Lytro lights up photography market with digital camera

Digital photography it's not overstated to call it a revolution. Turning film into ones and zeros and in the process completely changing the way we take and share pictures. But what about how we relate to them. A brewing revolution in that the other half of what it means to take a picture is where we're taking you today. And yeah. -- I was always motivated how can we use this new technology to -- take pictures -- help us tell richer visual stories to one another. -- is the founder of light trailed off photography company that aims to change what you think of as a photo and in the process what you want from a camera. While doing Ph.D. work at Stanford -- got into the core concept behind the light from camera capturing -- now so the photo can be almost anything later. What is it that this camera is gonna do differently from me as the photographer the consumer we -- them to call light field. And it contains all the amount of light traveling in every direction. At every point of space inside the camera so -- -- -- you're describing to me to this English major. Is all in multiple dimensions 3-D at its core is that getting close to it totally is the -- Regular photographs to. All photographs have always been to. Forming this very high multi dimensional Alexis. What really makes the light -- cameras -- is this a piece of glass called a micro lands around. If you look through that had a light source you can see how it spreads -- to -- -- -- Right can you see that here it's a huge number of from red green blue and may be sort of yellow here exactly and -- going in different directors and -- -- coming -- like what report you exactly. Instead of. Concentrating all the light in this scene into a flat plane with a single point of focus that's -- regular cameras do this light field sensor is able to capture the myriad rays of light coming from the micro lens. As raw materials more than -- finished photo. Here's a picture -- nine entities focused on these eyelashes. And him. And the actual eyeballs a little bit out of folk exactly but with the light field backing this. You can click on the picture and bring the eyeball to focus itself and I can see all the details in the iris. An existing it change the meaning of the photo. I love this picture to -- -- cricket. Climbing a belief and if we could -- -- picture you can see you know the veins within this leaf or sheer where this I believe this sort of curling back on itself or really interesting bit. -- this in the background. Once against and inviting you to explore and what is it my goodness it's another cricket in the background here. Now fall this selective focus stuff will initially be Greek to consumers there's another -- -- feature that won't be. 3-D. Convinced me that the 3-D part of what you do is interesting. Sure it is busses -- these are active shutter glasses and it's kind of remarkable from a single Camry can get this amount of -- and noticed here I can even change the view poignant missing in. -- -- -- So it's not only -- -- that you get in a movie but also this and really did change -- -- -- moving hit your head from side to side which is actually one of the strongest 3-D effects. We spend some 38 billion dollars on digital still cameras today. For about 200 dollars you get a huge amount of megapixels extreme levels of zoom HD video ability even built in Wi-Fi sharing and multiple screens now. That's a lot for a little and a lot to compete again. It's. I think for me photography means a lot of different things in many many different contexts and you can use in lots of different ways you can use it to take regular photographs more easily there's a lot of value in that tremendous value and income democratizing photography further even beyond where we have been today. But there is also tremendous value to opening -- new artistic avenues. And artists we're gonna find it just easy and you know something which is made their previous craft become something which is cheap. No they're gonna find that -- -- photography opens entirely new kinds of artistic challenges. -- cameras but is at the end game you really wanna get the camera business or are you proving a point to get this into all other cameras. But this technology can affect everything -- with a lens in front of a sensor. From mobile phones featured high end cameras at this point in time though the company's laser focus on -- first electric camera. And the process must take on the much bigger task than just building a new kind of camera. Getting consumers to want a new kind of picture. Yeah it.