dcjs wrote: "The light field engine then processes the data into a picture that is displayed in HD quality."
Taken from the announcement on dpreview. This might provide some clues as to the MP count.
Yep, but it is still weasel words to most of us. They can upsample to HD quality of course. I think everyone expects that the plenoptic micro-lens resolution is either 11MP/16 = 0.7MP or perhaps (but less likely) 11MP/9 = 1.22MP. They can take that native "resolution" and resample it to whatever they want for "display", just like Fuji did with its diagonal array sensors a decade ago. Some upsampling is probably fair as plenoptic systems are capable of a certain degree of super-resolution from a single exposure. I'd bet it is an 11MP sensor with 16 times decimation (so 0.7 million plenoptic lenses) that they will upsample slightly to something like 1080 HD resolutions.
No it isn't limited by "megarays". It is limited by their web application. A plenoptic image can be focused at any distance within its total focus range, it isn't limited to "zones". To serve up their images, however, the presently do zone process which results in the behavior you describe. This was brought up and explained way back when they did their first press release.
What "megarays" limit is the product of resolution and total focus range. You can have a deeper focus range with a lower output resolution or choose the opposite trade-off. This is not something the user can select, it is determined by the decimation ratio of the plenoptic micro-lens array. What they are being coy about is what is that decimation ratio or equivalently what is the number of plenoptic micro-lenses.
What it does illustrate well is all the potential problems with their social media business model. Sharing the images in an interactive way is dependent on their servers and how they decide to restrict the processing and viewing. On your computer with their software you'll be able to select an exact plane of focus, but if you share your images it looks like your viewers will see "zones".
As to your other comment, the output is 2D in the same way a movie is 2D. On the other hand movies and still images are quite different, and a scientist would say it is because the movie is a 3D data-set with the third dimension being time. Similarly changing focus is an additional dimension. In reality it is two additional dimensions although their current rendering transforms it into only a single addition dimension (focus distance).
This is clearly in an early adopter phase, but like any technology will improve over time. All Lytro had done is move the technology from prototype to mass production P&S. That is how progress happens.
I'm having a laugh at all the people who actually pre-ordered the thing and are livid about the IQ of the files being spit out from the thing (seen in reviews no popping up). Should have thought through a bit, you're now an early adopter of a new technology. This seems like it would interesting when its matured a bit, it seems half baked in its current form. Also I don't think I've ever ran into a situation where I wanted to change focus so dramatically. The changing of focus points seems to be the most uninteresting aspect of this camera in real world situations for me.
A hint to Sony: how about taking NEX camera and adding a "Lytro" shooting mode:
1) Just before taking a picture, quickly move focus from closest distance to infinity and capture/record all "focus peaking" information in a special file.
2) Take a picture using small aperture and hyperfocal distance to put everything in focus. Take more than one picture if necessary at different focal distances.
3) Write a viewer program that uses recorded focus peaking information and instantly blurs part of the picture to emulate objects moving in and out of focus.
I don't think I would ever need this mode, but history is full of examples when people said just that about what's most ubiquitous technology today - radio, cars, etc.
Morfeus wrote:
And the whiners had a reason. The introduction of digital cameras has changed the world of commercial photography to a huge extent.
I am not a professional photographer but earn my money partly with selling fine art photography since many years. I have spent thousands of dollars paying pros for photos of the artwork and thousands of dollars for sending large format ektachromes with FedEx around the world to clients and for producing books and catalogues.
Since the marketing guys make everyone believe that taking a good photograph is as easy as pushing the button on top of the camera, many pros have given up their businesses and most of the pro labs have gone out of business.
And, I am talking about pros here, that made the images for the annual calendars of a well known German sports car manufacturer, just to name one example.
Digital images have saved a lot of money for my business, but it is really sad that so many excellent photographers had to give up and I really understand that they whine.
That's certainly true, but in any artistic pursuit, whether it be painting, photography or fashion, you have to adapt and give clients what is in fashion NOW, or be a trend-setter and create what's going to be 'in'. Those that didn't adapt, failed. It's like that in general business too...as the market changes, you need to adapt to the change and put your resources in the areas where the market is moving to, and if you don't, you're going to fail.
Look at RIM. Blackberry use to be synonymous with business smartphone, and they are now absolutely tanking because they did nothing when the iPhone and Android came on strong and didn't adapt quickly enough to the emerging market. Now they'll likely be out of business in 5 years or less unless they pull something out of their hats.
Ataboy wrote:
A hint to Sony: how about taking NEX camera and adding a "Lytro" shooting mode:
1) Just before taking a picture, quickly move focus from closest distance to infinity and capture/record all "focus peaking" information in a special file.
2) Take a picture using small aperture and hyperfocal distance to put everything in focus. Take more than one picture if necessary at different focal distances.
3) Write a viewer program that uses recorded focus peaking information and instantly blurs part of the picture to emulate objects moving in and out of focus.
I don't think I would ever need this mode, but history is full of examples when people said just that about what's most ubiquitous technology today - radio, cars, etc....Show more →
I don't think you'd even need separate focus peaking and stopped-down images; just capture a segment of video while sweeping the lens at about the right rate to move focus by one DOF in each frame. Instant selectable-focus stack of images, and none of the heavy computer processing required for Lytro's sensor is needed here (although with full processing, you can still reconstruct the data capture by a plenoptic sensor, and allow for fancy variable control over focus in post).
