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Lytro has really cool technology but never really found a good use case for consumers. I owned both the 1st generation and 2nd generation camera, as much as I h

Lytro has really cool technology but never really found a good use case for consumers. I owned both the 1st generation and 2nd generation camera, as much as I hated the UI of the software and usability of the hardware, I can clearly see the team has tried really hard to make it usable. They tried building an editing app, a community, a community 2.0, multiple hardware batch revisions. I wonder why they didn’t stop sooner or up to which point they feel like this direction is done. I felt they never really listened to the photographer community during the process, or answer support sufficiently, they have done pretty much the exact opposite of user first or user driven product development in my opinion, and this still left me confused today. Burning a few million dollars a month, I feel it really took a series of very bad decisions to lead to this financial outcome.

samstave 9y ago
They are buying them to make dash cams for self driving cars is my guess... That tech in dash-cam video is priceless
- akhatri_aus 9y ago
  It's likely for VR, the 'reverse' of the Lytro allows projection to the eye at multiple focal points.
  - jacobush 9y ago
    I don't know about "likely", but that is an awesome idea.
    - ipsum2 9y ago
      This already exists: http://lightfield-forum.com/light-field-camera-prototypes/nvidia-near-eye-light-field-display/ http://lightfield-forum.com/light-field-camera-prototypes/nv... (among others)
      - taneq 9y ago
        Wow, that looks awesome! For something at the demonstration-prototype stage in 2013 I'd have hoped they would have something at least in development by now.
        Qworg 9y ago
        They have a fully working version of it: https://vr.lytro.com/within/hallelujah https://vr.lytro.com/within/hallelujah
        taneq 9y ago
        Looks awesome, but only an "experience" rather than something you can buy? I guess it would need an ultra-beefy system to run it, and is probably extremely expensive and not supported by much software (yet).
        Qworg 9y ago
        They run it for you - it is a capture service. https://www.lytro.com/immerge#immergeDetails https://www.lytro.com/immerge#immergeDetails
        ipsum2 9y ago
        We're talking about two different things. Hallelujah is interesting because it does light field videography, but what I linked was a light field display.
    - ansible 9y ago
      My top candidate for AR in the longer term is a scanning pico-watt laser which projects the image directly onto your retina.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- coldtea 9y ago
  Why would it be priceless? With dash-cam video you can just chose a fixed hyperfocal distance and have everything in good focus. You certainly don't need creative DoP and bokeh...
  - JimmyAustin 9y ago
    Just spit-balling, but could it be used for cheap depth perception, like a LIDAR alternative?
    - Angostura 9y ago
      Sounds plausible to me.
    - StavrosK 9y ago
      Probably, but so can two normal cameras, like the ones humans have in our heads.
      - KaiserPro 9y ago
        stereo cameras only give two viewpoints, it requires a lot of processing power to re-create the 3d scene. a lightfield gives you much more information making reconstruction much simpler. You can also see past occlusions, something not possible with stereo.
        StavrosK 9y ago
        How can you see past occlusions?
        PaulHoule 9y ago
        A stereo camera array can see past occlusions in the sense that some things are occluded to one camera but not to another. With a larger and more distributed camera array, cameras could be pointed everywhere so that every point in the field has a certain level of coverage.
- randomerr 9y ago
  I think its more that what the tech is for the Pixel 2 Super XL edition or Pixel 3. That would let you build a 3d photo and post it to Google Photos. Or maybe they could partner up with a 3D printing company the way you can print photo albums.
Stratoscope 9y ago
I discovered Lytro at the Maker Faire when they had their "borrow a Lytro" demo. It was a great bit of marketing: take a Lytro around the Faire for an hour (where are there are always plenty of interesting subjects) and afterward they put all your shots in an online gallery for you. I got a fun shot or two that day and promptly bought one of their first cameras. But it wasn't a very good camera, and they completely missed the boat on making it a storytelling tool. I took my Lytro with me when I walked with Team Torani (the Italian syrup people) in the Columbus Day parade that year, and did not get even one good shot. I wished I'd brought my little point-and-shoot instead, or just about any other camera, because I would have gotten dozens of good shots. The pitch at the time was "you can put your photos on lytro.com, and people who view your gallery can click anywhere to refocus!" But who wants to do that? If you're looking at a gallery of photos, do you want to go clicking around to bring different things in and out of focus? I don't. But for a photographer, this had some potential as a storytelling tool. Imagine having a photo that would do its own "pull focus" [1] when you view it, like in the movies. The photographer could first focus on one subject and then have it slowly change focus to something else to reveal something new to the person viewing the photo. Kind of a Ken Burns effect [2] but in the focus plane instead of - or perhaps in addition to - panning and zooming. I remember one photo I got at the Menlo Park street fair that would have lent itself to this. I had the camera down around knee height, and a dog came up with his nose inches from the lens. In the background was his owner, an attractive young lady. It was a nice shot, and I imagined having it start with the dog's nose in focus and then gradually pulling the focus back to the owner. Granted, this wasn't much of a story, but it was something. I couldn't even do that. All I could do on lytro.com was set the initial focus, and then leave it to any viewers to go clicking around to fiddle with the focus themselves. But nobody wants to do that. It seemed like an opportunity lost, because they were so focused (pun intended) on the amazing technology and not on how to use it to tell stories. [1] https://vimeo.com/233143268 https://vimeo.com/233143268 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Burns_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Burns_effect
- ipsum2 9y ago
  I was of the opinion that Lytro was just a gimmick (we have light fields, what can we do with them?), but your post is really insightful. What you describe sounds like a useful product.
fuck_google 9y ago
Isn't that just like the Apple/Google way of telling the users what is right, because the users are not smart like the geniuses they have hired? :)
sp332 9y ago
But they did stop. They wound down the consumer products years ago and moved into enterprise consulting and selling huge cameras to move sets.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
bunderbunder 9y ago
1st gen owner here. They absolutely tried hard, but I feel like they missed out on doing the one thing that might have really let the product take off: Releasing APIs (or at least protocol specs) for interacting with the camera over USB and wifi, and releasing a spec for their file format. That might have given them a chance to really take off in the DIY and hobbyist market. After unboxing mine, I pretty much immediately wanted to use it to do the sorts of things that Google seems to want to do it. But without an easy way to dig into it, I lost interest pretty quickly. Taking off my hacker hat and putting on my consumer hat, it just wasn't going to take off. My cell phone is even more portable, takes higher resolution images, and makes sharing them much easier. Getting to refocus after the fact wasn't that great a trick, because my cell phone camera already does such a good job at autofocusing. Taking that one off and putting on my hobby photographer hat, same thing. Decades of taking pictures has left me with enough of a sense for where I want to put the focal point and what I want to do with the bokeh that I'd just as soon do it when I'm taking the picture. There was some initial fun of playing with a new toy, but ultimately I realized that doing it after the fact took what has historically been one of my favorite parts of photography and turned it into just another editing chore. That, and, even when I'm not 100% sure what I want to do with the focus at the time I'm taking the photo, my mirrorless's burst mode can accomplish essentially the same thing. But if I could have strapped that sucker onto a robot and played with using it for 3D scene reconstruction or something. . . that would have been fun.
- majormajor 9y ago
  How well did it work for action? That's where I find myself always hating autofocus (even on a fancy camera with focus tracking and motion detection and such).
  - bunderbunder 9y ago
    The v1, at least, wasn't great for action. It has 10 focal planes, but they cover a fairly small range of distances, so it still needed an autofocus to get the range of focal lengths to be centered on the subject. And that autofocus was pretty slow, even slower than what I'm used to on an SLR. I'd assume the Illum (which I've never had a chance to play with) would be way better on that front.
PaulHoule 9y ago
How about the potential as a robotics camera, say to compete with the Kinect or with laser scanners for self-driving cars, etc..?

samstave 9y ago

They are buying them to make dash cams for self driving cars is my guess... That tech in dash-cam video is priceless

akhatri_aus 9y ago
It's likely for VR, the 'reverse' of the Lytro allows projection to the eye at multiple focal points.
- jacobush 9y ago
  I don't know about "likely", but that is an awesome idea.
  - ipsum2 9y ago
    This already exists: http://lightfield-forum.com/light-field-camera-prototypes/nvidia-near-eye-light-field-display/ http://lightfield-forum.com/light-field-camera-prototypes/nv... (among others)
    - taneq 9y ago
      Wow, that looks awesome! For something at the demonstration-prototype stage in 2013 I'd have hoped they would have something at least in development by now.
      - Qworg 9y ago
        They have a fully working version of it: https://vr.lytro.com/within/hallelujah https://vr.lytro.com/within/hallelujah
        taneq 9y ago
        Looks awesome, but only an "experience" rather than something you can buy? I guess it would need an ultra-beefy system to run it, and is probably extremely expensive and not supported by much software (yet).
        Qworg 9y ago
        They run it for you - it is a capture service. https://www.lytro.com/immerge#immergeDetails https://www.lytro.com/immerge#immergeDetails
        ipsum2 9y ago
        We're talking about two different things. Hallelujah is interesting because it does light field videography, but what I linked was a light field display.
  - ansible 9y ago
    My top candidate for AR in the longer term is a scanning pico-watt laser which projects the image directly onto your retina.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
coldtea 9y ago
Why would it be priceless? With dash-cam video you can just chose a fixed hyperfocal distance and have everything in good focus. You certainly don't need creative DoP and bokeh...
- JimmyAustin 9y ago
  Just spit-balling, but could it be used for cheap depth perception, like a LIDAR alternative?
  - Angostura 9y ago
    Sounds plausible to me.
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    Probably, but so can two normal cameras, like the ones humans have in our heads.
    - KaiserPro 9y ago
      stereo cameras only give two viewpoints, it requires a lot of processing power to re-create the 3d scene. a lightfield gives you much more information making reconstruction much simpler. You can also see past occlusions, something not possible with stereo.
      - StavrosK 9y ago
        How can you see past occlusions?
        PaulHoule 9y ago
        A stereo camera array can see past occlusions in the sense that some things are occluded to one camera but not to another. With a larger and more distributed camera array, cameras could be pointed everywhere so that every point in the field has a certain level of coverage.
randomerr 9y ago
I think its more that what the tech is for the Pixel 2 Super XL edition or Pixel 3. That would let you build a 3d photo and post it to Google Photos. Or maybe they could partner up with a 3D printing company the way you can print photo albums.

Stratoscope 9y ago

I discovered Lytro at the Maker Faire when they had their "borrow a Lytro" demo. It was a great bit of marketing: take a Lytro around the Faire for an hour (where are there are always plenty of interesting subjects) and afterward they put all your shots in an online gallery for you. I got a fun shot or two that day and promptly bought one of their first cameras. But it wasn't a very good camera, and they completely missed the boat on making it a storytelling tool. I took my Lytro with me when I walked with Team Torani (the Italian syrup people) in the Columbus Day parade that year, and did not get even one good shot. I wished I'd brought my little point-and-shoot instead, or just about any other camera, because I would have gotten dozens of good shots. The pitch at the time was "you can put your photos on lytro.com, and people who view your gallery can click anywhere to refocus!" But who wants to do that? If you're looking at a gallery of photos, do you want to go clicking around to bring different things in and out of focus? I don't. But for a photographer, this had some potential as a storytelling tool. Imagine having a photo that would do its own "pull focus" [1] when you view it, like in the movies. The photographer could first focus on one subject and then have it slowly change focus to something else to reveal something new to the person viewing the photo. Kind of a Ken Burns effect [2] but in the focus plane instead of - or perhaps in addition to - panning and zooming. I remember one photo I got at the Menlo Park street fair that would have lent itself to this. I had the camera down around knee height, and a dog came up with his nose inches from the lens. In the background was his owner, an attractive young lady. It was a nice shot, and I imagined having it start with the dog's nose in focus and then gradually pulling the focus back to the owner. Granted, this wasn't much of a story, but it was something. I couldn't even do that. All I could do on lytro.com was set the initial focus, and then leave it to any viewers to go clicking around to fiddle with the focus themselves. But nobody wants to do that. It seemed like an opportunity lost, because they were so focused (pun intended) on the amazing technology and not on how to use it to tell stories. [1] https://vimeo.com/233143268 https://vimeo.com/233143268 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Burns_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Burns_effect

ipsum2 9y ago
I was of the opinion that Lytro was just a gimmick (we have light fields, what can we do with them?), but your post is really insightful. What you describe sounds like a useful product.

fuck_google 9y ago

Isn't that just like the Apple/Google way of telling the users what is right, because the users are not smart like the geniuses they have hired? :)

sp332 9y ago

But they did stop. They wound down the consumer products years ago and moved into enterprise consulting and selling huge cameras to move sets.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

bunderbunder 9y ago

1st gen owner here. They absolutely tried hard, but I feel like they missed out on doing the one thing that might have really let the product take off: Releasing APIs (or at least protocol specs) for interacting with the camera over USB and wifi, and releasing a spec for their file format. That might have given them a chance to really take off in the DIY and hobbyist market. After unboxing mine, I pretty much immediately wanted to use it to do the sorts of things that Google seems to want to do it. But without an easy way to dig into it, I lost interest pretty quickly. Taking off my hacker hat and putting on my consumer hat, it just wasn't going to take off. My cell phone is even more portable, takes higher resolution images, and makes sharing them much easier. Getting to refocus after the fact wasn't that great a trick, because my cell phone camera already does such a good job at autofocusing. Taking that one off and putting on my hobby photographer hat, same thing. Decades of taking pictures has left me with enough of a sense for where I want to put the focal point and what I want to do with the bokeh that I'd just as soon do it when I'm taking the picture. There was some initial fun of playing with a new toy, but ultimately I realized that doing it after the fact took what has historically been one of my favorite parts of photography and turned it into just another editing chore. That, and, even when I'm not 100% sure what I want to do with the focus at the time I'm taking the photo, my mirrorless's burst mode can accomplish essentially the same thing. But if I could have strapped that sucker onto a robot and played with using it for 3D scene reconstruction or something. . . that would have been fun.

majormajor 9y ago
How well did it work for action? That's where I find myself always hating autofocus (even on a fancy camera with focus tracking and motion detection and such).
- bunderbunder 9y ago
  The v1, at least, wasn't great for action. It has 10 focal planes, but they cover a fairly small range of distances, so it still needed an autofocus to get the range of focal lengths to be centered on the subject. And that autofocus was pretty slow, even slower than what I'm used to on an SLR. I'd assume the Illum (which I've never had a chance to play with) would be way better on that front.

PaulHoule 9y ago

How about the potential as a robotics camera, say to compete with the Kinect or with laser scanners for self-driving cars, etc..?