Lytro, a Bay area startup announced their product to the world today. It is great to see innovation in the area of photography. Yes, we did go from film to digital, but what changed was the medium of capture of the data and nothing else. What Lytro promises is a new way to capture image data, one which captures light fields from multiple angles and lets the user manipulate the data after the fact. Check out their gallery for some stunning examples. This is really cool technology and I am waiting to get my hands on the camera.
The marketing message for this camera seems to be centered around 'shoot first, focus later'. Before auto-focus was invented, people focused cameras manually. But, once auto focus was introduced, how many of us focus cameras manually, especially, consumers. Auto focus was a boon to the camera world and paved the way to make photography an enjoyable experience, and we saw an exponential increase in consumer adoption. Digital photography (immediate gratification) took it to the next level. Now, Lytro wants the consumer (viewer of the end result) to 'focus' the picture in order to enjoy the 'living picture'. I don't think my friends and family would want to 'focus' my pictures and discover the hidden details.
The beauty and art of photography was that it allowed the artist to tell a story in the way they want to tell it. This new technology is akin to the 'create your own adventure' books where you decide how the story turns out. How popular are those books? Not very..
The light field technology and camera does have its uses. Imagine a traffic/surveillance camera equipped with this technology, and the CSI computer geeks will be out of jobs.
The success of this company will depend on how they productize the technology and market it to the consumers. The current story is not compelling enough to tilt the scales.