • totalreader

      +1
      Just huge lipstick :) ))

      but technology is great

      • http://www.TravisDart.com Travis Dart

        I think it looks more like a flashlight or a cigar…

        Those things aren’t considered “form factor fails.”

  • johnsmith

    mac only? this thing is dead to me.

    • Paul

      until 2012

      • Stu McConaghy

        They’ll be bankrupt by then.

        • lolly

          There’s probably a lot of venture capital behind this lytro camera … it’s certainly revolutionary … let’s see if they can do the marketing right to make it a success … a first model to market is usually a refined prototype … later models should be more interesting/marketable.

  • http://blogg.hogbergphotography.com Danonino

    Haha!

    “How does it do low light? How does it compare to an Ipad eh, Iphone?”

    “It´s pretty comparable..”

    W T F ! ?

    Nothing for people who use CAMERAS to take pictures then.

    Thanks but no thanks Lytro.

    • Robert

      A little impatient are we not. the tech is here to stay. Stop worrying about eronomics etc.. This is about buy in. They will try to ccapture consumer market first.

  • Bob

    “..more importantly I can Like and reshare…” U_U

  • Matt

    MEGARAYS? SERIOUSLY? These guys are MAKING UP new terms with every single step they make, based on nothing but marketing.

    FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION?
    DO THEY EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS? Because this is THE BEST EXAMPLE I’ve seen this year that is the EXACT OPPOSITE. This is FUNCTION FOLLOWING FORM. That is the WORST ergonomics I have ever seen on a camera. It’s like the design team never even talked to a real interaction designer, or the latter never finished or even did a proper education.

    INTERNAL MEMORY? WHAT IS THIS, 1999? I cannot believe they make you pay 100$ for 8gb extra memory. That is RIDICULOUS. And you can’t even choose what color your 16GB model comes in!?

    “Exposure Tap on touchscreen to set exposure.” TAP ON SCREEN? TAP ON A FUCKING 3CM WIDE SCREEN? HAVE YOU EVER TRIED THAT? A 3CM AREA I’M SUPPOSED TO TOUCH SOMETHING SMALL LIKE A PERSON? These people never even thought about photographing.

    “Produces HD-quality” HD-QUALITY? IS THAT WHAT YOUR RESOLUTION IS GUYS? HD CAN RANGE FROM 1280X720 UP TO 1920X1080. Since it’s square, and the height is the dominant factor in HD resolutions, that would be 1080×1080 pixels, which would actually correspond to what we’ve seen on Lytro’s website before. THOSE WERE FULL-SIZE IMAGES. THIS CAMERA’S RESOLUTION IS 1.2 MEGAPIXEL. ONE POINT TWO. YOU HEARD ME. THAT’S NOT EVEN ENOUGH RESOLUTION TO PRINT A TINY POSTCARD AND STATISFY YOUR AVERAGE COSTUMER.

    “Free storage for living pictures on Lytro.com, subject to the Terms of Use. (Internet access required)” SO TO ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO SHARE YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS ONLINE, YOU HAVE TO USE THEIR WEBSITE TO HOST ALL YOUR PHOTOS? OH WOW. OUCH.

    YOU ‘LAUNCH’ THE CAMERAS BUT THERE’S NO WINDOWS SOFTWARE? YOU PROMISE EVERYONE 3D BUT THE SOFTWARE AND ALGORITHM FOR THAT DOESN’T EVEN EXIST YET?

    GOOD IN LOW LIGHT? FROM A 1 MEGAPIXEL IMAGE ON A, WHAT WOULD IT BE BECAUSE THEY’RE SURE NOT TELLING US, TINY TINY SENSOR? I DON’T THINK SO. THIS MAKES A POP-UP FLASH SORELY LACKING.

    This company acts, writes and presents itself exactly like most fraudelent and scam companies would. They’re not taking this serious, and it shows, using weird made-up terms to sound impressive to people unaware of cameras. I honestly hope they go bankrupt soon, and I doubt there’s that many interest in this camera at such an incredibly high price, considering a high-end point and shoot is about 100$ to 200$ cheaper. And heck, they focus JUST FINE.

    Also, go to their website and check out the Great Monarch sample image. It’s impossible to focus properly on the far upper left background, this camera really DOESN’T capture everything they’d want you to believe.

    • ken r.

      oh shut up, coward. try it first, then decide if ist is good or not. troll…

      • Matt

        These are facts. It’s like me saying an f9 lens isn’t good for low-light, and you saying I should try it first before deciding if it’s good for low-light.

    • Yassinje

      Why I dont take this video and their images seriously ?
      I didnt hear a proper explanation of a photography-based expertise.
      I sense some SCAM here… The company might disappear after its pre-order payments are recieved. Just my intuition.

  • Nau

    you give great peace of tech to marketing ppl and the most exiting part of the presentation from them will be about Facebook like and re share

    doomed

  • kick and ouch

    how do u shoot picture with this thing? put it in the mouth an sucking it??

  • Ed Selous

    Looks pretty cool, Lytro might want to employ some people who know something about the camera, or photography in general though. The two stuttering guys in the first video didn’t have anything other than a very vague grasp of what they were selling.

  • Harold Ellis

    so it was designed by people who dont know what they talk about?

  • kenn rockwelle

    anyone notice the photographer in the back of one of these vids fucking chowing down on a bag of pretzels?

    • CJ

      Man, that guy was IMMERSED in that bag. I doubt that guys was there to take pictures, I think he was there for the food and cocktails.

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