Light Field cameras, the future of photography?

[lenshoarder]

I remember this stuff from back when I was at Stanford. Took longer than I thought for it to come out commercially. It's really not that complicated conceptually. A light field cameras takes photos that can have the focus point adjusted after the picture is taken. It's not magical. It simply takes multiple shots at different focus points. The lens is what makes it happen. You can think if it like an insect eye's lens where each little image is at a different focus. Thus you end up with multiple images that you can then post process to change the focus point of a composite image. The big downside, less resolution since it has to fit these multiple images onto the same sensor that would normally handle one image.

Light Field camera | Lytro

I don't know why the company is being so secretive about how it works. The paper about light field cameras is freely available. They should just link to it.

 

[grimloki]

I am truly glad to hear that there is a downside to this technology. I have big plans for bracketed exposure focus stacked macros, and I was bummed when I thought my hundreds of shots and all the processing could be done by one shot from a super-camera.