Do want. Starts shipping in early 2012, I'll probably pick one up late next year or a more camera-like version when they hit the market.



The cameras starts at $400USD for an 8GB version that holds 350 photos, and 500USD for 750 photos. It can take 3D photos as well and the censor is 11 Megarays (which I will openly assume is close to 11 MegaPixels.) The camera captures the vectors of light as information, allowing the shot to be focused afterwards: on the camera, on your computer or on the internet. It has three buttons, a power, zoom and shutter and a touch screen display on the back. Pretty impressive technology.

I was sent an e-mail to get "first dibs" but at $400, I'm not exactly eager to whisk that much money towards such an early - albeit promising - proof of concept. When the technology makes it's way into a point-and-shoot, I'll consider upgrading my social-event camera then.

While I do want one of these, I have since they did the initial product unveiling for the technology anyway. I am sad they didn't include any way to take a video with it, so it will not be able to replace a typical point & shoot. Which is a shame. Also, $400 seems a bit steep for something that is a little unproven, I want everyone else to be the first ones out of the gate for this as well.

Lack of video is disappointing but not surprising. I'm sure post-focusing video could be pretty difficult. I'm both disappointed and happy that I can't be an early adopter.

I can't imagine it would be any more difficult than a post-focusing still image, it would just require exponentially more memory. You'd have to carry a stack of harddrives on your back just to store an hour of video using this system in it's current form.

I'm tempted. At $400 it's cheap enough I just might pick one up to play with.

The first person to get one of these should stress-test the system by post-focusing on an arrow in flight.

I'm down.

Kllrnohj, it is indeed a very nice price point for such a new technology. I just wish I had the disposable income you do I'll look into it though, perhaps I can order one and they'll charge my card prior to shipping. I can afford that, I just can't afford it today.

I'm not so sure, 350 Images is roughly what I get on an 8GB card on my DSLR - albeit the photos are 17MB's on average. So, 750 on an 8GB version of the Lytro camera isn't that big, maybe 8MB's a photo? Assuming they are the equivalent of 11MP's is close to average file size for the RAW file format for a DSLR shooting 10MP's photos.

Just, the video. I'm sure that'd be a nightmare to encode all the information. Afterwards, it be as simple as selecting where you want to focus on playback and let the software do the work. At the very least, you'd need oodles of free RAM.

Okay, maybe no oodles.

Most motherboards today (Unless it's an old or budget one) can support anywhere from 16 to 32GB of RAM.

The 16GB one holds ~750, the 8GB holds ~350. You're looking at ~22mb per "picture"

I wonder if the light-field data could be used to generate a 3D model, or at least half of one...

The camera will be capable of 3D imagery, but 3D models may be a bit tricky unless you have the know-how on how to create models from stereoscopic images.

Oops, I got my numbers wrong. My 15MP DSLR shoots an average of 17MB photos, so 22MB's does work out to be a better average, since that equals about 7.7GB's of storage.