Must-Have: The LYTRO Light Field Camera

This week, Lytro finally unveiled to the world their light field camera, a revolutionary camera/software system that captures the entire light field, not just a single plane of light like your SLR. The revolutionary thing about this camera is their “living pictures” capability which allows the photographer and the viewer the ability to change the focus of the photo after the fact. Since you’re capturing all the light, there isn’t the shutter delay or auto-focus problems so you can instantly capture the picture you want and worry about the focus later. This is something I’d definitely like to play with.

Here’s a video explaining a little bit about how you interact with the photo experience:

Here’s a cross-section of the technology (slightly larger than true size). Alot of people have wondered what resolution this camera is capable of and it’s a little vague, (measured in millions of light rays), but Petapixel has estimated the size of the sensor to be similar to that of the fujifilm X10 camera.

There are two basic models of the camera the 16GB version (red) $499 and the 8GB version (blue, grey) $399. While this is a consumer version of the camera, features like this may be something we see in all kinds of cameras in the future. The Lytro is set to ship in early 2012.

Here’s a hands on look:

Via @laughingsquid and @petapixel