Originally Posted By: canuckInOR

So... the Lytro, gimmicky. Lightfields, not gimmicky.


Exactly. The Lytro's player allows anyone to refocus what appear to be simply bland/bad photos from their demo showcase I first saw last month (or was it September?)

The technology uses prismatic micro-lenses to capture multiple light fields, it doesn't take multiple photos. Its resulting file isn't exactly a photo either - it needs to be processed into one. And the Lytro implementation only captures sufficient light fields to produce a small number of focus possibilities. I believe it's 8 planes.

This isn't infinite focus by any stretch and I believe we're many years away from the technology being that mature, let alone being able to control depth of field which is a lot more fun than simply altering the focal plane. In the Lytro images I looked at, there wasn't much point to changing the focal plane - the images could have been captured with a traditional process producing better looking photographs. The Lytro only added the Facebook gimmick - which will be fun for about 5 minutes.
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Bruno
Twisted Melon : Fine Mac OS Software