Carlos Orlando at infopackets reports that a Silicon Valley start-up company (Lytro) has released a new camera model that allows a user to snap first and focus later.

Dubbed 'Lytro', the camera is able to capture light data from many different angles using a specialized sensor. The sensor uses what is termed a "microlens array", which packs the equivalent of many camera lenses into a very small space:  Sort of like the sonar “tail” that SSN and SSBN’s have for enhanced ‘listening’, or CT/MRI’s sensors (just different energy spectra). Maybe not a great analogy, but close. I have pictures of playing with images in the large photo gallery at Lytro's website but I think you might want to go there and do that yourself.

Interactive Pictures

The light information captured by the Lytro is significantly more than a conventional camera and is later focused and refined using your computer.

Focal points of the image are navigated using a few mouse clicks, allowing the user to sharpen the image at certain points, according to ibtimes.com . The viewer can literally navigate through the image to get a semblance of different perspectives.

As Lytro founder and CEO Ren Ng states, "They (the images) become interactive, living pictures."

From the Lytro website:

“The camera that turns light into living pictures

This year, Lytro will debut the first light field camera for everyone. OK – you’re not everyone. You are a beautiful, unique snowflake. And you deserve an amazing camera that lets you capture life’s singular moments, like baby’s first steps not second, with maximum magic and minimum hassle. No more fighting with dials and settings and modes. No more flat, boring, static photographs. With a Lytro, you unleash the light.

No fuss focus.

Click away. Shoot first, focus after. That's right, after. You can't miss.

Shares the magic.

Immersive sharing with living pictures makes “wish you were here” come true.

Speed, indeed.

From sleep to snap in under a second. Instant on. Bye-bye shutter lag.

Travels light.

Portable and stylish enough to bring along, from the beach to the bistro.”

"Shutter Lag" Removed Altogether

In addition to these innovative features, the camera itself is much faster than its conventional counterparts due to the removal of the "shutter lag" (the time it takes for the autofocus to kick in). These fractions of a second are often the times when an unsuspecting subject moves from their pose.

Furthermore, Lytro cameras are also able to capture 3D images, which can be viewed later on a computer screen with the aid of 3D glasses.

So, how does it work?

“Recording light fields requires an innovative, entirely new kind of sensor called a light field sensor. The light field sensor captures the color, intensity and vector direction of the rays of light. This directional information is completely lost with traditional camera sensors, which simply add up all the light rays and record them as a single amount of light.

By substituting powerful software for many of the internal parts of regular cameras, light field processing introduces new capabilities that were never before possible. Sophisticated algorithms use the full light field to unleash new ways to make and view pictures.

Relying on software rather than components can improve performance, from increased speed of picture taking to the potential for capturing better pictures in low light. It also creates new opportunities to innovate on camera lenses, controls and design.” – Ren Ng

Sounds fantastic but there’s a trade off:

The main one being picture resolution. The nature of light-field photography makes it difficult capture high-resolution images without making the optics extremely complicated. Although Ng says his team has found ways to mitigate the issue, the Lytro camera won't be competing with others on the market in the megapixel arena. Ng says it ultimately doesn't matter, however.

"Huge advances have been made," he says. "The resolution issue from the research side of things was one of the early big breakthoughs at the company. The thing about resolution, by the time people share pictures online, you're throwing away 90 to 95 percent of those pixels. And the vast majority of picture use today goes through the Web."  - PCMagazine

The price will decide whether it’s going to be a revolution or not. A staggering $50 million dollars has gone into developing it.

Sorry, there are no pictures of it to be had. I do suggest going to the website and play around in the image gallery. This could turn out to be the next “big thing”.

Sources: 

1.  http://www.infopackets.com/news/gadgets/2011/20110623_snap_first_focus_later_with_new_digital_camera.htm

2.  http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2387554,00.asp

3.  http://www.lytro.com/cameras

4.  ibtimes.com