Been tons of chatter online about the Lytro camera the last few weeks. In case you’ve been living under a rock or too busy to notice, then you’ll be happy to know that the new Lytro camera allows you to select focus AFTER you shoot the photograph. AMAZING technology developed at Stanford by Ren Ng. Just like you can change the white balance after capture when shooting RAW, well now you can put those striking blue eyes of your model in focus later.
Consider that with the technology of a camera like the RED Epic – shooting a 5,000 pixel wide image at 96 frames per second. You can aim that sucker at a scene and shoot 1000 14 megapixel still images in 10 seconds. No more need to catch ‘the decisive moment’!
Combine these two technologies? Whew! Now you’ve really got something.
Unless… your pictures have no focus. If you think that you’re photos are going to be better in the future because you don’t have to pick the moment or focus on your subject, you’re entirely wrong. These technologies are truly amazing, revolutionary and will continue to change the face of photography as we know it.
But mark my words, if you’re goal is to get your work to stand out from the crowd (as good art does), then you’ll need to focus all the more.
Focus on subject.
Focus on content.
Focus on meaning.
Focus on artistic vision…
…because these are all the tools that computers can’t help you with and these are the only ways from here on out that you’re going to be able to make a mark.
Focus on that.
[and don’t hate it, celebrate it, cause it’s all you’ve got.]
Chase, very cool technology, but I’m wondering when we will see this in professional equipment producing professional results (sharpness seems to be an issue on their demo photos… at least to me). I’m sure we will see this evolve just as we’ve seen in digital sensors over the years and the prospect of what you could do artistically with this technology is pretty exciting.
Is this becoming lazy photography? Or is this how artists depicted photographers when photography came along?
Technology will always be bringing out ‘improvements’ to the way we do things. While I won’t be going out to buy one, purely because I love the technical aspects of shooting, I won’t be making a fuss over hipsters who want to fork out $399-499 for this, err.. contraption.
Completely agree! Roughly the arguments I gave my friends when they saw the prototype and thought from now on everyone could take great photos.
Very interesting piece of technology, not ready for the public yet I think, it’s just not there. And definitely not for the real photographers I think, focus is something you think about thoroughly, it’s not always as obvious. But definitely very interesting 🙂
Well said sir 🙂 I understand where you’re coming from