Light Field Technology!

[Andrew Smith]

And they're even talking about resolution received from the camera! My, how things have suddenly changed.

Andrew

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Andrew Smith

And they're even talking about resolution received from the camera! My, how things have suddenly changed.

Not really. All they really refer to is a basic "755 megapixel sensor", and from that someone has inferred "40K" as resolution. Do the maths and if you assumed 16:9 aspect ratio, it gives a horizontal photosite count of about 36.6K horizontally - which is where I assume the "40K" comes from.

But the whole point of the Lytro technology is that it trades resolution for other features (such as refocusing). So the final image resolution will be much less than 36K, the amount depending on the fineness of the "refocussability" etc. But it should certainly be up to at least 2K for video, probably even 4K, yet still have enough in hand to provide reasonably seamless post focussing. So far so good.

But ..... look at the figures again. I don't see any mention of sensor size? We're talking about the horizontal count going up roughly by a factor of about 9 compared to a standard s35 4K sensor, and it being read at 300fps. Either the photosite size must therefore decrease a lot, or the sensor size must go up. To keep the same photosite size, you're looking at a sensor of around 21x12 cms (wow! :-) ), and even if each was shrunk to only a quarter of the s35 4k size (so 1/16 the area), it's still about 5cmsx3cms in total. And if you're reading at 300fps, small photosites aren't a good idea.

Yes, it's possible, but even before thinking about the huge data requirements, expect it to be very, very expensive, and don't expect a zoom lens.

Certainly, don't expect it to be the future of general cinematography. (Not unless refocusability is worth more to you than zoom lens etc, before even thinking about the cost.)

The real question then is less will it work (I'm sure it will) - but will the additional functionality be worth the cost? (The article describes "This camera is essentially military-grade technology") Will it be simply more cost efficient, even for VFX work, to just use current techniques? Not as elegant maybe, but overall far more cost effective?

It's worth noting that they claim:

Lytro Cinema captures all the rays of light within a scene, providing a rich amount of Light Field data.

Well, not really. Such a camera is only capturing the rays that impact the camera lens, albeit the area at full aperture. And that becomes significant when you consider the 3D aspects Lytro refer to. It's quite true that such a light field camera can produce a more "true" 3D effect than a stereoscopic camera - but the limits of such are similar to looking at a real world scene through such as a hole in a fence. Perspectives will change somewhat depending which part of the hole you look through - but the limits will be set by the edges of the hole. In this case, the diameter of the lens corresponds to the hole, and limits the amount of "looking around" objects that's possible.