Gadgetory

today is Friday jun 24 2011 my name is Stephen Beecham I am antuan goodwin and i am brian Tong welcome to buzz out loud CNET's podcast of indeterminate length today is episode 14 97 and we promised and we delivered a very special guest very special I'm telling you light rose founder and CEO renting in the house for us we're gonna ask him questions we're gonna have you guys ask him all the questions that you want as well we've seen and talked about this exciting launch and announcement lighters been everywhere right Twitter what's your life been like the past you know say 48 hours first of all thanks a lot for having me on that last 48 hours has been absolutely terrific we the response I think of the world has just been outrageously positive just a huge amount of traffic through our website we had a great launch party on Wednesday too we had a Cirque du Soleil like character either i messing around when you talk about cirque du soleil you're not messing around it was uh it was amazing yeah so now can you tell some tell our listeners and people have seen a little bit about your background you went to Stanford correct where you where he had your dissertation and this is kind of what sparked everything that's right yeah I was a member for a long time I came from Australia out to California about myself when I for undergrad and then stayed for grad school as well and I was doing all this researching computer graphics and just a very you know visually driven person just love pictures love photos taking lots of pictures lots of photos with film cameras and the digital cameras immersing and how you make pictures you know with the best computer affix and we're doing all this research on this thing called the light field and in taking you know 5,000 you know digital pictures every three months like well clearly what I need to be doing is studying cameras and how the application of all the best computer graphics in the world could make cameras better and that's how my research was born well so um were you would you describe yourself as kind of a photo junkie beforehand oh definitely I did a lot of rock climbing all my best friends are firm you know the rock climbing community like telling us you got guns yeah less these days a lot more rock climb on the bass yeah a lot more cameras these days and you know a lot of candid portraits and if you're you know you hanging off a rope and you're trying to take pictures down you know down a steep cliff you know focusing on the right person at the right time when you're trying not to you know swing around in the wind is it's pretty difficult and the good hiking and it was shooting with these you know these kind of pictures shooting kind of shoot lots of candid portraits where I was like you know cameras are still really complicated mr. really hard to use when you're trying to take a great picture and with all the things that we knew about from Cuba graphics because you know these days when you go to the movies right I mean so much of it is it's computer generated and in a way that you just can't distinguish in reality because we understand how light works so well that we can simulate it in a way that you can't distinguish in reality and if you think about applying all of that knowledge all that technology to a camera that's what you get with life your photography now one of the great things about this we showed off some of these pictures and examples that are on Lytro site it's lyt ro lytro calm you can check out their picture gallery where these pictures have been taken and after the fact you can choose the focal point that you want to focus on they'd use examples like flowers for lovely ladies faces and I click on each other did you like that one which boy ya know what if we can find you know what let's say well if we can find that picture for ladies will have a vote of which one we each prefer you when with the cats cuz I like the one with cat I'm not a fan of cats LOL Cats man party but the event the one that we talked about that we're amazed about the most was the one through the glass window that had the human yes on the ground oh yeah you're able to you know choose the point focus between the little hole in that kind of geometric square hey so um well yeah there's a shot that you like the four ladies that was taken by michael hsu he was photographer of the year a few years back and he shot early on with some prototype my few cameras we had a couple years ago actually so he's been a real fam you know real friend to the company and then the one that you talked about with the you know the grimy window that's taken by richard kochi Hernandez yeah I love that picture and there's almost two people of yeah there you go there you go yeah I love that picture because I'm very passionate about taking pictures that tell stories you know and I think this picture here really shows how Kochi is taking life you photography not just the things you know instant shutter you know taking picture with no delay focusing out the fact that's great for all of us but for people that really want to push the photographic art they're all these new opportunities to take pictures that are inviting you to explore they're inviting you to interact in order to discover and that I called it back in the research phase in my dissertation too i called it the sensation of discovery and I think that sensation of discovery when you can't quite see something that you want to see and then you click and it comes into clear focus is just a magical it's kind of like kind of like childlike like people here we were getting giddy about it we're like a wire now one of the questions that everyone has is at your event you did have the cameras there now they were according to sources wrapped in a leopard shark type sock stuffed animal and this is how we you know in this day and age of leaks all over the internet you've got to protect your properties that's right the camera is still very much under wraps the Sharks were you know an idea from our director of photography eric chang eric is you know one of the premier underwater photographers in the world he's taking his amazing you know you ever seen any of those pictures of a great white shark jumping out of the water to catch a seal he has a shot like that where the shark is like fully in the air like you know suspended in the air so naturally he has a lot of sharks around his apartment stuffed animals and at the last minute they decided that would be the best best way to mule the camera yeah now the question is here we you know I didn't get a chance to see how really you know big or small these cameras are is the technology here is the lytro is this going a lot of people are asking us is this going to be a consumer point and shoot camera or more a DSLR camera like what is what is the you know I guess the optics and the technology what form factor you guys look enough you have to launch wit ya know your life fields are applicable to anything with a lens in front of a sensor the technology is fundamental in that way and applies to all you know camera optical systems what we're really interested to do is to take this technology out of the lab where it used to be you know really about very research oriented large you know large computational photography systems and bring it to the masses and we're not going to do that half measure we're not going to come up with something that you know is still for industrial settings or something that is priced out of the consumer market this is going to be consumer form factor consumer price point for everybody excellent so what price point are you looking at target in friend it's going to be a competitively priced consumer oh no that a buzzword price right that's just you know the case if it is we can get right now you can knows the game can't blame me for trying though no no that's fine i'll ask you another question completely related so are you guys looking to launch this by the end of the year or in 2011 or next year 2012 which is going to be in 2011 2011 yep excellent yeah it's a it's a really exciting time to be this close to being able to bring this thing out you know that goes back to the mid 1990s right i mean this technology from these two professors Marco Voight Hanrahan goes back to I think the paper came out in 1996 and has been cited you know thousands of times in the research literature and to be able to go through these progressions of understanding it in big camera systems than small camera systems and now I'm bringing out into something where it can be for the whole world is something that I'm super super excited about yeah you guys talk about small camera systems and we know how mobile phones and cameras have exploded right iphone 4 is one of the number one photos types of photos from a device uploaded to Flickr these days yep are you guys I mean this is a very you know down the road question but are you guys looking to will your opt-in technology fit into a mobile phone or is that something that you would license down the road like what are you thinking in that direction it would definitely fit it's fully compatible with you know cell phones with large system small says industrial all the rest of it microscopes that technology for life you microscopy has been put on by professional avoid Stanford I collaborate on that since graduating in the cell phone space you know I think the cell phones are so important to all of us because they are they allow us to be so ultra casual about taking a picture so you can document everything in your life right and I think that really what we see in the market today is just this exploding interest in more and more picture taking and I think that what underlies that is as human beings we just have this you know this core need to be able to tell other people what we've been doing visually you know if you go all the way back to the cave paintings you know they discovered this cave painting in France nails like from the third 30,000 years ago right now it's an amazing picture you know like all these cattle like jumping over a ravine or at least that's what it looks like to me I haven't I mean it's such an action picture and you can just you know feel like someone that was out there on a hunt was just really compelled to want to lay it down for posterity if you look in like you know the 1830s the daguerreotype you know those the first process it really brought photography to the masses and it was this you know silver silvered plate they to put this these chemicals on it I think it started with you know with chloride and then went to bromides and things like this it was really toxic and in the very first week after de gar brought this thing out you know portrait houses sprang up all across Paris and people would bring their families to try to take pictures because they were never able to take a picture of the family before unless you're really rich and you could get a painting done and and it was really hard to take these pictures you know you had to sit there for a couple minutes so if you imagine trying to sit there for a couple minutes to have your picture taken you know what happens is that if you try to look at the camera your eyes are going to blur because you can't keep your eyes still for that long or you know your arms will just move is just not possible so they would have to close their eyes and they would have to sit in a chair with an iron collar to hold himself still enough for these exposures to work and just just think about the lengths that these people all across Paris went to to capture those pictures I think when you look at you know digital pictures today you know that that same energy is there for people to just want to take pictures with their smartphones but people just have this craving for really great pictures of the people that they love right so that drives an enormous camera market dedicated camera market it was like 38 billion dollars last year in sales projected to grow to 44 billion dollars in 2015 and that's before the innovations that lie field technology and lecture wants to bring back to the space so you know the history of progression of photography something I'm a very passionate about as well okay um we definitely will ask you more questions but we wanted to get questions that our audiences as I was asking of you so aunt wanna there's years of a couple of them rolling by the the one that I keep seeing the most is how does the file size or photo that's captured in this format compared to something like JPEG or raw as it yeah i'm in fowler it's not gonna be an immense file they're going to be comparable to the regular picture files and it really comes down to compression level so it might be a slightly larger depending on where we end up but it's not going to be like an order of magnitude larger than other pictures of did it will they be their own kind of file right it inherently has to be because this information that we're collecting is is not a photograph and so it collects all this extra information and now that said once you have a life filled engine that's our software to form the pictures from that life you well after that you know you could save it as a JPEG ship it out of course you lose the interactive capability right so what we wanted to make sure is that you know people don't just have this really powerful technology under the hood for the photographer and then you ship them out and your friends to a nice picture but they don't even know when you buy a life your camera it's something that you can really take some exciting content with and that is why we have launched the company with these living pictures on our website that is what people are going to be able to share with their friends and family and if you think about it right when people are going to website right now when you guys went you don't have to install any software to see it right no no the problem with formats in the past you know whether it's tiff or jpeg or raw was that the modern software infrastructure of the world with a software structure of the world at that time hadn't grown enough so that it wasn't a pain I mean you have to download software make sure it's compatible all this kind of things today with modern web technologies we can deliver something we're on mobile phones you know on a web browser now on the iPad people can see these living pictures without installing anything and that's the simplicity and unification of the experience that we want to deliver to our customers when the product comes out now i'm on the demos on your web page is it is it using html5 to read these files depends on where you look at it it's either flash or html5 so on a browsers like html5 and i think sorry on a mobile phone its html5 and on a browse so for someone let's say let's say my mom who in the future by his electro camera will she will she need to use some sort of light row software on her own computer initially to interact with the photos yeah initially yeah that's you know that's probably going to happen but when she shares with you or with anyone else in the world they don't need to install anything to appreciate the living picture now how does the duffel the chat room is asking how does the time between shots differ is it does it take longer to take these sort of pictures yeah it's a good question and you know we're not ready to go into some of the specifics on the product right now because a lot of those things are still in development but if we do like exclusives Ren right I'll see you are they solicit exclusive right here how much more do you want Brian not ask any one person cannot be in two places at the same time but keep on eating a lot of the physics oh yeah yeah inherently you know with light field technology this is a single shot right so it's not taking many pictures and trying to stitch them together so inherently light fields are the same speed or potentially faster exposures than for conventional cameras because we can shoot in Les life so you know things like that shot to shot speed and take multiple pictures really just come down to the electronic system is is independent of life field technology okay so um you know that we didn't see too many I guess action shots like let's say a runner someone throwing down a slam dunk like we'll be able to handle that okay definitely and I think there are some one the west side this I think a picture of a lot of pictures that are still coming through and going out because how the photographers are working with I think this one of a chain link fence with a some volleyball players in the background I think you know this volleyball players are about to spike the ball so they're definitely some action shots out there and yeah it's to roll and in fact the best one the one I like the most is there's a baby shot on there this is this is a friend of Eric's daughter yeah yeah there's baby kai this is like the happiest baby in the world a lot of pictures of baby kai and the amazing thing about this picture would you might not be able to tell baby look closely it's maybe caught on a swing at the park and I don't know if you guys have ever tried to take a picture of a baby on my nieces and nephews oh yeah see it's a great shot right because they love I mean babies just love being on the swing you know but it's with a conventional camera I mean you know you have to focus and usually convention cameras have that half press right so you know that that's that's a by the way a really simple thing where complication just write the moving shot you think the picture just means lots of people take it at the wrong time or they don't know you need to do that which is why its focus on the wrong point and you have to have press it and then you have to wait for the baby to try to go through that point it's basically impossible and that shot you just click it and then because you can focus after the fact that any depth you can make a picture is perfectly in focus that sounds very compelling right there we just click it yeah but not in fact i miss something which is not just the right focus but also at the right time right because when you click it it takes instantly without any delay and that i tell you is one of the hottest features going to be the next question I was asking what about the opposite end of that people who enjoy things like long long exposures will you still be able to do that for definitely and you know the thing about light feel photography is I wrote about this in my dissertation a little bit is you know I'm very passionate about I was came from film cameras travel on a slide film but I love velvia was the kind of film that I use it takes really saturated colors outdoors and then with digital cameras you know the same kind of craft of composition of the picture and all the kind of controls that you can have to creatively as something I'm you know just really passionate about and my field photography feels so natural because it very much is photography as we've known it right and the focusing that you see through these pictures feel so natural because it is just the soft the life fuel engine doing the physical work of the lens that would normally have been done a conventional camera you turn the focus ring we just do that physics now in software it's just an accurate simulation of that the best way that we can which is white looks a high fidelity so all the things you know from photography will continue to work except now the thing that you get is a little bit more life in the picture preserved forever and that's a great point because I think that's the one thing that everyone was worried about the like wolves is a proprietary camera how much control to actually get but that's really the after the fact you know being able to manipulate in deland have you know enjoy these photos right right right definitely and you know that there's so many capabilities that come from light fields and it's going to take time for us and for the ecosystem to bring all of those benefits to the consumer over time this is going to take years right but the amazing thing is that right out the gate you get a living picture that does things that you could never do before and the file that it came from the light fuel file contains all of the richness of that data for forever so we have had an example of a flying bird it was a pigeon that I shot in Japan like three years ago with an early you killed a pigeon no no no definitely not at all if you know where I know I'm we're not into animal cruelty at Lytro in any way no I mean the amazing thing was that you know I had this instant shutter so I could capture the bird just at the right moment as it was flying by and it used to be focusing only but then when we developed our 3d capabilities and built that out last year the same light feel file from three years ago I became 3d so now if you put glasses on you can see a flying bird in 3d even without glasses we have this immersive 3d that lets you change the perspective in the picture ran you're killing me right now I'm juice now I you know I signed up you can go to the website on light rail and there's an email list right to sign up to get it yeah how long is that list you won't tell me I can't say but i'll just do it we have been totally amazed at the level of interest and are so grateful to people for you know their support of the company now we're gonna wrap things up which is kind of a final question obviously the camera industry is growing exploding but it's really competitive right so for you what do you think are some of the challenges that you see that you guys kind of have to address out of the gates you know to get people to really not only understand lytro but jump on board with it yeah definitely you know I think that what the company needs to do is to keep our just a product design philosophy our silicon valley ethos you know really intact as we go forward because when you look at a lot of the cameras on the market today I think a lot of them are still polishing technology for technology's sake it's sort of like you know the CPUs back the CPU market you know back in the 90s right it was just like megahertz from stick I mean more megapixels is not visible to any of us and we share pictures and our orientation is to really use the advanced technology we have to make a simpler camera faster more delightful or magical for people and if we keep that end and product experience intact as we go forward which we have our I totally focused and committed to I think the company will be really success it's amazing a lots good question from the chat room can you apply these the light sensor to video as well as that protect is that definitely you saw the flying bird yeah so it's a single shot in time now you do a video rate a video is a really important for thing for us that what that was that was cool right was right that was yeah i'll give it that that all i'll say i'll give you guys one other you know final l thought it holograms right back in the research phase single shot of a life via camera we we could create a full parallax hologram in color a full color that you can move around and see things in in full full 3d yeah i'm a file is collected with light field camera provide that you know that opportunity compatibility for the future awesome mom Rendon thank you so much thanks Brian yeah thank you so much for coming out um please write my name on the top of the list I signed up two days ago I really appreciate it um but like sure you hear that lightlife you got you got like you guys on the altar on it anyways thank you run for coming in their studio and I will definitely keep our eyes on you guys and we appreciate everything so we're gonna go to an ad break everyone and we'll be back with the stories of the day but Ren thank you very much that's right cause baby I'm the woman clapping let's go okay thank you guys all right right to be here we'll be back in a moment guys you