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.]
I can one day see Lightroom incorperating “Focus point” and “Depth of Field” sliders…and that wil be both awesome and disappointing…
Wow!
A lot of this chatter sounds like my parents when we started using calculators. They told us we would never be good at math if we didn’t use that slide rule…
If this provides a tool that will let me capture a moment with less possibility of error, then great!!! I am all for better and better tools. Doesn’t mean I throw out everything in the past.
Other examples?!?!
Spell check
Cruise control
Auto focus
It goes on and on
Damn straight! You tell’em Chase. Stumbled.
And the Autofocus tech has taken so much away from us!
These guys at MIT came up with a similar technology in 2006ish: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/graphics/CodedAperture/