Lytro – a tiny camera whose images are even cooler than its appearance! Image via Jeffery Turner

They did it 15 years ago with a roomful of cameras a one supercomputer – now, they’ve taken that same technology and compacted it down into a miniature handheld camera. This is the relatively new art of capturing the ‘light field’ of a scene, of creating a camera that sees just as the human eye sees, not as a computer does.

A traditional camera adds together all of the light rays hitting its lens to create a single ‘amount’ of light. The Lytro on the other hand not only captures a whopping 11 million light rays on its tiny array of micro-lenses, it records every last one of them, creating a file with the amount of light travelling in every single direction, through every point in space. Cool, huh?


You’re probably wondering how much disk space this highly detailed file must take up. The truth is less than you might think – the 8GB Lytro claims to store 350 pictures, meaning each image is around 23MB in size. Large, but not overly so.

Lytro is the first camera to see the world the same way we do. Image via Jurvetson

So, what’s so cool about these light field images? Lytro calls them ‘living images’ and it’s easy to understand why – each image is recorded exactly as the human eye sees it, meaning that you can focus in on different areas within the same image as you please. It’s a far cry from the static, 2D images that the world is so used to seeing. Check them out for yourself on the Lytro website.

The technology behind Lytro seems set to revolutionise the photography industry. Aside from the obvious popularity with consumers (will we be seeing a flood re-focusable images on Facebook sometime soon?), light field technology can be applied to everything from cinema to security.

Imagine watching a film where each moviegoer can focus in on different areas of a scene – crime and horror films would surely be far more interesting!

As for security, we’ve all seen those low-quality CCTV recordings on TV where police are asking for help identifying a suspect whose face is little more than a handful of pixels. Now imagine security footage in which you can focus in on any one person and see them in perfect detail, whether they’re up close or in the distance.

It would have its uses in catching out dangerous drivers, making it easier to focus in on the number plate of speeding cars where a conventional camera would show nothing but a yellow blur.

The possibilities truly are endless. Can you think of any other cool uses for light field technology?

Author Bio:
Estelle Lévêque is a photography fanatic for both films and digital who blogs for Traders Warehouse about emerging techy products.


Read our exclusive interview with the founder of Lytro Camera: Ren Ng