Gadgetory

digital photography it's not overstated to call it a revolution turning film into ones and zeros and in the process completely changing the way we take and share pictures but what about how we relate to them a brewing revolution in that the other half of what it means to take a picture is where we're taking you today so I was always motivated how could we use this new technology to take pictures that could help us tell Richard visual stories to one another ranong is the founder of Lytro a photography company that aims to change what you think of as a photo and in the process what you want from a camera while doing PhD work at Stanford Wren got into the core concept behind the Lytro camera capturing light now so the photo can be almost anything later what is it that this camera is going to do differently for me as the photographer the consumer we collect something called a light field and it contains all the amount of light traveling in every direction at every point of space inside the camera so it sounds like everything you're describing to me to this English major is all in multiple dimensions 3d at its core is that getting close to it totally is yeah regular photographs 2d all photographs have always been to d yeah and with this the light-filled raise flowing in three dimensions forming this very high multi-dimensional light field what really makes the Lytro camera tick is this a piece of glass called a micro lens array if you look through that at a light source you can see how it spreads the Rays apart right can you see that yeah it's a huge number of red green blue and maybe sort of yellow yeah exactly and raise going a different direction and they're turning out like like a pork it exactly instead of concentrating all the light in a scene into a flat plane with a single point of focus that's what regular cameras do this light field sensor is able to capture the myriad rays of light coming from the micro lens as raw materials more than a finished photo here's a picture of an eye you can see it's focused on these eyelashes mm-hmm and the actual eyeball is a little bit out of focus actly but with the light feel backing this you can click on the picture and bring the eyeball into focus itself and now you can see all the details in the IRS and it's interesting it changed the meaning of the photo I love this picture too it's a cricket climbing up a leaf and if we click around this picture you can see you know the veins within this leaf or here where this other leaf is sort of curling back on itself all really interesting but what's this in the background once again started inviting you to explore and what is it my goodness it's another cricket in the background here now if all this selective focus stuff will initially be Greek to consumers there's another Lytro feature that won't be 3d convince me that the 3d part of what you do is interesting sure put these glasses okay these are active shutter glasses and it's kind of remarkable from a single camera you can get this amount of depth and notice here I can even change the view point in the scene after we've taken the shot so it's not only the stereo that you get in a movie but also this ability to change parallax kind of like you're moving hit your head from side to side which is actually one of the strongest 3d effects we spend some 38 billion dollars on digital still cameras today for about two hundred dollars you get a huge amount of megapixels extreme levels of zoom HD video ability even built in Wi-Fi sharing and multiple screens now that's a lot for a little and a lot to compete against I think for me photography means a lot of different things in many many different contexts I think you can use it in lots of different ways you can use it to take regular photographs more easily there's a lot of value in that tremendous value in democratizing photography further even beyond where we have been today but there is also tremendous value to opening up new artistic avenues and the artists we're going to find it just easy and you know something which has made their previous craft become something which is cheap no they're going to find that life you photography opens entirely new kinds of artistic challenges you're making cameras but is that the end game do you really want to get in the camera business or are you proving a point to get this into all other cameras this technology can affect everything with a lens in front of a sensor from mobile phones through to high-end cameras at this point in time though the company is laser-focused on this first electro camera and in the process must take on the much bigger task than just building a new kind of camera getting consumers to want a new kind of picture