Lytro Camera Lets You Focus Pictures After Taking Them
When you take a picture, light is reflecting off various surfaces in various directions. A standard camera takes a ’shapshot’ of what it sees, recording the light that’s reflecting, but nothing about the direction. That gives you a standard photo. Light field pictures, however, also record information about the direction of the light, resulting in a picture that is more similar to a digital replica of the scene than a traditional ‘picture’ is. That is what lets you refocus.
This is crazy! I just can’t stop playing with their demo. Also, I can’t help wondering what absolutely amazing effects this could have in science, too. Can you imagine sending this type of tech in our space probes or deep-ocean probes, and then producing 3-D images..?
This can also affect 3D images in general. Up ’till now, 3D was either “faked” (the image is layered twice with some computer algorithm adjustments) or required a special camera with 2 lenses. This could change that.
I want one!!!