My Review of the Lytro Light Field Camera

Disclaimer: This is not THE review by professionals stating technical specifications and mathematically correct calculations. Believing that this is THE review by professionals is like believing the people who said they are "sorry and if they didn't quite get it right, they will try and do better next time". And now, MY review.

Introduction
Lytro is a company that produces the first light field camera. This is started by Dr Ren Ng, a light-field photography research at Stanford University. The science behind this technology is essentially capturing the "amount of light traveling in every direction through every point in space" of an object or scene. So, Lytro camera is not measured by megapixels as captured by the conventional camera sensor. Lytro camera has an entirely new sensor called light field sensor which has a micro-lens array specially adhered to a standard sensor. Measurement of this sensor is by "light rays". In the Lytro camera, it captures 11 million light rays.

The philosophy of Lytro camera is "shoot first, focus later". This technology might just change the playing field in terms of camera technology in years to come (this is just my speculation, could take decades to change the game). Imagine pointing your camera and pressing the shutter button all at once. No need to worry about focusing. Focus later on your Macbook. Cool, isn't it? I mean, since people are always spending so much time usnig LightRoom, Photoshop and other image editing tools to touch up their (sometimes really bad) photos, it shouldn't take much longer determining the focus point, right?


Specification*
1) 11 'Megaray'* sensor
2) 8x 43-340mm equivalent, constant F2 lens (limited to 43-150mm range in Everyday mode)
3) 8GB or 16GB internal memory (depending on model)
4) 1.46" (33mm) 49,000 dot touch-screen
5) Instant power-on, instant focus in Everyday mode

* Taken off from Dpreview website

Some images of the package (pardon the poor image quality from my iPhone4, better pictures from my proper camera soon!)

The box


Box unveiled


Side profile


Comparison of the camera in my (ugly) palm and a film canister


Constant F2 aperture lens


More to come in the next few days! Please be patient!