@mostlymessingabout I'm just saying! 4mp is half the resolution of a 4k video, even! It just doesn't seem worthwhile for me personally. I'm definitely not a megapixel snob. Just give me, like... 12mp? So I can crop in a bit and straighten my horizons if needed.
4mp is more resolution than the cameras that made pro photographers switch from film to digital. The Nikon D1 was only 2.7mp and the Canon EOS 1D mark 1 was 4.1mp, definitely enough resolution to post on Instagram or twitter
I have a Lytro Illum. I bought it purely out of fascination. It's definitely interesting and looks really cool IMHO. It has a place on a shelf in my collection.
@stew_redman Do the Lytro web viewers still work? I wanted to put some Lytro images on my website and came across Lytro code for “Viewers” which could be imbedded into a site and show the post focus effects of the Illum, do you know if this still works, how do you view your Lytro captures?
I have this camera as well as their prior smaller model. I absolutely loved the creative expression that I was able to achieve with this camera. Not only post focus, post depth of field, but post angle shift, and multi depth color correction. However this only had real meaning with their interactive images that could only be hosted on Lytro's website. That is where the Lytro images truly came alive including a convincing 3D and zoom affects when tilting your phone, and in particular macro photography. For website and phone display, the lower resolution wasn't a big issue, being trapped in a proprietary web gallery was. I feel that if they have open sourced the image player, this camera would of had a better chance. One last huge feature of the Lytro images, they contained a lot of data at the time, 16mb per shot. That data included light intensity and light direction as well as RGB (light field) and that as software improved, you could reprocess your images to achieve improvements in quality and effects. I can only imagine now with our current advancements in AI assisted processing, how these images would have turned out.
This camera would be a godsend for any cg/vfx/animation artist, allowing to camera track and 3d reconstruct the scene. It should've provided its users all the possible raw data. It would be great to shoot video and get a depth map as well for starters. But unfortunately they only targeted it for doing gimmicky effects to impress your friends and family via a specialized website, and it tanked. Lightfields are still very promising but after this failed attempt people don't want to touch it, and go with the safest way of simple imaging that every camera does, and to let AI figure out how the scene was really like. Eventually they pivoted to ultra-expensive lightfield cinema cameras for movie studios, but they missed out on all of the prosumer and indie market that this camera could have taken over.
suchhhh a good point. The technology is incredible, I wonder if someone can somehow hack it? imagine hooking it up to like touchdesigner or something....
@@salarycat that was going to be their next venture, Lytro was working on a 360 camera that would let you scan entire rooms depth and let you copy the data directly into 3d software
I agree. The video describes it as if you'd pick one focus after shooting the image. However, retaining all ray information allows to do so much more. For example. you have some sort of eye tracking (maybe in VR too) and it puts the thing you're looking at in focus, just like in the real world. But there is not yet any demand for such effects.
I have a Lytro Illum, it took some amazing photos, it was fun, etc... With all the info you mentioned about its demise, I believe the final nail was from decisions the company made itself. There was an article written, and if accurate, company exec's wanted to go after bigger fish, movie cameras, so they abandoned the point and shoot and started building movie cameras. The size and price was both enormous and outlandish, hence the end of the company, as nobody in the movie world was willing to invest and/or film on the emerging technology. Essentially, according to the article, they abandoned any and all revenue generating products for a whale product that just was not ever adopted.
I was so on board for most of this video, until the 4MP images and price tag! Mental that canon was releasing DSLR’s for $550 back then (with a kit lens!) If they did a similar concept now, just with a higher resolution output and less janky files/software, I could totally see it being more viable ! Great video mate, I had no idea this thing even existed!
about that 4MP resolution comparison, you could have mentionned that the last time we've seen a 4MP resolution being released in a camera above $1500 was in... 2003 ! (with the Nikon D2H) 11 years before the Illum !
@@leoborn4013 actually that's not really the case. Light field images have 1 pixel per micro lens on the final image, but there is much more actual photodiodes under each micro lens. The CMOS sensor itself doesn't have much different pixel pitch compared to a regular sensor, however you use more than one photoside on the sensor to reconstruct one pixel on the final image. This is what gives light field effect cameras the ability to shift the perspective a little bit a rack focus in post, but that also means considerably lower resolution for the final image. photosites of the D2H from 2003 are actually much, much larger than the ones in the Lytro Illum. The point was that 4MP was already criticised in 2003 for being relatively low resolution compared to the competitor 6 or 8MP cameras of the time, and that it being criticed for its low res, 11 years before the Illum was launched with the excat same resolution figure is really what's funny here.
When you explained the thousands of lenses, it struck me that insects with compound eyes probably see... they can probably focus on things in a very similar way
This would've been a huge success if you could also do that for video, gone would be the days of missed shots, focus pulling or pumping auto-focus and you could just replace the focus afterwards with some keyframes
Have an Illum since day 1. one can do pretty crazy stuff with it in post, like a stairway with all steps in focus but the ceiling vanishes in bokey. I think it was ahead of time and still is, because of it physics bending capabilities. However, those obscure artifacts in the images showed to be the biggest downturn, combined with the fact you want to create an impression when capturing, not hours after. It is a totally different creative process behind it, that is not easy to switch between the regular and commercial world.
It will probably never happen for the more standard sensor sizes like Micro 4/3, APS-C, and Full Frame. A lens like that will be incredibly big and heavy to be useable for handheld shooting, not to mention the cost to make one.
That was really interesting! I never knew about this, but I sometimes fantasized about similar technologies, even though I was thinking more about LiDAR or some similar technology, which records a depth map for easier editing and adding realistic light effects in post. But it seems like software is getting better faster than hardware in these regards. Btw your video seemed very abruptly cut off at the end, I had to go back and check if something was wrong with my phone 🤣
This launch was the reason I stay far far away from kickstarter, indigogo, or any crowdfunding campaign of new tech startups. The entire technology world loved to write about this camera to gain momentum. Still remember those articles.
Yes, I would agree. A close analogy now would be the launch of the Alice Camera, an AI-power Micro Four Thirds camera that attaches to your phone. I didn't back it on Kickstarter originally and I'm still on the fence now, even though it's being released and is 30% off. And I'm a dedicated Micro Four Thirds shooter with many lenses. But somehow, I still feel like this camera is not being marketed to me.
I do have this camera. Due to Updates of the operation system, I do not have the Lytro software any more. Do you know, where I still could find a download link? Thanks for your support.
I remember coming across a detailed article a couple of years ago that explored not just what the MLA could achieve, but a whole lot of other things you could also do when you added very clever software and very high resolution sensors. What Lytro could do was basically _one_ of these effects. Others include such things as automatic bracketing (such as HDR in a single take), also photos taken at multiple simultaneous shutter speeds, and photo shooting that can take the picture before you hit the button.
I remember seeing these promoted and thinking it was an amazing invention, but never was able to test it out. I hope a few of the big companies might jump into the game on this type of product.
That was an abrupt ending! 😂 But yeah, I remember how amazing it sounded and have occasionally wondered what happened to the tech. Thanks for the update!
I wish something like this would be made as an accesory that clips on to my phone. They used to make some really nice zoom lenses that attached to the phone, but now they only have the crappy clip on lenses.
I was a popular macro photographer while this system was in development. I was talking to their dev department about doing one click focus stacks for macro. We didn't make it very far.
there are one or two that crop up for sale from time to time on Facebook marketplace. The 2nd Gen one, similar to the one shown here, is listed right now at 12k. Been tempted, but I have my eye on a Nokia 9 (another computational photography oddity) as well 😊
I first saw the Lytro illum at The Photography Show, and the looks of the camera, and ability to change depth of field made it stand out. But as you said, this camera was aimed at the wrong kind of person. This camera was always going to be a curio, more than a mainstream camera, and it showed in the sales.
Reel says “watch the full video to see how this camera works”, so I start the video: “we’ll go into how it works later”, ok sure no problems, I’ll wait. “It’s too long to tell you how it works, I’ll just link you this”, now you pissed me off. But still nice video and I agree on what you said in the video
I had the original rectangle Lytro and was fascinated by the idea of it. I’m an amateur photographer, owned a couple of Canon DSLRs and good lenses, and liked how I got better over time. But the idea of controlling the photo after the fact, opened up some creative possibilities. The ideas died with the company, but the functionality built in to the iPhone and others comes close to what was offered by Lytro.
Fascinating video! I remember hearing about the Lytro, how it was supposed to revolutionize photography. I did't know about all the cons--and the 4 MP output! 😆Panasonic has a "Post focus" feature on many of their cameras that kind of does the same thing. But I rarely use it, except as a novelty feature.
I remember this camera and although first it gave this feeling of "wow, cool", it also had major flaws, like low resolution and that you had to host your photos in their servers. And although it gave the option of focusing later, I always felt that this is in the end a gimmick and too closed system for people to get excited. Especially as before this technology I was testing out all kinds of things with Flash (R.I.P) and I also made some tests with focus stacking / alpha blend png files that produced pretty much the same effect that based on your mouse movement there is a parallax effect and focus effect based on the mouse coordinates. I don't say that mine little art / script projects was as sophisticated, but the effect was quite similar (and as I was using a dslr, the resolution and quality was better) so I didn't get too excited about the whole thing... I wasn't too surprised to hear the company and the cameras just vanished a few years later.
Oh wow! I remember that thing. I remember that it was a simple box. And yeah, never heard of since. I didn't know all of this happened. Sad and fascinating at the same time.
I remember hearing about the Lytro camera when I was not too far out of High School. I thought it was neat, but never wanted one of my own. I didn't think about it for a long time, but then it popped into my head one day and I thought, "whatever happened to that camera?" Well, it did indeed flop.
i remember following the development of this prior to launch. the idea behind the tech seemed really cool but i think the execution fell short of potential. its really cool to see a company push things so far.
Also had one of those but unfortunately no matter how bright it was the edges of the bokeh was always a bit jagged and not smooth, a bit like software portrait mode of modern smartphones but worse. Although the biggest weakness was the sharpness or the lack of when it comes to the background as in with no bokeh applied. Luckily now we have relatively good portrait modes on smartphones that gives us something similar, as long as it doesn’t confuse curly hair with the trees in the background…
Had one of those, bought out of curiosity. Never really found a usecase for it, and as you say developments in other ways of creating depth maps made it redundant
I like how you waited till the very end to tell me just how bad this camera was. You’re right. I probably wouldn’t have watched that whole thing if you started with that segment of your video.
❤ love it the documentary about the camera, I love the design of the camera too, so unfortunate that they failed 😣 even though they did something that they thought was ahead of the competition 😅 how unfortunate that they had something similar or better planned. I also remember that Nokia and Samsung had phones with great cameras.
I’ve got an original lytro, the kind of commercial prototype they put out. It’s actually really interesting to shoot with even though there’s not much you can do with it.
I was just going to say this. Post focus was on my G9 and even my little zs80. I played with it a little when doing macro stuff. But it's not like it was a revolutionary thing.
It is revolutionary yes but alot of flaws yes my grandpa had one before but sadly don't work no more because suddenly when he was using it it suddenly turned off never to turn on again sad I didn't had the chance to hold and operate such an innovation
I have that camera in 2014 something. The only good thing about this camera is the nice feel to hold it and focal length. They had some website to upload those lrf something files. Later that that website got shut down. And I eventually sold the camera.
It’s a nice camera, got both the tiny cube on and the big one. The error they made was concentrating on the focus feature that most cameras with optical focus can do anyway, and much better. The depth effect is splotchy. They should have just let users play with raw data in the first place. Now with AI, that raw light field data can be quite useful for tools like controlnet depth and relighting a scene.
I still have mine. I was amazed by what you could do with it, but it was the 4MP that eventually led me to going back to DSLR - at that time a 24MP crop sensor. And it didn't help that the MacOS software was a full version behind Windows.
Hey Tom, So you used the worlds biggest camera fail to take photos of the UK's worst town (Potatoborough) four years running. And they're pretty good images! What a total boss! ...Great review mate! 🙂👍🇬🇧
AF has gotten exponentially better since 2014 but even pros would love to be able to make micro adjustments to focus. It sounds like the entire concept is just too niche. I’m assuming those insane lens specs can only exist for light field cameras (even with adapters) so interoperability with lens manufacturers / industry standards for this camera is going to score an F. The megapixels is probably a CPU/Memory bottleneck which could easily be improved over time so I don’t see that as a big issue either.
I followed the launch back then with great interest. As an owner of a Pentax DSLR, poor focus was very familiar to me. Nonetheless, it was clear to me back than, that it solved a non-existent problem with creating two huge new ones. Nobody really wants to ever play with the focus of their images again. Usually you just want to take a picture. And having to fiddle with each image later to get the dof you initially wanted and get images with massively reduced resolution and extremely poor low light performance was going to fail from day 1. Somebody had to try it, the tech was just too interesting to not try, but it never had a mainstream chance of succeeding.
This would be the perfect camera if it could be used for video too. You didn't had to by specific lenses to get that shallow depth of field. Also it could also allowed to key ot elements in post, wuthout the need for a green screen.
Lytro Illum - amazing colors and amazing professional user interface. If it were without the light field it would be a Haselblad of my choice. So it stays on the shelf. But I took wedding photographs and corrected the depts field after I took them . The pictures were tremendous. Despite the relatively low resolution compared to a current camera. I still would use it. Unfortunately there is no way to use have the 3d feature displayed in web any more. As far as I know.
Ironically it's very likely that today you'd be able to take the relatively low resolution of the Lytro and upscale it with AI much better than upscaling a regular low res photo because of the extra data it contains.
having a proprietary software to edit photo is a dealbreaker for most people. Cost Too easy to focus especially when there's enough light. Low light AF is more valuable.
Could you review the discontinued Samsung NX cameras? Specially the Samsung NX300 which i've used and seems to have incredible results and some modern features for a camera released in 2013. It's price has plummeted down so maybe it could be a budget camera for an excellent performance.
Ah yeah i had the HTC M8 with the " 4 Gigapixels " It wasnt bad for a smartphone camera. It was just laggy for what it was offering owing to the fact the processing baked in using all the resources of the little processors. To be left with a 4 mp pictured. Oh an subject aware and edge detection was just starting so the transitions weren't all that good
I remember wanting one of these for Macro photography when they first came out, I was hoping they would be useful for doing focus stacking and getting everything in focus at 1:1 to 2:1 image rations, The cameras were also used in some TV shows to make it look like some futurestic equipment, I cant remember which shows it might have been Fringe or Bones where a scientist or forensic person would use one to make it look like they had the camera with the latest tech.
Wow, a 30 to 250mm F2 lens with a 3cm minimum focus distance. Those are pretty impressive lens specs. I really didn’t understand the 4mp spec for 2014. That probably killed it right there. I didn’t hear him give the sensor size either, just the full frame equivalent, so that may have killed it as well.
Of course! It's the Ulanzi TC001 Smart Pixel Clock. It does a bunch of other stuff too, but I just bought it to use as a sub counter. Link below for you (it's an affiliate link - it won't affect the price for you but Amazon will give me a small kickback if you use it - no worries if you'd prefer not to though!). amzn.to/3AczbU2
I still haven't gotten out with my Lytro Field camera (the weird, square "lipstick" camera that's also shown a few times here), but having gotten it on the extreme cheap ($35) I'm in no way sad about it. Even if it sucks, it's a unique piece of camera history to have. Very weird tech, but I remember seeing these when they released and being super intrigued back then.
Nokia - back when they were the clear leaders in mobile imaging - did a Windows app "Refocus" which virtually did the entire Lytro thing in software. Take a picture in the app, and then you could refocus on different elements in post processing. Even that wasn't particularly popular, but when Lytro can be replicated entirely in software on a Nokia 930, it's no surprise that Lytro itself disappeared.
I understand why this camera was a flop, but the size of its lens will never be matched by a smartphone lens. btw, is it possible to use the different focused shot of a single photo for a focus stacking procedure? If so, combined with the possibility to shoot in macro, it would be a quite interesting tool for macro photography.
I owned one for a while to play around with depth maps and 3d images. The depth maps that the camera created were pretty poor. 3d images (using the left and rightmost images) were ok, but only worked well for subjects very close to the lens... the difference between left and right images did not give enough separation to generate a good 3d effect, which probably also played a part in the depth map quality. It's a shame they didn't open-source the "living picture" code... it would have been somewhat useful if you could host them on your own website.
You had me until the 4mp 😂 what an interesting camera
I think you speak for every photographer ever with that statement 😅 Such a shame because the concept is so interesting!
Oh come off it. Don't be a MicroFourSnob 😂
well the other tech makes up for it and those samples looked damn good for 4mp
@mostlymessingabout I'm just saying! 4mp is half the resolution of a 4k video, even! It just doesn't seem worthwhile for me personally. I'm definitely not a megapixel snob. Just give me, like... 12mp? So I can crop in a bit and straighten my horizons if needed.
4mp is more resolution than the cameras that made pro photographers switch from film to digital. The Nikon D1 was only 2.7mp and the Canon EOS 1D mark 1 was 4.1mp, definitely enough resolution to post on Instagram or twitter
I have a Lytro Illum. I bought it purely out of fascination. It's definitely interesting and looks really cool IMHO. It has a place on a shelf in my collection.
@@stew_redman how much did it cost ya, I'm interested
@@Buzzkill11900 I paid $150AUD, about $100USD or 75GBP
@stew_redman Do the Lytro web viewers still work? I wanted to put some Lytro images on my website and came across Lytro code for “Viewers” which could be imbedded into a site and show the post focus effects of the Illum, do you know if this still works, how do you view your Lytro captures?
I remember those highly advertised online. Focusing afterwards sounded too good to be true. But the price made me shy away.
So you don't really use it?
I have this camera as well as their prior smaller model. I absolutely loved the creative expression that I was able to achieve with this camera. Not only post focus, post depth of field, but post angle shift, and multi depth color correction. However this only had real meaning with their interactive images that could only be hosted on Lytro's website. That is where the Lytro images truly came alive including a convincing 3D and zoom affects when tilting your phone, and in particular macro photography. For website and phone display, the lower resolution wasn't a big issue, being trapped in a proprietary web gallery was. I feel that if they have open sourced the image player, this camera would of had a better chance. One last huge feature of the Lytro images, they contained a lot of data at the time, 16mb per shot. That data included light intensity and light direction as well as RGB (light field) and that as software improved, you could reprocess your images to achieve improvements in quality and effects. I can only imagine now with our current advancements in AI assisted processing, how these images would have turned out.
your story telling style is so smooth . glad you pop up on my feeds.
Thank you, I appreciate you taking the time to leave a nice comment. I'm glad you enjoyed the video!
This camera would be a godsend for any cg/vfx/animation artist, allowing to camera track and 3d reconstruct the scene. It should've provided its users all the possible raw data. It would be great to shoot video and get a depth map as well for starters.
But unfortunately they only targeted it for doing gimmicky effects to impress your friends and family via a specialized website, and it tanked. Lightfields are still very promising but after this failed attempt people don't want to touch it, and go with the safest way of simple imaging that every camera does, and to let AI figure out how the scene was really like.
Eventually they pivoted to ultra-expensive lightfield cinema cameras for movie studios, but they missed out on all of the prosumer and indie market that this camera could have taken over.
suchhhh a good point. The technology is incredible, I wonder if someone can somehow hack it? imagine hooking it up to like touchdesigner or something....
@@salarycat that was going to be their next venture, Lytro was working on a 360 camera that would let you scan entire rooms depth and let you copy the data directly into 3d software
I agree. The video describes it as if you'd pick one focus after shooting the image. However, retaining all ray information allows to do so much more. For example. you have some sort of eye tracking (maybe in VR too) and it puts the thing you're looking at in focus, just like in the real world. But there is not yet any demand for such effects.
The lens looks like the latest version of Hasselblad.
So... ugly?
No, it isn't. @@bojcio
I have a Lytro Illum, it took some amazing photos, it was fun, etc... With all the info you mentioned about its demise, I believe the final nail was from decisions the company made itself. There was an article written, and if accurate, company exec's wanted to go after bigger fish, movie cameras, so they abandoned the point and shoot and started building movie cameras. The size and price was both enormous and outlandish, hence the end of the company, as nobody in the movie world was willing to invest and/or film on the emerging technology. Essentially, according to the article, they abandoned any and all revenue generating products for a whale product that just was not ever adopted.
@@randominterest8868 that sounds very very plausible.
I was so on board for most of this video, until the 4MP images and price tag! Mental that canon was releasing DSLR’s for $550 back then (with a kit lens!)
If they did a similar concept now, just with a higher resolution output and less janky files/software, I could totally see it being more viable !
Great video mate, I had no idea this thing even existed!
Agreed, though I think once smartphones started being able to replicate this effect, it was all over 😅 I love the creative potential it had though
You know what’s crazy? I looked this up yesterday to see a lack of recent videos. Now this has been uploaded. Spectacular
This looks fun (except for the smol pixel).. i mean, there is a very specific genre of photography that can benefit this, i think..
about that 4MP resolution comparison, you could have mentionned that the last time we've seen a 4MP resolution being released in a camera above $1500 was in... 2003 ! (with the Nikon D2H)
11 years before the Illum !
Bigger pixels mean more light per pixel. This is essential for the light field effect.
@@leoborn4013 actually that's not really the case.
Light field images have 1 pixel per micro lens on the final image, but there is much more actual photodiodes under each micro lens. The CMOS sensor itself doesn't have much different pixel pitch compared to a regular sensor, however you use more than one photoside on the sensor to reconstruct one pixel on the final image. This is what gives light field effect cameras the ability to shift the perspective a little bit a rack focus in post, but that also means considerably lower resolution for the final image.
photosites of the D2H from 2003 are actually much, much larger than the ones in the Lytro Illum. The point was that 4MP was already criticised in 2003 for being relatively low resolution compared to the competitor 6 or 8MP cameras of the time, and that it being criticed for its low res, 11 years before the Illum was launched with the excat same resolution figure is really what's funny here.
@@leoborn4013the sensor itself is 40mp on this lytro camera
@@sowa705 yes but that really doesn't really change the output doesn't it
At the end of the day how important is high megapixel? Instagram won't even let you post 1920x1080
When you explained the thousands of lenses, it struck me that insects with compound eyes probably see... they can probably focus on things in a very similar way
This would've been a huge success if you could also do that for video, gone would be the days of missed shots, focus pulling or pumping auto-focus and you could just replace the focus afterwards with some keyframes
Have an Illum since day 1. one can do pretty crazy stuff with it in post, like a stairway with all steps in focus but the ceiling vanishes in bokey.
I think it was ahead of time and still is, because of it physics bending capabilities. However, those obscure artifacts in the images showed to be the biggest downturn, combined with the fact you want to create an impression when capturing, not hours after.
It is a totally different creative process behind it, that is not easy to switch between the regular and commercial world.
I would love to have those lens.
30-250mm f2, I wonder when other manufacturers will make a lens like this…
Nikon, Canon, Olympus and Panasonic... it's a tiny sensor and just like literally every other bridge camera they have super zooms
It will probably never happen for the more standard sensor sizes like Micro 4/3, APS-C, and Full Frame. A lens like that will be incredibly big and heavy to be useable for handheld shooting, not to mention the cost to make one.
It’ll be the size of a small car
@@LoFiAxolotl Definitely not f2. If you would make a FF lens, it would be humongous
@@ameiya8949 compact cameras do this, lol
That was really interesting! I never knew about this, but I sometimes fantasized about similar technologies, even though I was thinking more about LiDAR or some similar technology, which records a depth map for easier editing and adding realistic light effects in post. But it seems like software is getting better faster than hardware in these regards.
Btw your video seemed very abruptly cut off at the end, I had to go back and check if something was wrong with my phone 🤣
Haven’t come across your channel before, but I’ve got to say, this video was amazing man! Concise points, wonderful explanations!
thank you for the 21:9 video! my Xperia is happy
It was ahead of its time, like the Apple Newton. Let's wait.
This launch was the reason I stay far far away from kickstarter, indigogo, or any crowdfunding campaign of new tech startups. The entire technology world loved to write about this camera to gain momentum. Still remember those articles.
Worse than crowd finding was the completely uncritical, hype "journalism" that became ever more pervasive back then and hasn't gone away nowadays.
Yes, I would agree. A close analogy now would be the launch of the Alice Camera, an AI-power Micro Four Thirds camera that attaches to your phone. I didn't back it on Kickstarter originally and I'm still on the fence now, even though it's being released and is 30% off. And I'm a dedicated Micro Four Thirds shooter with many lenses. But somehow, I still feel like this camera is not being marketed to me.
I do have this camera. Due to Updates of the operation system, I do not have the Lytro software any more. Do you know, where I still could find a download link? Thanks for your support.
I remember reading about this on The Verge and being so excited about it.
I remember coming across a detailed article a couple of years ago that explored not just what the MLA could achieve, but a whole lot of other things you could also do when you added very clever software and very high resolution sensors. What Lytro could do was basically _one_ of these effects. Others include such things as automatic bracketing (such as HDR in a single take), also photos taken at multiple simultaneous shutter speeds, and photo shooting that can take the picture before you hit the button.
I remember seeing these promoted and thinking it was an amazing invention, but never was able to test it out. I hope a few of the big companies might jump into the game on this type of product.
absolutely did not expect to see peterborough city centre at 1:39
That was an abrupt ending! 😂 But yeah, I remember how amazing it sounded and have occasionally wondered what happened to the tech. Thanks for the update!
I wish something like this would be made as an accesory that clips on to my phone. They used to make some really nice zoom lenses that attached to the phone, but now they only have the crappy clip on lenses.
I was a popular macro photographer while this system was in development. I was talking to their dev department about doing one click focus stacks for macro. We didn't make it very far.
I remember this many years ago!! it never arrived here in the Philippines!
there are one or two that crop up for sale from time to time on Facebook marketplace. The 2nd Gen one, similar to the one shown here, is listed right now at 12k.
Been tempted, but I have my eye on a Nokia 9 (another computational photography oddity) as well 😊
I first saw the Lytro illum at The Photography Show, and the looks of the camera, and ability to change depth of field made it stand out. But as you said, this camera was aimed at the wrong kind of person. This camera was always going to be a curio, more than a mainstream camera, and it showed in the sales.
Reel says “watch the full video to see how this camera works”, so I start the video: “we’ll go into how it works later”, ok sure no problems, I’ll wait. “It’s too long to tell you how it works, I’ll just link you this”, now you pissed me off. But still nice video and I agree on what you said in the video
@marcoficeli9408 no he said I can't cover the full story so watch the full video
lol agreed
I remember hearing about it at its launch and thought it had way too many compromises while looking to solve a problem that didn't exist, IMO.
didn't know about light field cameras. cool stuff, nice to learn about it
Fascinating indeed. Thanks for the useful content.
I turned on the subtitles just to see the 4mp through my eyes
I had the original rectangle Lytro and was fascinated by the idea of it. I’m an amateur photographer, owned a couple of Canon DSLRs and good lenses, and liked how I got better over time. But the idea of controlling the photo after the fact, opened up some creative possibilities. The ideas died with the company, but the functionality built in to the iPhone and others comes close to what was offered by Lytro.
New favourite channel!! ❤
Fascinating idea, I remember this being talked about , but never seen one in the real world
This camera was dreamcast in attempt to compete w the more infamous systems at the time.
I smaller version in the rectangular block form factor - definitely a novelty
Fascinating video! I remember hearing about the Lytro, how it was supposed to revolutionize photography. I did't know about all the cons--and the 4 MP output! 😆Panasonic has a "Post focus" feature on many of their cameras that kind of does the same thing. But I rarely use it, except as a novelty feature.
I remember this camera and although first it gave this feeling of "wow, cool", it also had major flaws, like low resolution and that you had to host your photos in their servers. And although it gave the option of focusing later, I always felt that this is in the end a gimmick and too closed system for people to get excited. Especially as before this technology I was testing out all kinds of things with Flash (R.I.P) and I also made some tests with focus stacking / alpha blend png files that produced pretty much the same effect that based on your mouse movement there is a parallax effect and focus effect based on the mouse coordinates. I don't say that mine little art / script projects was as sophisticated, but the effect was quite similar (and as I was using a dslr, the resolution and quality was better) so I didn't get too excited about the whole thing... I wasn't too surprised to hear the company and the cameras just vanished a few years later.
Oh wow! I remember that thing. I remember that it was a simple box. And yeah, never heard of since. I didn't know all of this happened. Sad and fascinating at the same time.
Thanks Gordon. A well balanced and fair assessment.
I remember being fascinated by this camera when it was announced, but I ended up opting for the Pentax K-5 IIs (the renewed "poor man's Leica")
What happens with no advertisement
I love that the video just ended, no outro, no nothing
I'm very happy to see this camera again : ) Yes it was really Fantastic item !!!
That was definitely not the current item! :)
I never heard of a pro photographer needing to change focus or DoF after the shot. Image quality and speed, on the other hand, are what counts.
I remember hearing about the Lytro camera when I was not too far out of High School. I thought it was neat, but never wanted one of my own. I didn't think about it for a long time, but then it popped into my head one day and I thought, "whatever happened to that camera?" Well, it did indeed flop.
i remember following the development of this prior to launch. the idea behind the tech seemed really cool but i think the execution fell short of potential. its really cool to see a company push things so far.
Also had one of those but unfortunately no matter how bright it was the edges of the bokeh was always a bit jagged and not smooth, a bit like software portrait mode of modern smartphones but worse.
Although the biggest weakness was the sharpness or the lack of when it comes to the background as in with no bokeh applied.
Luckily now we have relatively good portrait modes on smartphones that gives us something similar, as long as it doesn’t confuse curly hair with the trees in the background…
Had one of those, bought out of curiosity. Never really found a usecase for it, and as you say developments in other ways of creating depth maps made it redundant
What is your B-cam for overhead shots? I always notice how noisy it is 😁
I use various cameras and all end up being somewhat noisy as I shoot at f/11 so have to boost the ISO to compensate.
I like how you waited till the very end to tell me just how bad this camera was. You’re right. I probably wouldn’t have watched that whole thing if you started with that segment of your video.
Cool tech, great video. I think Lightfield affect cameras will probably make a comeback in some smart phone.
Wow, I had forgotten about this, I was so hyped to get one of these :(
Fascinating! If you ain't covered the Foveon sensor yet, please do. Thank you.
❤ love it the documentary about the camera, I love the design of the camera too, so unfortunate that they failed 😣 even though they did something that they thought was ahead of the competition 😅 how unfortunate that they had something similar or better planned. I also remember that Nokia and Samsung had phones with great cameras.
I’ve got an original lytro, the kind of commercial prototype they put out. It’s actually really interesting to shoot with even though there’s not much you can do with it.
My old Lumix G9 had post focus and I don't recall ever using it.
I was just going to say this. Post focus was on my G9 and even my little zs80. I played with it a little when doing macro stuff. But it's not like it was a revolutionary thing.
It is revolutionary yes but alot of flaws yes my grandpa had one before but sadly don't work no more because suddenly when he was using it it suddenly turned off never to turn on again sad I didn't had the chance to hold and operate such an innovation
cant believe people werent willing to pay 1600 for revolutionary technology but are currently willing to pay 6000+ for a Leica Q3
This goes on my display shelf next to my Light L16
I have that camera in 2014 something. The only good thing about this camera is the nice feel to hold it and focal length. They had some website to upload those lrf something files. Later that that website got shut down. And I eventually sold the camera.
Key For iPhone photographers ‘ focus image change is on iPhone Even IPhone 15 Max . Extra 😅
It’s a nice camera, got both the tiny cube on and the big one. The error they made was concentrating on the focus feature that most cameras with optical focus can do anyway, and much better. The depth effect is splotchy. They should have just let users play with raw data in the first place. Now with AI, that raw light field data can be quite useful for tools like controlnet depth and relighting a scene.
I wish they redevelop this it's an amazing camera futuristic looking
And that lens is a dream
I still have mine. I was amazed by what you could do with it, but it was the 4MP that eventually led me to going back to DSLR - at that time a 24MP crop sensor. And it didn't help that the MacOS software was a full version behind Windows.
STILL want one... (what's the discounted price?).
Low resolution plus low dynamic range...professionals will love this! 😅
Hey Tom, So you used the worlds biggest camera fail to take photos of the UK's worst town (Potatoborough) four years running.
And they're pretty good images!
What a total boss!
...Great review mate! 🙂👍🇬🇧
AF has gotten exponentially better since 2014 but even pros would love to be able to make micro adjustments to focus. It sounds like the entire concept is just too niche. I’m assuming those insane lens specs can only exist for light field cameras (even with adapters) so interoperability with lens manufacturers / industry standards for this camera is going to score an F.
The megapixels is probably a CPU/Memory bottleneck which could easily be improved over time so I don’t see that as a big issue either.
the lens is pretty much the same (quality wise too) as on every bridge camera... it's really nothing special
I've always been curious about this camera. I'm going to have to look up sample images from it now
I followed the launch back then with great interest. As an owner of a Pentax DSLR, poor focus was very familiar to me. Nonetheless, it was clear to me back than, that it solved a non-existent problem with creating two huge new ones. Nobody really wants to ever play with the focus of their images again. Usually you just want to take a picture. And having to fiddle with each image later to get the dof you initially wanted and get images with massively reduced resolution and extremely poor low light performance was going to fail from day 1. Somebody had to try it, the tech was just too interesting to not try, but it never had a mainstream chance of succeeding.
Cool video! Just out of curiosity, how much megabytes do the files weight (roughly)?
Lytro files are LFR/LFP format. Typically the files are ~50MB
I have one, but the battery died and I can’t find a replacement anywhere.. does anyone have an idea where to find it?
I wouldn't be surprised to see a comeback of this technology one day.
This would be the perfect camera if it could be used for video too. You didn't had to by specific lenses to get that shallow depth of field. Also it could also allowed to key ot elements in post, wuthout the need for a green screen.
Looking forward to the blogger's review of the Light L16 camera, which has similarities with this camera
Lytro Illum - amazing colors and amazing professional user interface. If it were without the light field it would be a Haselblad of my choice. So it stays on the shelf. But I took wedding photographs and corrected the depts field after I took them . The pictures were tremendous. Despite the relatively low resolution compared to a current camera. I still would use it. Unfortunately there is no way to use have the 3d feature displayed in web any more. As far as I know.
I always wanted one of these!
the 4mp was ridiculous ... but I love the Illum and hope some day devs can use the android os for new features
Ironically it's very likely that today you'd be able to take the relatively low resolution of the Lytro and upscale it with AI much better than upscaling a regular low res photo because of the extra data it contains.
So is like the post focus found in any Lumix?
having a proprietary software to edit photo is a dealbreaker for most people.
Cost
Too easy to focus especially when there's enough light. Low light AF is more valuable.
I recognise that place from the photographs, that's Peterborough city centre!
What mirrorless fullframe and tiny camera body should i get around 1500 usd
@@abutalha6220 sigma fpl
Could you review the discontinued Samsung NX cameras? Specially the Samsung NX300 which i've used and seems to have incredible results and some modern features for a camera released in 2013. It's price has plummeted down so maybe it could be a budget camera for an excellent performance.
Ah yeah i had the HTC M8 with the " 4 Gigapixels "
It wasnt bad for a smartphone camera. It was just laggy for what it was offering owing to the fact the processing baked in using all the resources of the little processors. To be left with a 4 mp pictured. Oh an subject aware and edge detection was just starting so the transitions weren't all that good
I remember wanting one of these for Macro photography when they first came out, I was hoping they would be useful for doing focus stacking and getting everything in focus at 1:1 to 2:1 image rations, The cameras were also used in some TV shows to make it look like some futurestic equipment, I cant remember which shows it might have been Fringe or Bones where a scientist or forensic person would use one to make it look like they had the camera with the latest tech.
Wow, a 30 to 250mm F2 lens with a 3cm minimum focus distance. Those are pretty impressive lens specs.
I really didn’t understand the 4mp spec for 2014. That probably killed it right there.
I didn’t hear him give the sensor size either, just the full frame equivalent, so that may have killed it as well.
I found the topic really exciting at the time.
Unfortunately I didn't get any 😕
May I ask where you got the subscriber counter from? It looks sick!
Of course! It's the Ulanzi TC001 Smart Pixel Clock. It does a bunch of other stuff too, but I just bought it to use as a sub counter. Link below for you (it's an affiliate link - it won't affect the price for you but Amazon will give me a small kickback if you use it - no worries if you'd prefer not to though!).
amzn.to/3AczbU2
@TomCalton Thank you man! Appreciate it that's so cool
damn 4 MP just ruined it completely, imagine this one capturing in 24MP
I still haven't gotten out with my Lytro Field camera (the weird, square "lipstick" camera that's also shown a few times here), but having gotten it on the extreme cheap ($35) I'm in no way sad about it. Even if it sucks, it's a unique piece of camera history to have. Very weird tech, but I remember seeing these when they released and being super intrigued back then.
Nokia - back when they were the clear leaders in mobile imaging - did a Windows app "Refocus" which virtually did the entire Lytro thing in software. Take a picture in the app, and then you could refocus on different elements in post processing. Even that wasn't particularly popular, but when Lytro can be replicated entirely in software on a Nokia 930, it's no surprise that Lytro itself disappeared.
I bought the first little boxy Lytro. Interesting first act, but….
I understand why this camera was a flop, but the size of its lens will never be matched by a smartphone lens. btw, is it possible to use the different focused shot of a single photo for a focus stacking procedure? If so, combined with the possibility to shoot in macro, it would be a quite interesting tool for macro photography.
I owned one for a while to play around with depth maps and 3d images. The depth maps that the camera created were pretty poor. 3d images (using the left and rightmost images) were ok, but only worked well for subjects very close to the lens... the difference between left and right images did not give enough separation to generate a good 3d effect, which probably also played a part in the depth map quality. It's a shame they didn't open-source the "living picture" code... it would have been somewhat useful if you could host them on your own website.