Panasonic Light Field sensor Patent No. 20140078259. Light Field forum coloured the most important elements.
LIke you know Lytro created quite some buzz with their recent Lytro Illum Light Field Digital Camera (specs here on BHphoto). And we now from patents that Panasonic is working on such a Light Field Camera too (see patent on top for example).
In a new Interview at Thenextweb Lytro’s CEO Jason Rosenthal said that Light Field Cameras will eventually replace current system camera tech. If he is correct we really have to change our way of thinking and habits. It will be a huge change!
P.S.: Play with that image to learn in three seconds what a Ligh Field Camera can do:
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for Online viewing it might seem to make sense but for prints it makes no difference – of course one has the ability to change the image before printing so in that sense might make sense –
3D has still not gotten very popular – and Beta was better then VHS and so was HD DVD –
so time will tell – I just have not seen any of my friends run out and get the Lytro although I know one person that owns one but he does not use it much –
Same thing when digital cameras come out (the first cameras had 640×480 output). But after 20years, who still use films?
There’s still strongholds of film users, such as in APUG.
Like any other tech news that say “kill” in its headline, we need to agree on a certain threshold to declare it “dead”.
Else, as long as there’s still one film camera working, the proponents will say digital has failed to kill film. The only acceptable defeat is a 100% wipeout.
This would be the case in the internet for this light field vs traditional.
As long as there’s still one camera still working, even though the support has ended years ago, they will stubbornly stand like the Black Knight in Monty Python.
del
was better then VHS and so was HD DVD –
so time will tell – I just have not seen any of my friends run out and get the Lytro although I know one person that owns one but he does not use it much –
http://radyabkhodro.net/
I am not sure. At least to what I have learned from blogs and forums, is that photographers are quite conservative and resistant to adapt new stuff. Doesn’t every single, but that is my feeling regarding the majority.
It has a long ways to go to pose a threat. “When a 40 megaray light field image is converted to 2D the export resolution is approximately 4MP.” 4 MP $1499 does not pose a threat to conventional digital. Will it ever maybe but I have my doubts.
Time will learn, but Lightfield camera is just a baby in the world of camera’s. The only thing you can adjust is the place where you want the focus. Aperture is stuck and can’t be changed. DOF is an gimmick of today. Maybe in the future, we just don’t care about DOF, but quality in lenses and scharpness.
Hmmm, timewill tell. 3D cameras were said to be the future years ago, but as far as I know they didn´t have the breaktrough.
Betteridge’s law of headlines – Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.
I guess if I could completely understand the technology (which I don’t yet) I could envision it replacing most cameras….but I sense that it is possible. Viewing media for images is changing just as quickly as camera tech and perhaps the Lytro camera and how we view our photos, advertisements and educational materials are on a collision course?
I welcome this development. It’s a new direction and a new set of creative opportunities. But I don’t think it will replace classic 2D photography, just like we don’t watch 3D news on our TVs. Its role will be complementary I think. It can give e.g. web sites a new “pop”. Even wedding photos etc. with a bit of perspective parallax can look lively and great.
With a picture I normally try to create a very specific look and view.
This Lytro thing reminds me of “zoom in” applications you sometimes find on product description pages in the web. “Naturalism” I’d say.
I could well accept this as a RAW that is totally RAW. IF it could change aperture in post.
You can put your effort in to capturing extremely detailed information from from a single focal plane, or you can spread out that effort, and capture data in the depth plane as well. Either way you have limited resources, unless you have an unlimited budget, and the size of the camera is not a factor.
Kill is definitely too strong a word.
Not in the foreseeable future, not for everyday photography.
When someday 10+ MP conventional images can be extracted out of light field data, things will become more interesting. For example, I expect focus stacking to become replaced by light field imaging to some extent, at some point in time.
May be and the question is: will something that killed the killer of the killer of lightfield kill it? Yes and it will be killed too.
No way. And all the lenses, sensor tech and special features we all love?? Is like asking, will point’n’shoot replace system cameras? For amateur use, maybe, nothing more than this.
hmmm… it’s not though. You can’t compare it. And there’s certainly no way to tell how professionals will exploit this tech. I doubt people will enjoy zooming in and out and panning and focussing, what you see in that example is a demo of what can be done, but not what it will be used for. To the photographer producing the end image, it’s just a tool like digital post-processing.
Will digital toys replace film cameras?
So basically it’s for people who are too lazy to compose and focus a proper shot.
In the same way that RAW is for people who can’t nail the exposure.
I disagree on this, RAW certainly is not same. And has far more use than simply recovering bad photo.
RAW allows you to also change/correct the color balance, noise reduction levels among other things without degrading the image due to recompression of the image after every change you make to a jpeg image. So no…RAW isn’t only for exposure.
RAW is the digital equivalent of darkroom development – You could take old film, use different chemical solutions, crops, and exposures to draw multiple levels of analogue data from a single shot. RAW is a very well executed attempt to make digital as dynamic as analogue, not what you are suggesting.
Are applications like Lightroom, Photoshop or Aperture for people who are too lazy to take good shots? I mean, they allow you to change the picture you took, so what’s the difference between in-cam and post processing? None! Get over it, deal with it, embrace it and at least, keep up! There will always be purists, but they quickly become extinct. LightField is happening, and I for one am interested in the possible future. I know it’s a long way off, but you’re making a big mistake by thinking it’s for idiots. I promise you pros will find very good uses for it when the tech develops further.
Well killing is a big word. I do think m43 is going to die soon though, it is long overdue.
wha? There are more companies than ever developing tech, lenses etc. for the M43 format. Mirrorless system camera sales are increasing – where do you get your info?
I doubt he’s even checking any info at all 🙂
I think he’s been given plenty of info, he just can’t handle it.
Yes, long overdue. That’s why more comapnies are producing cameras and lenses, because it’s dying.
After or before Lytro runs out of money?
We’d be foolish not to acknowledge that this tech is promising. To say “no way” is like when Bill Gates said that the internet was a fad, or oldskool photographers claimed that digital cameras will never replace film. I can agree that it has a loooong way to go before it’s going to deliver results that are competitive with current digital cameras and lenses, but as soon as they get that nanotech working and bring 16+ Megapixels to the game, I’m betting we’ll see new and amazing uses for it in photography, where the parameters we currently use in photography such as ISO, DOF, F-stops and so still have relevance, but are applied in the LightField world. Bring it!
It will happen at some point. It won’t happen today, but as soon as the technology gets there it could really change your perception on camera tech. It needs more MP’s and control over DOF. Eventually, computer simulation will be just as good rendering bokeh as even the best lenses out there. I think it’s foolish to think this won’t happen eventually.
This is pretty incredible tech. The race will be for Lytro to survive long enough to develop a high rez version. Do they have other uses for the existing tech?
I really doubt it will even if they manage to create higher resolution cameras. At least doubt we will ever see it. After all, there are so many different photography niches. But of course, like phones, it can take one piece of cake. However mirrorless and classic dslr’s compete in same field and we might even see when the mirror will pass away.
come on, cameras will small pixels already work. FF with same sized pixels as on 1/2.3″ gives 600 MP. If you need 36 mpix images, up to 16 pixels can be clustered as one light field pixel.
In short: we are very likely to see it, maybe not in 2015, but in next decades for sure. At least it’s most useful method for excessive pixel numbers.
A bit wrong meaning, didn’t finish my sentence properly. What we won’t see is light field cameras kill mirrorless and dslr.
While the Illum still doesn’t have the resolution to compete with conventional sensors, I think there are a number of killer applications for lightfield cameras that have serious potential. Off the top of my head:
1) Macro photos. Infinite depth of field without any of the lame faux-bokeh selective focus is incredible, letting you shoot at wider apertures with high shutter speeds. Ups the game for available-light nature macro photography, for sure.
2) Sports! No need to worry about whether your $10000 camera & lens combination has its AF accurately micro-adjusted while you motor-drive your way to 12 fps of hopeful shooting. Just press the shutter when the moment is right, and don’t worry about whether it’s in focus or not.
I think both of these are much more valuable than the ability to play with focus after the fact. I don’t want/need other people to be able to fiddle with my photograph – I just want it to look the way I want it to look without kludgey workarounds (like focus stacking) or spending thousands and thousands on the best gear.
The DOF that Illum offers is not infinite. It only lessens focus accurary requirements approximately tenfold. For macros and teles you still need to focus.
I find it awkward. I’m usually open minded, but I find this a different thing compared to a photo: the fact that you can play “live” with the focus makes it something different than a picture.
I can see the benefits of this tech, like taking easy macros for example, or helping when trying to focus on difficult subjects, but as long as it is a “dynamic” image I’m not keen to call it photo.
For the moment I see it as a cool feature on a smartphone, with a dedicated app.
Call me stubborn or old fashioned, but I prefer the great photo taken with skills.
Think of it as a capture of 3 dimensional image, instead of a 2 dimensional image. With a 2D image people can play around with the image by cropping, skew, twisting, rotation, etc. The only difference with a Lytro, I assume you are also able to blur out specific planes or control the size and position of the depth of field.
Of course if you do not care about depth of field and always shoot at F20 then I can understand why you wouldn’t be interested in such a camera. To be honest I just wish a camera would have focus bracketing, as well as the other usual bracketing features like exposure which would do the same thing in the end and you can manually choose the image yourself without special software.
I haven’t said that I’m not interested in this tech, I find it an option, but I find more fascinating the old way of figuring a scene and capturing it.
Agreed. That’s lead me back to shooting film in addition to digital.
Generally I don’t know how I get by without chimping, if you want to really restrict your self to get into the feeling of photography, I reckon the best way is to have no image review (chimping) until you upload, full manual without aperture, set white balance to cloudy, hide exposure prediction.
Its actually quite fun because you always need to think, and allows you to think how you took your photo retrospectively, but also means you become more cautious and forces you to think about every shot, slows you down a fair bit too.
Well, that’s usually my way of shooting, at least if I’m not in high contrast situations where the risk of a bad light metering is high. I really enjoy every moment when taking photos with a camera. This does not happen when doing it with a smartphone, even when I like the results. A different approach I think.
The old way is to use paper and pencil.
It’s the second time you misunderstand photography with drawing.. We’re not talking about drawing here. Nor writing a description of a scene.
Film nuts used so say similar things as you:
“Digital cameras are for taking pictures. Film cameras are for photography, which is a different thing.”
Indeed, sequences of zeroes and ones are not substitute for real image.
BTW, many painters lost their jobs as photography progressed.
What’s your problem? Am I not entitled to have and express a personal opinion? If you carefully read my comments, you’ll see that I’m not against this tech at all.
In case you missed again, as it is now, this is more a gimmick than something useful.
I receive newsletter from Lytro since they were still developping their first light field camera. The new version makes some step ahead and this tech could help the photographer in some situations.
Is it necessary? Not to me, but perhaps to some.
Is IBIS necessary? Not, but useful in many cases.
Is ABS on your car necessary? No, until you need it.
Perhaps there will be one day when you will be able to shoot randomly and then you will spend time trying to decide if there’s something good in the hundreds of images you took in an afternoon. Then you will set the focus on the subject. Then you will crop and tweak the image. And you will be happy.
But right now you can only play with the image on Lytro proprietary app.
I have never said that someone will loose his job as photographer.
And BTW, Bresson became a painter after leaving photography.
I see this as similar to shooting RAW, then making lots of post edits. Like you, I don’t necessarily want some of my images changeable by others, nor do I want to play with a master photographer’s decisions. But having the tools to alter focus the way we do today with exposure, is of interest to me. Then, I’d output a “fixed” photo that says what I want it to say.
Like shooting for stills in 4K and picking a decisive frame, this is a pretty radical workflow change that I’m not sure I want to embrace. But it is is coming, and we can choose to use the tool or not.
That’s the point: right now it’s a “moving” scene to play with, in the Lytro app. Will it be something like a tool to use in post production to help you create the image you wanted to capture? If so, as you say, it will be simply another tool.
And it won’t kill anything, it will simply be another tool.
Autofocus was not necessary (sometimes going manual is better) but helpful, IBIS is not necessary (better than a tripod).
ABS on cars is not necessary, but very helpful IF needed.
Hence I see it as a future tool.
But I don’t see it as a killer.
I think he’s using the word “killer” here to represent the way that the majority of people will shoot. In the future, I believe that it will. This, plus the coming advances in dynamic range and resolution will mean that you merely need to be there. The workflow can be simplified in an app (on a camera or phone), maybe even automated, and then this becomes an ultimate point and shoot. No focus. No exposure. Barely even needs framing or lens considerations. Just shoot. Then decide. Or don’t tweak. These “advances” won’t “kill” the joy of photography for you or me, but it may well change photography as we know it.
When the only cameras that exist are phones, the only thing that will matter is creative decisions made by the artist. Those will be finalized in post. I both look forward to, and dread that day! 🙂 But I think we have several decades of traditional cameras before that happens
I 100% agree. This is best used as a tool for the photographers, rather than a new medium for the viewers. In general I’m not as interested in obscuring an image via shallow DOF, though, unpopular as that opinion is these days.
Agree. I’m using M43 largely because of increased DoF, not in spite of it.
Surely, Andreas thought if light field sensors would replace conventional ones; this does not have necessarily to require something from users, in green square mode camera will do everything automatically, e.g. it will find two eyes in frame and make them BOTH sharp. Just as many don’t know what AWB does.
I think it could eventually become the mainstream way to capture photos, though I would gather we are a decade or 2 before the tech is anywhere near mature enough to be used exclusively by professionals. Processing and storage will be a huge requirement, especially if the tech makes it to motion picture.
Don’t know. I see it as a part of the post processing, maybe for photographers (that couldn’t make up their mind at the shooting scene), maybe even more for movie makers.
Could this kill the need for fast aperture lenses in order to get shallow DoF?
Could this mean f/1.2 bokeh from a point and shoot sized camera?
Is fast lens kill?
No, read the review of the old Lytro camera on DPR and you see that the critisized the camera for having to little DOF to realy play with it. The new camera must do better.
Too little DOF? So its razor shallow then, and you can’t get enough in focus?
I want to avoid any extra PP …or better say minimize it …not to have it more … not for me
also if you dont know what should be in focus in the moment you press the button …its to late to catch it during pp…cause framing/composition/light/focus etc that all must be done before you press the button …only that is good picture ….othewise its only shot
What if you know what you want to be in focus, but your camera can’t nail it?
Lightfield makes it all about framing, composition, light, and focus, rather than about equipment limitations. Photography is about the image, not the camera.
“The absence of limitations is the enemy of art.” – Orson Welles
Oh come on.
Do you use autofocus lenses? What about automatic metering? Do you shoot with a gray card in your pocket for white-balance?
I think it’s funny how people are willing to act like purists when they embrace technology, but only up to a specific, very arbitrary point.
“Oh, I couldn’t imagine using an EVF. I’m shooting a Real Camera (TM), not playing a video game on a tiny television! Harrumph!”
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the advantages this technology — if we can really call it that — presents, it’s just that it’s a long way from practical, and its implementation comes with all sorts of other restrictions that hamper realizing a well-rounded piece of content … at least for the foreseeable future.
Personally, I don’t ever see it taking hold in any meaningful way for consumers.
That was just Orson reacting on the use of the word ‘limitations’. I think he’s got a point. Don’t criticize him, he can’t defend himself.
yes it happens to me ..especialy for fast moving kids …but I blame my old epl3 camera ..newer cameras …even m43 should have more reliable AF so this should be no big deal I think .
anyway in such case I would expect the companies improve the AF accuracy and speed …and not this kind of software magics
If and when they come close to the quality of current DSLRs and Mirrorless cameras, then sure, why not? But they are currently very far from that.
Of course that CEO will say whatever he wants.
Lytro always sacrifices resolution and people always want more resolving power. How does that fit together? Maybe we’ll some day shoot BIF shots with a fixed lens wide angle camera and then crop. But this? This gimmick? It has just as much future potential as 3D. No one needs it, no one buys it, stalled development, death.
At the time where Lytro becomes even remotely usable for general purpose photography, people will have AF systems better than the D4 in their smartphones.
Some day we’ll see Hollywood have 10-20 locked off, low light, 20K, light field, video camera’s set to wide, making films and every single decision, like focus, framing, camera shake, digital lighting, etc will be made in post. Mark my words.
🙂 they will even decide in post process what movie they were actually making.
You’re right. They may intend the film to be a drama, but it works better as a comedy, stuff like that. I bet there will be multiple versions of the same film. Hollywood can then release them all in theaters to make more money.
better yet: two versions of film, with and without certain clothes xD
I’m not $1500 interested, but I’m curious enough to have placed a rental preorder for one. With the potential for all-in-focus macro without focus-stacking, I’m already daydreaming about compositions that would be difficult/impractical with a conventional camera.
IQ-wise, the tech obviously anticipates a future of ubiquitous 100MP sensors, and that future is not here yet. I also worry about the dynamic range of a 40MP 1″ sensor… Probably won’t be as nice as a modern Micro Four Thirds.
As far as “will X kill Y” is concerned, I’m sure computation will play an increasingly larger role in photography & video going forward, and these Lytro cameras are examples of that.
It is interesting.
It’s not a 40MP sensor though, it’s “40 Megarays.” I read the output of the image you make is about 5MP
very tnx for this comment
http://ict3.com
Worth it just to see equivalence trolls do their nut on this. (Until they find another equivalence to hang petty consumer insecurities on)
I personaly think that the Light field photography is nothing more then a new way of taking and looking at pictures. With normal photography you take a picture, decide what is sharp and what not and when ready people can look at the pictures in the way you intended it to be. The light field makes the pictures “interactive” the viewer can discover what is in the picture, The can play with it. The pictures will not on print anymore, but only on screen. It takes a new kind of photographer to make full use of this technic, he or she must take pictures where even the out of focus parts can hid something interesting, can add someting to the end result…
Will sculpture kill painting? Will MPEG kill JPEG? Will HTML kill plain text? Will cheeseburgers kill bread? Will Coke kill water?
Will the computer kill the typewriter? Will the car kill the horse and carriage?
Will propositional logic kill your argument?
Will a half arsed attempt at propositional logic win your argument?