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Lytro's light field is a bullshit product that very few photographers and even fewer consumers will actually give a shit about. Nikon, Canon, etc. have made fa
by 9999 15y ago
Lytro's light field is a bullshit product that very few photographers and even fewer consumers will actually give a shit about. Nikon, Canon, etc. have made far more significant advances in the last five years than Lytro. Here is a short list of reasons why Lytro's product is just a big ball of hype:
1) Horrible low light performance from the sensor, which they have deflected by talking up the relatively large aperture of their lens, which is not really even that impressive (f/0.95 would be impressive, maybe even an f/1.4, but f/2? go buy a Panasonic LX5, it blows the Lytro out of the water).
2) No one cares about adjusting focus after the fact, get it right the first time, or don't bother. Even when you can adjust the focus, 99.9% of the time, that feature is only useful for macro photography, which is generally tightly controlled and reproducible at the time of exposure
3) The resolution sucks.
4) The form factor is way too big for a supposedly revolutionary product
5) There is no convenient way to share your photos directly from the device
6) Slow frame rate (again, even the lowly and well aged LX5, which you can buy for around $270 on Amazon right now, blows it out of the water)
7) The UI sucks. They're going for Apple level quality there, but they're a bunch of third rate amateurs.
8) Only hobbyists and pros want to fiddle with an image after it's taken, your average Joe just wants it to look great the second they take it. What's better, red eye reduction in some software on your computer or red eye reduction in the camera?
You know who gives a shit about Lytro? Gadget bloggers do, because it's something new. That's it. The technology is hardly revolutionary. Due to the small sensor size in what they're offering, it's pretty hard to even tell you've shifted focus in anything other than a macro shot. Go look at this example:
http://www.lytro.com/living-pictures/144 http://www.lytro.com/living-pictures/144
This is one of the very few honest examples in their gallery. You can barely detect the focus shift because the depth of field is pretty high already, which is commonly the case with the cameras average users have embraced (wide angle lenses and a small aperture mean that almost any cell phone will guarantee that everything is in focus in a daylight pic). Furthermore, for the vast majority of photography there are not multiple points that should be in focus. 99% of the time, you either want everything in focus or only one thing in focus. Look at this example:
http://www.lytro.com/living-pictures/138 http://www.lytro.com/living-pictures/138
Why would I want only one in focus?? So my gadget blogging buddies can fiddle fuck around with it using some proprietary widget on some website? Jesus.
Lightfield's everything in focus tech comes at a cost that is far, far too high. None of Kodak's expertise can correct for that, because it is basically a question of processing power and what the sensor is optimized for. What do you want? High resolution? Great low light sensitivity? Super high frame rates? Selective focus in editing? Super long battery life? You can't have them all. Consumers won't care about it, pros don't care about it, and there will be a terrible, terrible bunch of reviews as soon as they get to market. I wish they were public so I could short them.
Lenticular printing?? Seriously? Hollywood and every TV manufacturer are slowly realizing (again, because they like to do this every 40 years or so) that almost no one cares about 3D TVs or programming. You want Kodak to go down that path in a format where it's not even as beneficial?
Printing 3D objects is something Kodak could go after, but do they have any expertise whatsoever in that field? Creating a truly revolutionary digital camera (e.g. something that captures things people actually care about, like crazy fast action at a kid's soccer game from 30 yards away like the new Nikon V1 can, and can be shared instantly) is another thing they should go after.
Lightfield. Ha.
- Pheter 15y ago"Lytro's light field is a bullshit product that very few photographers and even fewer consumers will actually give a shit about." You're underestimating how the technology can be used to simplify the process of taking an image for the average consumer. With the right marketing and UX Lytro could sell their camera as one that 'just works'. No one wants to bother focusing an image. Everyone is disappointed when a photo comes out blurry. Yeah sure they could invest time into learning how to take better pictures but for a lot of people who just want nice pictures of their friends when they're on holiday/at a club/out for dinner, they don't want to waste their time doing that. A camera where focusing an image is abstracted away so that the consumer doesn't have to think about it would be a huge step forward. (Think post-shot auto-focus with optional tweaking for when the camera doesn't get it right). Combine this with features already available such as automatic red-eye reduction and the barrier to entry for taking decent quality pictures is much lower. A lot of people would buy that camera.
- chrischen 15y ago> You're underestimating how the technology can be used to simplify the process of taking an image for the average consumer. With the right marketing and UX Lytro could sell their camera as one that 'just works'. Simpler than having the camera embedded in your phone so you don't have to carry two devices just to take and send pictures? Face it if you're a pro you'd carry an SLR and if you're not you'd probably just use your phone.
- justincormack 15y agoPhotos are usually blurry because the exposure time is long because light levels are low. Depth of field is very high on consumer cameras sofocussing is pretty much unnecessary.
- 9999 15y ago"A camera where focusing an image is abstracted away so that the consumer doesn't have to think about it would be a huge step forward. (Think post-shot auto-focus with optional tweaking for when the camera doesn't get it right). " Almost every DSLR you can buy has already abstracted this away by coming up with really killer AF systems. Cheap consumer cameras and cell phone cameras have abstracted this away by always producing images with a super high depth of field. There is an inherent contradiction in what you're saying about the post-shot tweaking and user simplicity. The camera has to always get it right, there is no post-shot process for anyone other than photo hobbyists and professionals, who represent a small (though not insignificant) market. I do agree that their technology could be slightly useful for that market, but unfortunately the major use case is when the camera has screwed up, and because of the nature of their technology, the images produced with it are of such mediocre quality that it's almost hard to tell the difference. Even in the macro shots on their demo gallery, the lens itself is so soft and the resolution off the sensor is so poor that shifting the focus isn't even all that rewarding most of the time. The long and the short of it is that Lytro are not making the kind of camera you are talking about. Sony are with their NEX series. Panasonic are with their GF series. Nikon with the 1 series. The iPhone 4S camera totally destroys the Lytro for apparent image quality, low light performance, dynamic range, and then completlely annihilates them when it comes to actually doing something with your photos... Lytro's camera is a graduate thesis that grew legs, went mad with delusions of grandeur and tried to con the whole world into thinking that its one basically irrelevant feature is actually revolutionary. Gadget bloggers believed the hype because that's essentially what they're paid to do.