Spacefruit is a man of many qualities, not least of which is his tendency to purchase interesting toys and pass them to me to play with. Yesterday he handed me this:
It’s the world’s first consumer light field camera and I have absolutely no idea why anyone would want one. But I intend to find out by playing with it for a couple of days and then writing a review. Took it out this afternoon and this was one of the results:
Click anywhere in the image to change to focus point. Or don’t. I really don’t care.
I also have another lens review to write and another camera to bang on about; and all these floors won’t mop themselves you know (but I even have a review related to that). And tomorrow I am off to the zoo!
Posts will follow later; please amuse yourself in the meantime (no, not like that).
Comments 🔗
2012-11-05| Robin Parmar saysIntriguing. A solution to a problem no-one actually has. Low light shots (I am at a party!) and subject blur (my friends won’t stop dancing!) are the issues most people face. Especially when shooting drunk with a mobile phone camera.
2012-11-05| Jock saysIntriguing … a solution to a problem no-one wants … enjoy the party .. stay in the background and out of focus, go un-noticed … now you´re relative privacy is invaded by someone zooming in on you and double-clicking to get a better view of what you´re up to … particularly invasive if she doesn´t happen to be your wife ! One for the dustbin me thinks !!
2012-11-05| Grant saysIntriguing, a solution to a problem no-one knew existed! Out-of-focus with a PhD, and the complete answer to all that arty blurry crap they keep on making facile excuses about… On balance, looking forward to the floor-mop review, really…
2012-11-05| Robin Parmar saysI love how these comments appear to have been generated by one of those spam engines that infect certain blogs and fora. ;-)
2012-11-05| Clive saysThis is a tough one.
Part of me looks at this and thinks it’s a one-trick wonder that will go the way of those “stereoscope” things that were around in the 1970s, with the pairs of images set as slides on a rotating cardboard disc… [ i.e. a fad that won’t last]…
Another aspect to this, however, is that it might just shake up the unimaginative camera market and prompt them to do something useful. I was reading on “canonrumors.com” [yes, I have seen the M43 light, but still have thousands tied up in Canon gear] that Canon “can’t even make a billion dollar profit any more”. Apparently that’s a big deal [that they can’t] even though those numbers seem obscenely large to me…
My dabbling with M43 thus far would lead me to think that if Canon, with all their R&D budgets, and all their incredible experience in this space, their R&D programs, their optic manufacture, etc, etc, are still producing very expensive gear that’s getting trounced by upstart competition, then they need to re-think their business.
Canon and Nikon are very much “Kodak” waiting to happen all over again… Or mySpace wondering what the fuss about facebook is, or the dinosaur wondering what that second bright light in the sky is all about…
I don’t think Lytro will succeed in it’s present form, simply because it doesn’t have enough of a paradigm shift to break into the existing, segmented market. “Intro” range cameras are practically dead (I can get a good quality Canon Ixus from Amazon for £60 in the UK) because camera phones have killed the market. Top end SLRs are there, but the prices are silly and people are wondering what the constant churn of new models is necessary for. Then again, it’s not like these companies are required to produce the gear that people actually want or need, is it? Sigh…
2012-11-05| Grant saysYep. That’s you and I Robin, the Spam Brothers, and dangerously infectious…