In 2011, Lytro Inc dazzled the consumer gadget world when it introduced a pocket flashlight-sized gizmo that could take "living" pictures - images that could be refocused after the shutter clicked.
Published : 23 Apr 2014, 11:58 AM
On Tuesday, the Silicon Valley company unveiled a bigger, more expensive camera designed to make a "do-over" a reality instead of a photographer's dream.
The Lytro Illum, priced at $1,599, is marketed as a legitimate tool for commercial photographers and advanced amateurs who want to differentiate their work in an age of Instagram and "commodotized imaging," Lytro founder Ren Ng said.
The original camera, which was priced at $399, was mostly a niche product that sought to prove the viability of light-field photography. Lytro has declined to provide sales figures for that model.
Ng said it made the most sense for his company to target the $20 billion high-end camera market due to the growing ubiquity of smartphones. His cameras share many components, such as sensors, with high-powered digital single-lens reflex cameras, known as DSLRs.
Like its predecessor featuring the ability to "focus after you shoot," the Illum captures the three-dimensional data in light rays. The technology lets the user adjust the plane of focus or slightly tilt or shift perspective after the shot.
Unlike the original Lytro camera, however, the Illum resembles a traditional DSLR, featuring a 30- to 250-mm equivalent F/2 lens, a 1-inch sensor and a sleek black body with a shutter button, SD memory cards and a 4-inch touchscreen display. Its sensor captures 40 "megarays," but the still images have the equivalent resolution of roughly 4 megapixels, Ng said.