What is Lytro light field camera?

Lytro said on March 20th that this light-field camera with revolutionary camera technology will enable users to change the focal length to refocus after taking pictures and get perfect photo effects. A device can capture the whole light field of a picture at a time, not just a piece of light. The working principle of this camera is to capture the whole background light field while taking pictures with the lens (light field refers to every beam of light that shines in every direction). After the user captures the whole light field at the moment of shooting, people can change the focus, move the angle of view and even turn the photo into a 3D display afterwards. In other words, with Lytro's camera, users can really capture all the images at that moment, or capture all the light that can represent that moment.

Generally speaking, the biggest difference between all-optical digital camera and ordinary camera in hardware is that a layer of microlens array is added between photoelectric sensor and lens. This lens array is like an insect's compound eye, and each lens covers several photoelectric sensing pixels, which store the light direction information of the scene.

In terms of software, some mathematical methods are needed to generate pictures with specified focus. When all the light field information is recorded, the original information will contain a large number of light signals in different directions, which are superimposed together and cannot be directly output as pictures. Ng proposed a method to decompose different signals by Fourier transform and then combine them according to the needs of users. This post-processing method called Fourier slice photography can synthesize photos focused on any point.

People can use computers to give this technology more magic. The photos with different focuses overlap, which can be animated to reveal more details of the scene; Two full-field cameras can be combined into a 3D camera, which can even bring more special effects to movies.

At present, we are not sure about the exact shelf time and price of this camera, except that its manufacturer is in Taiwan Province Province. Lytro didn't choose to cooperate with giants like Nikon or Canon because Lytro intends to produce better products in a way that he can completely control.