Lytro Is Just Scratching The Surface Of Light Field Photography

The Lytro Camera isn’t like any other camera on the market and it’s only going to get better.

Eric Cheng, Director of Photography at Lytro, was at CES this year to show off the camera’s capabilities. And according to Cheng, Lytro is only scratching the surface of Light Field photography at the moment.

The Lytro Camera creates “living photos” by capturing light from all angles. This gives the user the ability to manipulate photos after they’ve been taken. At the moment, you can change the focus and shift the perspective of your photos. But Cheng says that there is a lot more data to be mined and that Lytro will add new features in the future.

Cheng said:

With the launch we had re-focus … And even though that is very cool the light field is much richer. So now we’re unlocking features of the light field without having to change the hardware of the camera. Basically what we’re doing is virtualizing the camera.”

With Lytro, photographers aren’t going to have to upgrade equipment every year. The company is rolling out software updates to improve the camera and add new features but the hardware is expected to stay the same for the time being.

Speaking of hardware, here’s a look at what’s inside the camera. The specially designed chip breaks up light entering the camera so that Lytro can create the light field.

Lytro’s light field camera may not be able to provide all of the features of a professional DSLR but it does give photographers an entirely unique new way to tell a story with their photographs.

Here are a few photos taken with the Lytro camera.

You can getmore stories from CES 2013 here.