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LYTRA Illum - the game-changing DSLR killer?


mtheory
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http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/22/5638812/meet-the-illum-lytros-futuristic-new-light-field-camera

 

Wow, I did not expect this to go beyond the quirky experimental stage so quickly....looks like they took some pointers from BMD in terms of design. The camera has flexible DOF and can apparently do 3D with a single lens....crazy. It costs $1,599.

 

Right now it can only do stills at 4MP resolution....but if they manage to make this baby do RAW image sequences in 4K as well as record sound....well...that will really, truly change the game.

 

If adopted by the film industry, this could potentially make all of the current cinema glass obsolete...

 

But only imagine being able to adjust DOF, exposure and 3D...all in post.  :wacko:

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Fixed lens and only still images. If this would do 1080p 24/25 fps it would be a game changer for video for sure! Pulling focus in post... Would be amazing! For stills it's still a gimmick IMO. Fun to embed those interactive iframes where you can change the focus, but what is the real use of that?

It's a big step up from the first version indeed. Might be very interesting for cinematography if this develops more.

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If only I had money to burn!   :( I'm glad they're still in business.  Wouldn't you like a camera where you could take someone's photo and know FOR SURE that you could get the focus you want?  

 

Many people believe Cell phones are the eventual market.  Imagine getting a shallow DOF portrait from your phone?  

 

Interesting stuff.  Go Lytro!

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Guest Ebrahim Saadawi

Man this kind of things make you feel old. :D

Can anynody explain (simply) how this technology works? What is this about?
I have tried googling it but no luck, all technical complicated talk.

The only way I can imagine this is by taking a huge number of pictures from the closest focus point all the way to infinity, so that you could pick one in post? (of course this is complete nonsense and unrrealistic:D)

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Can anynody explain (simply) how this technology works? What is this about?
I have tried googling it but no luck, all technical complicated talk.

The only way I can imagine this is by taking a huge number of pictures from the closest focus point all the way to infinity, so that you could pick one in post? (of course this is complete nonsense and unrrealistic:D)

 

Probably the blind leading the blind here, but here's my shot.  

 

As you know, light reflects of objects in every conceivable angle.  The lens essentially "selects" a subset of those rays (at specific angles) and focuses each one onto a pixel in the camera.  So if you're looking at a telephone pole, for example, the lens in your eye, or camera, is selecting those rays that come off it relative to the distance to which you are standing.  Other rays are coming out, which a camera could focus on in front of, or behind you, but your lens is not "tuned" to them.

 

A polarizing filter is another "selector" of specific light rays.  The iris also performs a similar "selection" process for the sensitivity of the sensor.  Why can't we get all the brightness values from one image?  Why is exposure so important?   We are bombarded by radiation from every which angle in a very wide range of values.  In order to deal with all that information we use physical filters/selectors/focusers, whatever you want to call them.  The lens, the iris, the shutter.  

 

What light field camera does is capture information about the lights "angles", by using micro-lenses, for each part of the image, and then uses complex math to abstractly create what a lens does physically--create a 2D matrix of light values from a specific set of angles (focus).

 

You could take multiple photos, like you suggest, but I believe it would then be more difficult to know which photo is in focus with which object.  With light field data, when you select a ray of light, you can calculate it's direct angle (focus).  Computationally, there is a lot more you can do.  

 

I think I'm hurting my brain here ;)

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Man this kind of things make you feel old. :D

Can anynody explain (simply) how this technology works? What is this about?
I have tried googling it but no luck, all technical complicated talk.

The only way I can imagine this is by taking a huge number of pictures from the closest focus point all the way to infinity, so that you could pick one in post? (of course this is complete nonsense and unrrealistic:D)

 

it's an idea i've wondered about since i was a kid playing with prisms and pinhole cameras.. why do you have to commit to a specific focal point if all the light is available in the area of a circle.. why couldn't you just record all the light? this is basically what they have done, but in order to be able to focus later, you have to also record the vectors that the light is traveling in.. this is why that lens is fixed, you need an array of light sensors.

 

here's the paper that was done by the founder while he was at Stanford, before the company was launched:

 

https://www.lytro.com/downloads/resources/renng-thesis.pdf

 

 

it's not new in theory but to make a consumer camera it required all the other digital components to exist. from what i understand the difficulty really is in developing the algorithms specific to this novel device. 

 

and i do think it's a game changer.. there are really interesting interactive implications too.. you could develop a file format that contains scatter light vector info - or whatever they are calling it - and work with mozilla and google on a plugin. it's gonna be a big file, but how cool would it be to have all images online be capable of focus.

 

add hdri to the format and it's starting to feel like a bad sci-fi movie set in the not too distant future. 

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Its not just about being able to move around the focus point. You can also "look around" the image kind of like a 3D image - but much more realistic. It's actually quite amazing and I think it could have interesting applications. Think Harry Potter where the images have dimension.

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as i discussed with a friend, photography tends to go towards the plastic, online and cold, this camera sums it up. I feel old somehow, :wacko: yes this is the future, i can imagine now a gallery of these photos online. Maybe a brides blog, with these "focus yourself" photos, certainly a big hit with the crowds...but very very cold.

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The problem is that the data requirements are prohibitively large. AFAIK there is no way to feasibly get professional looking high resolution, high bit depth images, and still maintain all the of the flexibility in focus without blowing up the file size. 

 

Yes, if millions of years led to the lens and iris system in animals it's probably because we'd need a brain the size of a truck to process vision in that way.  

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Alternatively, one of the big boys could jump on this bandwagon and steal Lytra's thunder, sort of the way Playstation Morpheus is trying to do to Oculus Rift. The name of the game in the tech industry is "new", that's how you sell. After all, where do we have left to go after 4K-3D-HFR are no longer novelties? Exciting times.

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Its not just about being able to move around the focus point. You can also "look around" the image kind of like a 3D image - but much more realistic. It's actually quite amazing and I think it could have interesting applications. Think Harry Potter where the images have dimension.

 

I thought those demos were just animatics.. are you sure you can look around the image? I thought that was only possible with waves that penetrate an object and in blade runner.

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Could this not be achieved with (within reason) with what we have now?

 

We have 30FPS+ 4K now (isn't that like 8MP?) - could it not be feasible for a camera to take 30 frames+, which at each 'take' adjusts the focus a point further?

 

Then on viewing on the picture, you can move between the frames, which would be moving through the focal points?

 

Rich

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For video, no.  For photography, yes.  There are "photo stacking" techniques out there, which use tethered shooting to take multiple shots at different focus points.  

 

Most cameras can't even output a full-frame of video in 1/30th of a second, let alone 1/900th of a second!  Global shutters, which can output a whole frame within a 30th of second, are still high-end.  

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If adopted by the film industry, this could potentially make all of the current cinema glass obsolete...

 

 

Maybe not. Panasonic filed a patent for a light-field system that:

 

"can be used effectively in every camera that ever uses a solid-state image sensor, and may be used in digital cameras, digital camcorders and other consumer electronic cameras and in industrial surveillance cameras, to name just a few."

 

 http://lightfield-forum.com/2014/04/panasonic-patents-image-sensor-for-full-resolution-light-field-recording/

 

Look like it requires a new sensor and other sundry innards, so I wouldn't count on seeing it as part of any GH4 firmware upgrades. 

 

But your lenses should still work.

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