Today's hot news seems to be the announcement of the Illum Professional Light Field Camera by Lytro.
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| (Photo from DP Review article) |
Lytro is currently taking pre-orders for the Illum. Sales are scheduled to start in July. The Illum is listed at $1,599. You can save $100 by pre-ordering (pre-ordering the Illum also provides some additional perks beyond the price drop, including a chance to participate in a photo shoot run by a professional photographer.)
Camera Specs
- 40 mega-ray sensor
- 8x optical zoom lens, 30-250mm equivalent
- Constant f/2.0 aperture
- Macro capability
- 1/4000 of a second high-speed shutter
- 4" tilting touchscreen
Included software can be used to manipulate the images and to create interactive images or animation. It can also export still image files that can be edited with other image editing software. (Apple's Aperture and Adobe's Photoshop/Lightroom support the light-field image files. These programs should be able to edit the light-field file without exporting it as a jpg or similar image file first.)
The images can also be used to produce 3-D images on 3-D capable devices.
Lytro has a page with interactive images produced using the Illum. These images give an idea as to the type of post-processing possibilities that exist when editing the light-field image files.
DP Review also has a brief interview with the Lytro CEO.
The most interesting part of the interview may be the part on the zoom lens used by the Illum. The lens uses 13 elements, which is fairly low for this type of lens. Normally the lens would need to address aberrations by including additional pieces of glass (or more complex pieces).
The ability to track light-ray direction enables the camera to omit those. Aberration correction is done by software instead.
This suggest that light-field cameras could wind-up competitively priced in comparison to regular digital cameras. The sensor might be more expensive, but the expense could be offset by less expensive lenses that still produce images of similar quality.
The 40 mega-ray number seems impressive, but that includes a great deal of information not used when exporting a two dimensional image. Those images run about 5 megapixels.
5 megapixel output seems low given the $1,599 price tag.
The resolution produced when exporting still images still needs to improve in order to compete with existing digital cameras.
There is also no information on hardware specifications for using the accompanying software. I suspect it will be higher than the requirements for other image editing software.
Overall, the camera does not seem well suited for traditional photography. The image resolution just isn't high enough for still images. That does not mean the camera is useless, though.
It seems tailor made for game and web developers. The ability to capture 3-D information suggests that 3-D game developers might be well served by investing in the camera. It also promises to be useful for creating interactive web sites.
One thing to remember is that this is basically the second generation of light-field technology. While it might come up short when compared to existing digital cameras, the Illum looks very impressive when compared to second-generation digital cameras. (Those didn't even manage 5MP.)
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