Lytro, camera of the future?

I have been seeing articles about this new camera for days now, but it was not until the other night that I actually read one of the articles to see what all the buzz was about.

The new camera is from a company called Lytro.

The most amazing thing about this camera is the new technology it uses for taking pictures.

Traditional cameras use lenses that focus the light so that one plane of the viewing field is sharp and in focus. For instance, if you are taking a picture of your friend in a forest you would focus on your friend and everything else closer or further away would be blurry.

Enter the Light Field Camera.


This new technology uses software algorithms to record all light traveling at all vectors (fancy word for direction). Because of this the information for all focal planes is stored in one picture.

{Click on different parts of the picture to focus.}



With the Lytro camera you don't worry about focusing before you take the picture. You take the picture and can focus later (sounds weird, right?).

I have to admit that I am still a little skeptical about the whole deal.

This is such a revolutionary concept in photography I will need to see it for myself; or at least hear from a reliable source that it does indeed work they way it is described.

One thing that makes me believe this could be true is the pictures that are up on the Lytro website.

All I can say is that if the Lytro lives up to the hype this could be the biggest thing in photography since... well, photography.