You must see the video before reading the text, because this is kind of a spoiler. I’ve always been a fan of illusions and this guy has managed to have a ton all in one spot. I kind of felt there was something fishy because some objects were out of focus, not sure if that was deliberate. One can read about my favorite illusion so far [here] .
I recently passed by X-Cite to pick up a Lytro camera to review. It’s the world’s first light field camera (explanation below). As you may already know, I’ve been pretty hyped about this device ever since I posted about it when it was first announced around this time last year. My first two impressions were light and weird looking.
Let’s be brutally honest here, the camera’s design isn’t that appealing. If anything it looks like something from Armani’s new perfume collection but it was built that way for a good reason which I will go through in detail later in this post. There is one main button for snapping photos and a scroll that allows you to get up to 8X optical zoom
Click on the image to focus
By using light field technology the camera lets you to readjust the focus of your image after it is taken. The cat above hangs out in our neighborhood and I thought she’d be a good example. If you click on her face the image will focus on her face and blurs everything else out, if you click on the wall the image will focus on the wall.
A clearer example of focusing after the image has been taken was when I took a photo of my business card. When you click on the business card it becomes crispy sharp but when you click on the grass the business card blurs out and the grass becomes much sharper. There is no way to focus before you take the photo, only after.
This is what the camera looks like from the inside. Lytro camera’s store a lot more light data when they took photos than normal cameras, 11 million light rays to be exact. This allows the light field sensor to save the vector direction, which makes it record depth of field data and separate between different objects.
The screen on the Lytro camera isn’t that good, you can easily see the pixels. I’m hoping they get a new manufacturer with better quality screens on their next generation of Lytro’s. You can touch to focus on images you shot but it’s way better doing that on a computer. Took me 10 minutes to figure out the camera doesn’t function if it’s being charged.
Click on the image to focus
Lytro doesn’t do all that well in low-light places, but it’s still reasonable. This image I shot at night while having Burger Boutique. You can focus on the burger (click on the lettuce) or focus on the wooden stick or focus on the guys shirt. X-Cite are selling the 8GB version for KD 149 and the 16GB version for KD 189.[Amazon][X-Cite]
