lytro

I’m not just a camera history nerd, I’m also a huge fan of weird things in general. Weird and unique technology is especially fascinating, and I’m sure many readers here share the same sentiment.

An industrious programmer managed to reverse-engineer the original Lytro light field camera firmware and opened it up to allow live streaming, full remote camera control, and custom code execution.

Goodbye, Lytro. The pioneering light field camera company has officially announced that it's winding down operations. This comes just one week after it was reported that Google would be acquiring the company for somewhere between $25 million and $40 million.

Google is reportedly in the process of acquiring the light field camera startup company Lytro with a price tag somewhere in the range of $25 million to $40 million.

It started full of hope and possibilities: In 2011, Lytro promised a camera that could change photography forever with its light-field technology, which allowed photographers to refocus after the shot. But having already announced a change in the company's direction towards video rather than consumer still cameras, Lytro has now shut down its online sharing platform for light-field still images. pictures.lytro.com is no more.

Back in 2014, the light field camera company Lytro unveiled the $1,600 Illum, a camera of the future that shoots 40 "Megaray" photos and lets you refocus photos after they're shot. The tech specs were fancy, but no one bought the camera, leading to massive price cuts and eventually a complete change of direction by the CEO. The 5-minute video above is a hands-on look at the Illum.

In 2015, light-field camera startup Lytro did a huge pivot, redirecting its focus from consumer light-field cameras (the original and the Illum) to its new light field virtual reality camera, the Immerge. Today the company released a first peek at what the Immerge can do.

My name is Jason Rosenthal, and I'm the CEO of Lytro. A little over a year ago, it became clear to me that we needed to drastically change the direction of our company.

Back in 2011, Lytro launched the world’s first consumer light field camera, which lets you “shoot first …

Back in July, Panasonic announced an upcoming feature called "Post Focus" that allows photographers to select their focal point after photos are shot. Instead of using light field technology like Lytro or an array of cameras like Light, Panasonic's feature uses rapid-fire focus bracketing.

Panasonic has begun publishing videos around the world that show how the new feature works.

Lytro today announced Immerge, a new camera that may revolutionize how virtual reality content is captured. The company calls it "the world's first professional light field solution for Cinematic VR."

Want to see what Lytro’s light field camera technology is all about? You can now take the plunge for …

Lytro’s research into the world of light field technology has produced two consumer devices. Their first camera was released in 2012 and introduced photographers to the concept of being able to refocus images after they had been taken. Then in 2014, Lytro released their flagship: the ILLUM. Armed with an integrated 30-250mm f/2.0 lens, a 40 megaray sensor, and upgraded software, Lytro was ready to show the world that their technology wasn’t just a gimmick.

Lytro may have launched the world's first consumer light field camera back in 2011 and a more powerful followup, the Illum (pictured above), last year, but it may not be alone in rushing for future milestones in light field photography.

Case in point: Panasonic is said to be working on the world's first light field camera that uses interchangeable lenses.

The shutter fires and your camera’s digital image sensor is hit by photon particles, creating a two-dimensional photograph; this process is one that photographers are familiar with in their day to day work. However, when Lytro introduced the first commercially available light field camera, the game was changed with a sensor that could capture more than before - aperture and focus became adjustable in post-production, and an interactive perspective became possible.

Back in 2011, Lytro announced the world's first light field camera for shooting photos that can be refocused after they're captured.

If you've been dying to own a piece of the new technology but have been put off by the $400 price tag, here's some great news: the original Lytro camera is Amazon's Gold Box Deal of the Day. It costs just $60 with free shipping.

Light field photo studios are now a thing. This morning Lytro launched the world's first light field imaging studio in Tokyo, Japan.

Lytro has announced that it just raised $50 million to undergo a "strategic shift" in strategy. Instead of focusing on light field photography and refocusable 3D photos, the company plans to expand into the fields of video and virtual reality. A large number of jobs will be shed during this process.

Earlier this month, we shared some sample photos showing how Lytro's Illum light field camera performed in capturing the NFC Championship game. Here's another look at the camera with a very different subject matter: wedding photographs.

When the Green Back Packers played the Seattle Seahawks this past weekend in the NFC Championship Game, Seattle-based photographer Mike Sternoff was there documenting the action from the sidelines with a Lytro Illum light field camera.

Lytro has released Version 4.1 of its desktop light field photo editing software, and one of the main new features is something called "Focus Spread." It's a revolutionary feature that takes advantage of Lytro's "shoot now, focus later" abilities, giving photographers the ability to control where focus starts and stops in a photo.

The folks at Lytro have always believed that light field technology is the future, and not just for photography and storytelling. They believe that anything with a lens and a sensor can benefit from the technology, and with today's announcement of the Lytro Platform, they're opening up their proprietary tech to anybody who wants to partner up with them and expand light field into new markets.

Ever since iOS 8 was released, most major camera apps have released updates allowing you to control things like exposure, focus, ISO and more thanks to the unprecedented access to iOS camera settings the new release allowed.

The MultiCam app also lets you adjust focus and exposure on iOS 8... but it handles things a bit differently. It lets you do it AFTER you've taken the shot, and it uses a creative approach to doing it.

With each passing day, it seems as though light field photography (and its imitators) is becoming more and more ubiquitous. Patents here, rumors there, it’s a conglomeration of what is very likely the next frontier in photography.

And this past week, Pelican Images published a collection of online 3D viewer images captured with its thin light field camera that might be making its way into mobile devices soon.

One of (if not the) main challenges Lytro faces as it attempts to bring light field photography into the mainstream is the fact that there aren't a lot of places you can actually experience the 'living' images where they're, to use Lytro's vernacular, alive.

Most places just don't support viewing of the interactive images, and while Lytro has taken some steps to remedy this in the past, the company just took what amounts to a giant leap.

The light field photography market may soon get a little more crowded and competitive according to an exciting Sony patent that promises to not simply copy, but improve upon the technology made famous by Lytro.

Lytro came into the photography world not only to create a novelty product, but to fundamentally change how we approach image capture. Because despite light field photography being around for over a century, it’s only with the latest technology that the company is able to exploit what it is a camera is truly capable of doing.

We recently spoke with Lytro about its upcoming Illum camera a bit, diving into the technology behind the specs and revealing how Lytro's approach is allowing the company to not only step, but leap into the future.

A major drawback of Lytro's technology has been the closed ecosystem its files are trapped in. Unable to be edited in programs such as Lightroom or viewed on the Web without a proprietary image viewer, the experience is lacking the ubiquity needed to gain the acceptance of the masses.

Well aware of this problem, Lytro today takes the first of what we assume will be many steps in the right direction, by announcing that their images will now be viewable on the Internet via a new, open-source WebGL player.

When it comes to technological innovations, the acronym MIT comes up often. Known for their incredible collection of human capital in the form of intellect, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is constantly pushing the boundaries of what’s capable in every facet of life.

And in the case of a project called “Tesseract,” the boundaries being pushed are those surrounding the field of smartphone camera technology.