I wouldn't hold your breathe waiting for this.... On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 8:58 AM, John Robinson <[email protected]>wrote:
> This article isn't about Mac's but I bet we use it on our Mac. Enough of > us in the group seem to be into this topic I though you might like to see > what is soon to be available. > > John > > > > > > *A Start-Up’s Camera Lets You Take Shots First and Focus Later* > [image: nyt_logo_106x27.gif] > > - > > > > STEVE LOHR, On Wednesday June 22, 2011, 12:35 am EDT > > With an innovative camera due out later this year from a company called > Lytro, photographers will have one less excuse for having missed that > perfect shot. > > The company’s technology allows a picture’s focus to be adjusted after it > is taken. While viewing a picture taken with a Lytro camera on a computer > screen, you can, for example, click to bring people in the foreground into > sharp relief, or switch the focus to the mountains behind them. > > But is Lytro’s technology just a neat feature, or is it the next big thing > in cameras? > > The founding team of the Silicon Valley start-up and investors who have put > in $50 million are betting on the latter. The technology has won praise from > computer scientists and raves from early users of its prototype camera. > > “We see technology companies all the time, but it’s rare that someone comes > along with something that is this much of a breakthrough,” said Ben > Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, a major investor in Lytro. > “It’s superexciting.” > > Lytro’s founder and chief executive is Ren Ng, 31. His achievement, experts > say, has been to take research projects of recent years — requiring perhaps > 100 digital cameras lashed to a supercomputer — and squeeze that technology > into a camera headed for the consumer market later this year. > > Mr. Ng explained the concept in 2006 in his Ph.D. thesis at Stanford > University, which won the worldwide competition for the best doctoral > dissertation in computer science that year from the Association for > Computing Machinery. Since then Mr. Ng has been trying to translate the idea > into a product that can be brought to market — and building a team of people > to do it. > > The Lytro camera captures far more light data, from many angles, than is > possible with a conventional camera. It accomplishes that with a special > sensor called a microlens array, which puts the equivalent of many lenses > into a small space. “That is the heart of the breakthrough,” said Pat > Hanrahan, a Stanford professor, who was Mr. Ng’s thesis adviser but is not > involved in Lytro. > > But the wealth of raw light data comes to life only with sophisticated > software that lets a viewer switch points of focus. This allows still > photographs to be explored as never before. “They become interactive, living > pictures,” Mr. Ng said. He thinks a popular use may be families and friends > roaming through different perspectives on pictures of, say, vacations and > parties posted on Facebook (Lytro will have a Facebook app). > > For a photographer, whether amateur or professional, the Lytro technology > means that the headaches of focusing a shot go away. Richard Koci Hernandez, > a photojournalist, said that when he tried out a prototype earlier this > year, he immediately recognized the potential impact. > > “You just concentrate on the image and composition, but there’s no need to > worry about focus anymore,” Mr. Hernandez said. “That’s something you do > later.” > > “That was the aha! moment for me,” said Mr. Hernandez, an assistant > professor of new media at the graduate school of journalism at the > University of California, Berkeley. “This is game-changing.” > > Mr. Hernandez, who is not affiliated with Lytro, was one of several > photographers who tested prototypes. His model, he said, was sheathed in a > black plastic shell, so he did not see its design. But he said it was the > size of a standard point-and-shoot camera. The picture resolution, he added, > was indistinguishable from that of his other point-and-shoots, a Canon and a > Nikon. > > Eliminating any loss of resolution in a camera like Lytro’s, which is > capturing light data from many angles, is a real advance, said Shree Nayar, > a professor at Columbia University and an expert in computer vision. Mr. > Nayar is familiar with Mr. Ng’s work, but he said he had not seen anything > Lytro has done in more than a year. > > “If they have been able to recover most of the lost resolution, then their > image refocusing application is a very cool feature,” Mr. Nayar said. “But > it is an open question how popular it becomes.” > > At Lytro, the view is that the technology, once it gets into people’s > hands, opens the door to many possible new features and uses. Among its > other advantages, the new camera is much faster than conventional ones > because there is no “shutter lag” — waiting for the autofocus device to work > and the shot to be taken. Those fractions of a second, of course, are often > when the dog darts off or the child’s smile becomes a frown. > > Lytro cameras can also capture plenty of data for 3-D images, which can be > viewed on a computer screen with 3-D glasses. > > Lytro is not saying what the price of its first camera will be, but insists > it will be for the consumer market, which suggests a price of a few hundred > dollars. The company is also not being more precise about when the camera > will ship. It will initially be sold through online retailers like > Amazon.com and Lytro’s Web site. > > But to gear up, the company is rapidly adding to its 45-person staff in > Mountain View, Calif. Its recruits include veterans of Microsoft, Google, > Apple, Intel and Sun Microsystems. > > One Lytro convert who caught the attention of the Valley digerati was Kurt > Akeley, who joined the company last September from Microsoft Research. Mr. > Akeley, 53, was one of the early engineers at Silicon Graphics, a pioneer in > computer graphics, and is one of the lead developers of OpenGL, a popular > set of graphics programming tools. > > Mr. Akeley, a consulting professor at Stanford, was familiar with Mr. Ng’s > work and said he was lured by the challenge and technical opportunity. > Lytro, Mr. Akeley said, has “a powerful technology with legs — great things > can happen.” > > Lytro chose to design and market a camera itself, instead of licensing its > technology to a camera giant like Canon or Nikon. It will farm out the > manufacturing to a company in Taiwan, but it wanted to control the details > of the camera itself — much as Apple does. > > “We can just make a better product this way, and really show what we can > do,” Mr. Ng said. “The big camera makers are mostly polishing existing > technology, and we didn’t want to do this in an incremental way.” > > > _______________________________________________ > MacGroup mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.math.louisville.edu/mailman/listinfo/macgroup > > -- U-2 & SR-71 web page http://www.blackbirds.net Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety -Benjamin Franklin Read the Constitution - It's Interesting! http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.overview.html Blog: http://johnsstone.tumblr.com/
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