Ordered a Lytro "Shoot Now Focus Later" Camera

Brian Sweeney said:
http://lytro.zendesk.com/entries/20558091-how-does-the-lytro-camera-work#overview

Not much detail on how it works.

It would be great technology for a surveillance camera. Go back through time-stamped images, pull out anything suspicious. Get it in focus.

Nimslo was "19th century negatives" and 1950s plastic prisms. This one looks different. It does not use Holographic Liquid Crystal technology. That was 1990's.
Click to expand...

Dear Brian,

Never mind the technology. I think the mind-set or world-picture is more important. I suspect (reading between the lines) that you may agree.

Cheers,

R.
 
wgerrard said:
Roger, on one hand, I don't expect this camera to be any more popular with consumers than stereo/3D cameras. I do, though, think high-end models are going to be marketed into the security, intelligence, and other areas. It might also be useful in astronomy, which already deploys a lot of computational power.

On the other. I wouldn't be surprised to see this rolled out in cell phones. Useful or not to the average person, it would help sell phones. So much so, in fact, that the real intended target for this roll out might well be Apple.

For what it's worth, my take on the OWS movement here is that it is less fueled by animosity toward corporate privacy invasions -- it's organized by phone and Facebook -- as it is hostility toward perceived rigging of the game in favor of a tiny elite and the political process they corrupt. (I saw a report this week that real wages in the U.S. have not increased in 50 years.)
Click to expand...

Dear Bill,

Insofar as the two are distinguishable... These people are trying to rig the game in their favour, as Kodak did with 620 and 828, and will fail for the same reasons as those two formats lost out to 120 and 35mm: people don't like highly proprietary monopolies when there are alternatives available. Unless this is even cleverer than it looks, I can think of at least one alternative.

Cheers,

R.
 
Isn't this camera focus later thing similar to Bokeh Control feature included in the Pentax Q and Nikon 1 cameras? I mean, isn't it just large depth of field captured and blurred later?

I found inventor's thesis on this topic, but haven't time to read it, yet: https://www.lytro.com/renng-thesis.pdf
 
I think this is very cool technology. Although I have real reservations about keeping my photos on some cloud system.

As far as it being something for amateurs. I believe I saw a photo of the inventor using the prototype lens (pg 6, lfcamera-150dpi.pdf) on a Contax 645.

It would certainly have pro-use. Could the software be used to do tilt/shift photography in post?
 
Spleenrippa said:
Shoot now, focus later- and can only be run on a MAC. By summer 2012, every hipster you see will be carrying one :rolleyes:
Click to expand...


OT, but Why is it that so many people capitalize all three letters in "Mac"? Apple never has, and it's not an acronym (it's a truncation of Macintosh, as in the variety of Apple). The odd capitalization seems especially prevalent among people who've used Windows for a long time. It's perplexing.
 
ricnak said:
That camera makes me want to quit digital
Click to expand...

Interesting- this is the first camera that has made me really interested in digital imaging. I've never wanted to be one of the first to own new technology before- I prefer to let others be the beta market test guinea pigs-but if this works, it could be really interesting. I'm in line for one of the first batch- small, unprintable, proprietary format files be damned. This could be fun.
 
The cloud will rule, sorry.

The cloud will rule, sorry.

If you own a Mac and want to install the the latest upgrade you cannot buy the disk, download is the only way.
Here are 9 more ways you will be impacted buy the cloud.

1. The Post Office
Get ready to imagine a world without the post office. They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. e-mail, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.
2. The Check
Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the post office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business.
3. The Newspaper
The younger generation simply doesn't read the newspaper. They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.
4. The Book
You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy.And the price is less than half that of a real book. And think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book.
5. The Land Line Telephone
Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don't need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they've always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes
6. Music This is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The music industry is dying a slow death. Not just because of illegal downloading. It's the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem. The record labels and the radio conglomerates are simply self-destructing. Over 40% of the music purchased today is "catalog items," meaning traditional music that the public is familiar with. Older established artists. This is also true on the live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating and disturbing topic further, check out the book, "Appetite for Self-Destruction" by Steve Knopper, and the video documentary, "Before the Music Dies."
7. Television Revenues to the networks are down dramatically. Not just because of the economy. People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers.And they're playing games and doing lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV. Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than the lowest common denominator. Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I say good riddance to most of it. It's time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery. Let the people choose what they want to watch online and through Netflix.
8. "Things" That You Own Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future.. They may simply reside in "the cloud." Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest "cloud services." That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud.. If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider. In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That's the good news. But, will you actually own any of this "stuff" or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big "Poof?" Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.
9. Privacy If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy. That's gone. It's been gone for a long time anyway. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7, "They" know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits.. And "They" will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again.
Forward looking predictions today are easy because of the
cloud / Google.
 
semilog said:
OT, but Why is it that so many people capitalize all three letters in "Mac"? Apple never has, and it's not an acronym (it's a truncation of Macintosh, as in the variety of Apple). The odd capitalization seems especially prevalent among people who've used Windows for a long time. It's perplexing.
Click to expand...

I've always wondered why people capitalize Ob/Gyn as if it were an acronym, and often even pronounce each individual letter. Some sort of euphemism?

Sorry, getting really off track here.
 
whatever said:
If you own a Mac and want to install the the latest upgrade you cannot buy the disk, download is the only way.
Here are 9 more ways you will be impacted buy the cloud.

1. The Post Office
Get ready to imagine a world without the post office. They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. e-mail, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.
2. The Check
Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the post office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business.
3. The Newspaper
The younger generation simply doesn't read the newspaper. They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.
4. The Book
You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy.And the price is less than half that of a real book. And think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book.
5. The Land Line Telephone
Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don't need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they've always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes
6. Music This is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The music industry is dying a slow death. Not just because of illegal downloading. It's the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem. The record labels and the radio conglomerates are simply self-destructing. Over 40% of the music purchased today is "catalog items," meaning traditional music that the public is familiar with. Older established artists. This is also true on the live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating and disturbing topic further, check out the book, "Appetite for Self-Destruction" by Steve Knopper, and the video documentary, "Before the Music Dies."
7. Television Revenues to the networks are down dramatically. Not just because of the economy. People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers.And they're playing games and doing lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV. Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than the lowest common denominator. Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I say good riddance to most of it. It's time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery. Let the people choose what they want to watch online and through Netflix.
8. "Things" That You Own Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future.. They may simply reside in "the cloud." Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest "cloud services." That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud.. If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider. In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That's the good news. But, will you actually own any of this "stuff" or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big "Poof?" Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.
9. Privacy If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy. That's gone. It's been gone for a long time anyway. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7, "They" know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits.. And "They" will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again.
Forward looking predictions today are easy because of the
cloud / Google.
Click to expand...

1 No. Magazines, for a start (though of course you will argue that these must disappear too). And greetings of various kinds.

5 Hardly. Try telephoning another country on your mobile and see what it costs you.

8 Again, hardly. My house; my clothes; my transport; my kitchen (and all its tools); my cameras; my guns; the list goes on. This is the weakest of all your points.

9 How? If you rely on credit cards, you might be right. I use mostly cash.

What's the alternative to a forward-looking prediction? A backwards-looking prediction? Besides, read The Black Swan for a real assessment of what predictions are worth.

The good or credible points you make are greatly weakened by your over-enthusiasm for points that aren't really defensible.

Cheers,

R.
 
I wonder if this Lytro technology will take off - or just be another gimmick that fades out. (A bit like 3D TV - does anyone really use it?)

Or more likely finds a specialised niche without mass market appeal.

As to cloud computing, while I understand the case for doing this from the viewpoint of suppliers of the technology I am deeply suspicious of any business model that involves taking over my data or becoming locked into a proprietory solution.

This is one reason I have never been very interested in going down the Apple Mac path - all well and good to have that lovely technology but to use it properly, it means buying totally into the Apple business model and committing totally to it. (Steve Jobs predicated the Apple model on this approach as opposed to the Windows model of open interoperability)

Not my cup of tea I am afraid. I much prefer to be in charge of my own destiny even if it means making a few technology compromises. And that means putting my own data on my own machine in whatever form takes my fancy.
 
O.K. -- let's all move on to what really needs to be discussed regarding the Lytro...

Black paint or silver chrome?

;)
 
Peter, I've been storing data online for several years. And harbor no expectations that data abut my internet use isn't joining billions of other data points in any number of corporate programs. It isn't the storage aspect of the "cloud" that interests me, so much as it is the possibility of accessing computational power that could never fit inside my laptop or desktop. I like my privacy at least as much as the next guy, but it isn't an absolute. I can swayed.
 
Actually, I find this technology absolutely fascinating - more mysterious, actually, than anything though really. I saw a video on this on the Intertubes. It said the lens has a fixed f2.0 aperture - that's weird in and of itself. Is there a "shutter speed"? Has to be. But there doesn't appear to be any controls for it. The zoom is only digital. The images look decent to my eye but in fooling around with their sample images - what if I want a wide depth of field with everything in focus? It seems to want to pick one focus point then blur everything in the foreground and background around that point. Not sure I'd like that. I imagine you can do it. It's also pretty reasonably priced.

In the future - everything will be in the cloud. It's the only way piracy can be prevented and it will open up the market for users. You will subscribe to Photoshop and your RAW processor - or pay as you go. Privacy? Hahahahahhahaha... that's been gone since the 1990's. C'mon, I can use Google and virtually "walk" past my house.
 
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Just to point out, I covered the subject indepth on our community blog. It's an interesting system and something no one is ready for. Unfortunately for us as a dealer, they are keeping the sales direct, but I'm looking forward to seeing a great many amazing things come from Ren Ng's spectacular brain.
 
whatever said:
If you own a Mac and want to install the the latest upgrade you cannot buy the disk, download is the only way.
Here are 9 more ways you will be impacted buy the cloud....
Click to expand...

Herewith my thoughts your 9 declarations:

1. Hard copy deliveries to the non-profitable boonies will be sustained, and subsidized. The post office may switch to a subscription model and do away with postage.

2. I no longer write checks, but banks will likely continue to accept them for a fee.

3. I pay a few hundred dollars each year for my newspaper. I have no problem paying for an online paper. It's silly to expect everything on the web to be free.

4. There are several orders of magnitude more books in the world than old RF's, and a lot of people here seem to expect old cameras will keep film alive. Book publishing will switch more and more to digital deliver. Hard copy versions of digital books may be available for a price.

5. I gave up my landline phone last year. Pointless.

6. The "recorded on plastic" music industry is on the way out. Still plenty of good music being made. Musicians can record on any number of platforms, including an IPad. What's missing are replacements for coherent corporate distribution and sales.

7. TV is crap. Netflix is just another way of distributing crap. I cancelled cable months ago. If I wanna watch TV, which happens rarely, I watch it via a gadget that captures over-the-air digital and feeds it to my wireless router.

8. I think it will be computational power in the cloud, not storage, that turns out to be the big deal.

9. The only reason browsers, et al, haven't been able to take snapshots of everything on your local hard drive for the last decade or so is because no one would use them once word got out. It's certainly do-able. Internet privacy is a matter of trust, and nothing more.
 
Lytro + 3D

Lytro + 3D

peterm1 said:
I wonder if this Lytro technology will take off - or just be another gimmick that fades out. (A bit like 3D TV - does anyone really use it?)

Or more likely finds a specialised niche without mass market appeal.

As to cloud computing, while I understand the case for doing this from the viewpoint of suppliers of the technology I am deeply suspicious of any business model that involves taking over my data or becoming locked into a proprietory solution.

This is one reason I have never been very interested in going down the Apple Mac path - all well and good to have that lovely technology but to use it properly, it means buying totally into the Apple business model and committing totally to it. (Steve Jobs predicated the Apple model on this approach as opposed to the Windows model of open interoperability)

Not my cup of tea I am afraid. I much prefer to be in charge of my own destiny even if it means making a few technology compromises. And that means putting my own data on my own machine in whatever form takes my fancy.
Click to expand...


Thank you for your comments Peter. The Lytro could very well be like the gimmick Apple Newton.
I believe the Newton failure was the inspiration for the I Pad.
Lytro could be the genesis for a digital photography game changer.
Regarding Apple / Mac,
in my opinion, one of the sweetest laptops out there
is a Mac Air with MS 7 installed. It is supper fast and supper light,
it is Leo Laporte’s favorite user.
And about 3D ( one of my favorite subjects )
It will take off when they get rid of the glasses. The technology is there just a little pricey right now. Toshiba has the first. Bill
http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/laptop-model.jsp?family=qosmio&model=F750
 
Is it me or is the the image quality of the lytro look horribly low-res, perhaps to compensate for a slow cloud ?

to "Whatever":

the #1 reason why cheques won't die in the US is that it provides a float for companies in terms of delaying the payment. "Cheque's in the mail"

of course the land phone will be there, it will be given free by the mobile phone companies.

cloud computing may be coming, but it will probably morph into something else over time. there are very few successful cloud computing companies, eg. amazon, itunes and salesforce.com.

the only real impact of cloud computing will be that the OS doesn't matter anymore since the browser is king.



raytoei
 
wgerrard said:
It's interesting that there's little interest in the technology and a lot of rejection of the implementation of that technology -- the camera -- apparently because it doesn't hold to the traditionalist preferences of many RFF'ers.
Click to expand...


Oh, I've been reading *a lot* of rejection based on conjecture and very little on firsthand experience for over six years on these here parts.
 
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