Steve Bush
US firm Lytro has announced a consumer camera that does not focus images optically, but records light rays as vectors rather scalar intensities and computes focussed images from data.
The technology springs from the Stanford University computer science thesis of Dr Ren Ng, who founded Lytro where he is CEO.
Known as a light-field or plenoptic camera, "its light field sensor captures 11 million light rays of data, including the direction of each ray," said the firm. "The light field engine then processes the data into a picture that is displayed in HD quality."
The data file produced contains enough information for any part of the image to be focussed at any time after the image has been taken providing the light filed engine software is available.
The consumer camera has an 8x optical zoom and f/2 lens, with 8Gbyte and 16Gbyte models are available storing 350 and 750 pictures respectively. Prices start at $399.
There are demonstrations here - just click on any part of the pictures to focus that part.
