Tag Archives: Science of photography

Shoot first, focus later!

With the new revolutionary Light Field Camera, Lytro, it is possible now to shoot first and focus later. Lytro creates still where you can focus (or correct focus) afterwards.

The team at Lytro is completing the job of a century’s worth of theory and exploration about light fields. Lytro’s engineers and scientists have taken light fields out of the lab – miniaturizing a roomful of cameras tethered to a supercomputer and making it fit in your pocket.

The light field is a core concept in imaging science, representing fundamentally more powerful data than in regular photographs. The light field fully defines how a scene appears. It is the amount of light traveling in every direction through every point in space – it’s all the light rays in a scene. Conventional cameras cannot record the light field … read all the science inside Lytro here.

Impressive … but I’m concerned that technology advancement is shifting focus from photography to post-processing. What is left now for photographers to master? From Lightroom/Aperture to Photoshop, from correcting light-metering to enhancing colors afterward and now focus too! The only thing left now is composition. I’m sure one day, very soon, there’s going to be a camera or technology that would capture images beyond the standard aspect ratios with adjustable wide angles. We already are seeing video cameras that start recording even before the button is pressed.

One practical use of this camera, aside from consumer usage, would be in journalism but one thing is for sure that there would be no more orbs and ghosts in photos anymore!

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