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Is Lytro Illum Camera the future of photography? Lytro Illum camera is able to produce ‘living images’ which allow the user to shift the point of focus after the shot has been taken.
It sounds incredible? Isn’t it? The technology used involves a microlens array in front of the Illum’s sensor which scatters the light in different directions depending upon the angle at which it entered the array.
Using millions of micro-lenses to record the direction and intensity of light, Lytro Illum cameras take a 3D snapshot that includes depth information.
This allows the photographer to magically refocus shots after they have been taken and even adjust the perspective.
Lytro Illum compact camera
Lytro Illum Camera is like a storytelling machine that allows you to adjust aperture, use selective focus, tilt, focus spread, animation and even 3D to differentiate yourself with multiple deliverables.
The Illum’s processor uses the direction data gathered from the sensor to calculate how the light would have responded if the lens was focused at different points.
This in turn enables the camera to generate different versions of the image with the focus at different distances.
Where regular cameras focus on a single plane and rely on depth of field to make objects nearer or further away look sharp, the Illum captures a zone of sharp focus which you can exploit later.
Unlike the tube-shaped original Lytro camera, the Illum actually looks and acts like a regular camera with a proper grip, physical controls and a hot shoe for attaching a flash along with a proper zoom and focus rings.
Lytro Illum specs
A 40 Megaray sensor with 8x optical zoom lens and 30-250mm equivalent focal length brings unparalleled capability in a single lens.
You have the ability to capture the scene with exceptional foreground and background detail. All the imaging power you need to compose experiences that have never been framed before.
Lytro ILLUM features a Snapdragon 800 Processor and it offers real-time playback controls to preview every detail, every dimension, instantly.
Capturing every ray of light within the scene requires the most powerful computational technology in the industry.
Disclaimer: We can not guarantee that the information above is 100% correct. Please check out the manufacturer website for complete info.
The post-production tweaking also includes very powerful Lytro Desktop that allows user to crop images and adjust the white balance, saturation, sharpness, noise reduction settings and various tonal settings like contrast, shadows and highlights.
Images can be animated, zooming in or out, or panning around while focus changes. You can even add tilt shift-style blurring effects. And all of this is reversible. Photos can also be saved as flat “normal” images in formats like JPG or PNG.
Lytro ILLUM desktop focus spread
Also available is a new plugin for Photoshop users that allows you to edit the camera’s “living pictures in Adobe’s image editing software instead of Lytro’s own powerful, but unfamiliar Desktop application.
You can create animations of 3D photos that are compatible with Virtual Reality headsets like Google Cardboard and the Samsung Gear VR.
The obvious issue with Lytro ILLUM camera is the low-light performance that is fairly lousy compared to even basic compact cameras with plenty of noise.
Another issue is the fact that it’s painfully slow startup which can soon become a frustration for regular users.
Lytro Illum may not be a camera that everyone – or even very many people – will want or need right now but perhaps a few years down the line, it cold the one that everybody will own.
Lytro Illum at least feels like a genuine, serious tool for photographers that offers new possibilities and a real glimpse of photography’s future.
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