Lytro? An early review

The goofy and potentially loveable Lytro camera gets a look at DP Review. Hard to know what to make of its potential, but the technology is dazzling.

Lytro review

And it's small.

Cheers,

You can't really say it's the Sputnik (c.1955 from Russia) of the digital age:



But more the Instamatik 10 (c.1971 from Kodak) of the digital age:



One day the technology could be available to the point-and-shoot consumer in a decent-megapixel camera with a decent-sized viewing screen as a way to not have to focus. Or maybe you would just hold it up and shoot and then crop and focus sharpen later and not even have a screen to compose on (or viewfinder to look thru.) Now that's a true P&S!

But can you see any application now, Rick, with this odd-shaped thing for a lightweight hiker? Any idea what it will cost?

Perhaps it will be the new "digital" Holga (c.1981, from China), intended to provide an inexpensive mass-market camera for the working-class in order to record family portraits and events. We could make them in the US by the millions for the new Chinese burgeoning bourgeoisie.

The least we can do is take notice since Ren Ng, the CEO of Lytro, developed the technology at Stanford fairly recently and already has this first product ready for market. I wouldn't necessarily want to buy one -- but certainly would love to invest in some stock . . . ?

Hi Kevon,

All excellent points. I'm taking this one from the "we report, you decide" standpoint, but confess I'm hooked on clicking the sample images to shift focus. I'm simple that way.

$400/$500 for the 8gb/16gb versions. A lot like buying an ipod. And with that shameless segue, I'll add the rumors floating about that they're in talks with Apple. Stuff the tech in the iphone and you instantly have 50 million users.

If the technology were transitionable to "real" cameras, I could imagine some interesting results using fast primes and a decent size imager. That would make the effect far more dramatic and ease the focusing task considerably (I have lenses with DOFs best measured in millimeters). The needed computing power and file size would be enormous.

It could be the next thing for the public to become bored with, after they give up on 3-D.

Cheers,