New Lytro camera - A must see!
Discussion
A company called Lytro is designing a camera that may be the next giant leap in the evolution of photography — a consumer camera that shoots photos that can be refocused at any time. Instead of capturing a single plane of light like traditional cameras do, Lytro’s light-field camera will use a special sensor to capture the color, intensity, and vector direction of the rays of light (data that’s lost with traditional cameras).
http://www.petapixel.com/2011/06/22/lytro-is-devel...
http://www.petapixel.com/2011/06/22/lytro-is-devel...
If the quality is good and you can narrow the DOF and and have high ISO to remove camera shake there's not much point in buying expensive fast glass, it could cause a revolution. 
Fascinating; especially reading the PhD behind it from which I copy the Conclusion
Through a pioneering career as one of the original photojournalists, Henri Cartier-Bresson
(pxow ¡V qoos) inspired a generation of photographers, indeed all of us, to seek out and capture
the Decisive Moment in our photography.
The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take,
just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your
little box.
Armed only with his manual Leica, and ¡§no photographs taken with the aid of flashlight,
either, if only out of respect for the actual light,¡¨ Cartier-Bresson made it seem as if capturing
the decisive moment were as easy as turning one¡¦s head to casually observe perfection.
But most of us do not find it that easy. I love photography, but I am not a great photographer.
The research in this dissertation grew out of my frustration at losing many shots
to mis-focus. One of the historical lines in photography has been carried by generations
of camera engineers. From the original breakthrough by Daguerre in pwrx, which was instantly
popular in spite of the toxicity of the chemical process, to the development of the
hand-camera, derided by even the great Alfred Stieglitz before he recognized its value, to
the rise of digital photography in the last ten years, we have seen continuous progress in the
photographic tools available to us. But picture-making science is still young, and there are
still many problems to be solved.
puv
puw chapter w. conclusion
Themain lesson that I have learned through my research is that significant parts of the
physical process ofmaking photographs can be executed faithfully in software. Inparticular,
the problems associated with optical focus are not fundamental characteristics of photography.
The solution advanced in this dissertation is to record the light field flowing into
conventional photographs, and to use the computer to control the final convergence of rays
in our images. This new kind of photography means unprecedented capabilities after exposure:
refocusing, choosing a new depth of field, and correcting lens aberrations.
Future cameras based on these principles will be physically simpler, capture light more
quickly, and provide greater flexibility in finishing photographs. There is a lot of work to be
done on re-thinking existing camera components in light of these new capabilities.The last
chapter discussed how lens design will change to exploit digital correction of aberrations.
With larger-aperture lenses, itmay be possible to use a weaker flash systemor do away with
it in certain scenarios. Similarly, the design of the auto-focus system will change in light of
digital refocusing and the shift in optimal lens focus required by selectable refocusing power.
Perhaps the greatest upheaval will be in the design of the photosensor. We need to maximize
resolutionwith good noise characteristics ¡V not an easy task. And the electronics will need to
read it out at reasonable rates and store it compactly.This is themain price behind this new
kind of photography: recording and processing a lot more data. Fortunately, these kinds of
challengesmap very well to the exponential growth in our capabilities for electronic storage
and computing power.
In photography, one of the most promising areas for future work is developing better
processing tools for photo-finishing. In this dissertation, I chose methods that stayed close
to physical models of image formation in real cameras. Future algorithms should boldly
pursue non-physical metaphors, and should actively interpret the scene to compute a final
image with the best overall composition. The quintessential example would be automatic
refocusing of the people detected in the picture while softening focus on the background, as
I tried to suggest in the treatment of the two-person portrait in Figure s.pq. Such automatic
photo-finishing would be a boon for casual photographers, but it is inappropriate for the
professional photographer or serious enthusiast. Experts like these need interactive tools
that give them artistic control. A simple idea in this vein is a virtual brush that the user
would ¡§paint¡¨ over the photograph on the computer to push the local focus closer or further
pux
¡V analogous to dodging and burning in the old darkroom. Having the lighting at every pixel
in a photograph will enable all kinds of new computer graphics like this.
The ideas in this dissertation have already begun to make an impact in scientific imaging.
A light field camera attached to a microscope enables rd reconstruction of the specimen
from a single photographic exposure [Levoy et al. qoou], because it collects rays passing
through the transparent specimen at different angles. Telescopes present another interesting
opportunity. Would it be possible to discard the real-time deformable mirror used
in modern adaptive-optics telescopes [Tyson pxxp], instead recording light field video and
correcting for atmospheric aberrations in software? In general, every imaging device that
uses optics in front of a sensor may benefit from recording and processing ray directional
information according to the principles described in this dissertation.
This is a very exciting time to be working in digital imaging. We have two powerful
evolutionary forces acting: an overabundance of resolution, and processing power in close
proximity. I hope I have convinced you that cameras as we know them today are just an
evolutionary step in where we are going, and I feel that we are on the verge of an explosion
in new kinds of cameras and computational imaging.
But thankfully, some things are sure to stay the same. Photography will celebrate its
puvth birthday this year, and photographs are much older even than that ¡V we had them
floating on our retinas long before we could fix them on metal or paper. To me, one of
the chief joys in light field photography is that it feels like photography ¡V it very much is
photography as we know it. Refocusable images are compelling exactly because they look
like the imageswe¡¦ve always seen, except that they retain a littlemore life by saving the power
to focus for later. I find that this new kind of photographymakes taking pictures that much
more enjoyable, and I hope you will too. I look forward to the day when I can stand in the
tall grass and learn from fellow light field photographers shooting in the field.
DI G I TA L
L IG H T
F I E L D
P HOTO G R A P H Y
a dissertation submitted to the department of computer science and the committee on graduate studies of stanford university in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy
Ren Ng
July qoou
Through a pioneering career as one of the original photojournalists, Henri Cartier-Bresson
(pxow ¡V qoos) inspired a generation of photographers, indeed all of us, to seek out and capture
the Decisive Moment in our photography.
The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take,
just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your
little box.
Armed only with his manual Leica, and ¡§no photographs taken with the aid of flashlight,
either, if only out of respect for the actual light,¡¨ Cartier-Bresson made it seem as if capturing
the decisive moment were as easy as turning one¡¦s head to casually observe perfection.
But most of us do not find it that easy. I love photography, but I am not a great photographer.
The research in this dissertation grew out of my frustration at losing many shots
to mis-focus. One of the historical lines in photography has been carried by generations
of camera engineers. From the original breakthrough by Daguerre in pwrx, which was instantly
popular in spite of the toxicity of the chemical process, to the development of the
hand-camera, derided by even the great Alfred Stieglitz before he recognized its value, to
the rise of digital photography in the last ten years, we have seen continuous progress in the
photographic tools available to us. But picture-making science is still young, and there are
still many problems to be solved.
puv
puw chapter w. conclusion
Themain lesson that I have learned through my research is that significant parts of the
physical process ofmaking photographs can be executed faithfully in software. Inparticular,
the problems associated with optical focus are not fundamental characteristics of photography.
The solution advanced in this dissertation is to record the light field flowing into
conventional photographs, and to use the computer to control the final convergence of rays
in our images. This new kind of photography means unprecedented capabilities after exposure:
refocusing, choosing a new depth of field, and correcting lens aberrations.
Future cameras based on these principles will be physically simpler, capture light more
quickly, and provide greater flexibility in finishing photographs. There is a lot of work to be
done on re-thinking existing camera components in light of these new capabilities.The last
chapter discussed how lens design will change to exploit digital correction of aberrations.
With larger-aperture lenses, itmay be possible to use a weaker flash systemor do away with
it in certain scenarios. Similarly, the design of the auto-focus system will change in light of
digital refocusing and the shift in optimal lens focus required by selectable refocusing power.
Perhaps the greatest upheaval will be in the design of the photosensor. We need to maximize
resolutionwith good noise characteristics ¡V not an easy task. And the electronics will need to
read it out at reasonable rates and store it compactly.This is themain price behind this new
kind of photography: recording and processing a lot more data. Fortunately, these kinds of
challengesmap very well to the exponential growth in our capabilities for electronic storage
and computing power.
In photography, one of the most promising areas for future work is developing better
processing tools for photo-finishing. In this dissertation, I chose methods that stayed close
to physical models of image formation in real cameras. Future algorithms should boldly
pursue non-physical metaphors, and should actively interpret the scene to compute a final
image with the best overall composition. The quintessential example would be automatic
refocusing of the people detected in the picture while softening focus on the background, as
I tried to suggest in the treatment of the two-person portrait in Figure s.pq. Such automatic
photo-finishing would be a boon for casual photographers, but it is inappropriate for the
professional photographer or serious enthusiast. Experts like these need interactive tools
that give them artistic control. A simple idea in this vein is a virtual brush that the user
would ¡§paint¡¨ over the photograph on the computer to push the local focus closer or further
pux
¡V analogous to dodging and burning in the old darkroom. Having the lighting at every pixel
in a photograph will enable all kinds of new computer graphics like this.
The ideas in this dissertation have already begun to make an impact in scientific imaging.
A light field camera attached to a microscope enables rd reconstruction of the specimen
from a single photographic exposure [Levoy et al. qoou], because it collects rays passing
through the transparent specimen at different angles. Telescopes present another interesting
opportunity. Would it be possible to discard the real-time deformable mirror used
in modern adaptive-optics telescopes [Tyson pxxp], instead recording light field video and
correcting for atmospheric aberrations in software? In general, every imaging device that
uses optics in front of a sensor may benefit from recording and processing ray directional
information according to the principles described in this dissertation.
This is a very exciting time to be working in digital imaging. We have two powerful
evolutionary forces acting: an overabundance of resolution, and processing power in close
proximity. I hope I have convinced you that cameras as we know them today are just an
evolutionary step in where we are going, and I feel that we are on the verge of an explosion
in new kinds of cameras and computational imaging.
But thankfully, some things are sure to stay the same. Photography will celebrate its
puvth birthday this year, and photographs are much older even than that ¡V we had them
floating on our retinas long before we could fix them on metal or paper. To me, one of
the chief joys in light field photography is that it feels like photography ¡V it very much is
photography as we know it. Refocusable images are compelling exactly because they look
like the imageswe¡¦ve always seen, except that they retain a littlemore life by saving the power
to focus for later. I find that this new kind of photographymakes taking pictures that much
more enjoyable, and I hope you will too. I look forward to the day when I can stand in the
tall grass and learn from fellow light field photographers shooting in the field.
DI G I TA L
L IG H T
F I E L D
P HOTO G R A P H Y
a dissertation submitted to the department of computer science and the committee on graduate studies of stanford university in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy
Ren Ng
July qoou
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