Taking the perfect photograph is part artistic creation and part science . In the old days , when cinema was the only spiritualist you could use , you had to make indisputable you had the right-hand lens , lighting and type offilmfor the scene . As digital television camera took midway stage , lens choice and light stay significant . Equally as significant was a familiarity with blue-pencil software system . The right tools can facilitate you adjust the color Libra , contrast and other feature of the image .
Evencamerasfor professional photographers have limitations . One of those is the focal point for any give photograph . suppose you ’ve localise up a shot in which a tree outgrowth is in the foreground and a mortal is posed in the background . You adjust your tv camera ’s setting so that the person in the scope is in focus . The tree arm in the foreground is n’t in direction , creating what you hope is an artistic mental image . You snap the photo .
Later , as you gaze upon your chef-d’oeuvre , you have a shrewish uncertainty in your mind . Maybe it would have been unspoilt to focus on the tree branch instead of the person posed in the background . Perhaps the ambiguity would have made the picture more intriguing . But you ’ll never know , because you ca n’t alter the focus on a picture you ’ve already taken .
The Lytro television camera addresses this problem . It expend special lense and detector to charm all the light area within the oscilloscope of a scene . When you take a picture with a Lytro camera , you ’re just getting begin . With special software package , , included when you purchase the photographic camera , you may adjust the focal point of the double after you ’ve already taken it . Switching from a foreground to background focus only takes a tactual sensation of your digit or click of a black eye .
How does it work ? To really understand it , first we should look at how a traditional television camera captures an image .
Focusing on the Problem
At the most basic level , a camera bring in a record of light . When you shoot a view , light reflected by the scene slay your photographic camera ’s lens . The lens system bends the light and redirect it to the recording sensitive . In a filmcamera , that medium is a strip of chemically treat charge plate . In a digital photographic camera , it ’s an electronic detector .
Light from the scene turn as it passes through the lens . The light ray all meet on a single point . If you need the theme of your photograph to be in focus , you need that point to be on the surface of your picture show or on the digital sensor . you could adjust where the rays meet by incite the lens closer to or further from the spiritualist . When you focus a electron lens in a television camera , what ’s really bechance is the lens is moving closer to or further forth from the rest of the camera .
The curve of the lens determines how far away from the lense ’s airfoil light will converge to a point . A compressed lens wo n’t make light turn in as sharp-worded an slant as a rounded lens will . That ’s why the convergency point for a flat lens is further from the lens system than it would be with a rounded lens of the eye . Depending upon what you want to photograph , you ’ll need the right lens system to ensure your subject is in focal point .
The received approach to photography totals up all the light strike an ikon . There ’s no one option with a traditional camera that can capture everything so that you could throw the focus after you ’ve adopt the pic – what you see in the final image is what you get . But if you could immortalize all the individual Christ Within ray so that your image has all the visual information of a scene , you could switch from one focal level to another with the right software .
That ’s the foundation garment for the Lytro tv camera . It captures not just the total amount of light within a scene , but the literal lightheaded area .
Fields of Light
When we look at a lit object , our eye detect the luminosity bounce back from that object . That light source travels in all direction – if the object is gauzy , the lighting continues through it as well . If you were able to isolate a individual point in space within this lit scene , you would find ray of light cross through , travel in all directions .
A light field describes this phenomenon . you could think of a irradiation of light as something that has five dimension . Three of those proportion are the spatial dimensions we ’re all familiar with – what roughly translate to height , length and depth , or the x , y and z axes . The other two dimensions have-to doe with to the current of light along the beam .
The geometric statistical distribution of illumination is what we call aplenopticfunction . The word plenoptic comes from the Latin word plenus meaning full or complete . Opticsrefer to the behaviour of light . To capture the complete igniter from a view , we would need a plenoptic television camera .
A genuine plenoptic camera is just a thought drill . unintelligible physical objects pulley-block light – they cause closure . To becharm a clean line of business , the camera – and photographer – would have to inhabit every perspective around a matter at the same time without blocking light . We have n’t figured out how to position a photographic camera to capture every point of panorama around a subject or prevent occlusion . But the Lytro camera does simulate some plenoptic functions .
The machine has a few things in vulgar with your averagedigital camera . It has a lens and aperture through which light passes . It also has a sensing element that detects light . But between the two is an array of microlenses . These lens are much smaller than the Lytro ’s main lens – a epitome plenoptic television camera that was the precursor to the Lytro had microlenses that were 280 time minor than the main lens system [ root : Ng ] .
The lenses in the regalia verbatim Inner Light from the back of the main lens to the sensing element . The sensor capture the light field of view between the Lytro ’s lense aperture and the sensor . The solving of the photographs reckon both upon the power of the sensor and the number of microlenses in the raiment .
Once you ’ve captured an image , it ’s time to crunch some identification number .
Faking Depth
Imagine you have a long table fill with aim . You suffer at one end of the table and concentre on the nearest group of objects and take a photo . With a normaldigital camera , you would end up with a exposure in which the closest objects are in centering . The farther away the other physical object are , the more fuzzy and indistinct they ’ll appear in the picture .
ab initio , a Lytro photo can look that way too . But if you indicate that you would like a dissimilar area of the image to be in focus – you really want to see those cool toy you put on the other destruction of the table perhaps – the focal pointedness electric switch .
The Lytro ’s detector can get different images establish on the light-headed theatre conquer within the camera . While you ’re bound by a physical camera ’s focussing configurations when you take a ikon , the Lytro gives you option . That ’s because you could commute the focal deepness of a Lytro image after you ’ve already use up the pic .
As you focalise a physical tv camera , you move the lens and aperture closer to or further from the sensor . A Lytro image – the proprietary image file is called a Light Field Picture or LFP file cabinet – contains information about the loose field for that pic . Essentially , the software make a virtual lens and sensor , simulating what would happen if you were to have physically changed the focus on a traditional camera . The practical lens moves closer to or further away from the virtual sensor .
A complex collection of algorithms do the workplace . The light you catch with the camera serves as information . The algorithmic program are a set of directions for the Lytro software program to pursue . The software simulates what a physical photographic camera would have done and mother the image with the appropriate focal peak . Without the entropy from the light field , this would n’t be potential – the Lytro would n’t have the information call for to switch focus .
The fellowship offers a package product called Lytro Desktop that let you salt away and manipulate Lytro exposure on your computing equipment . finally , the camera may also allow you to take photos with an extended depth of field . That means you may be able to take a photograph with objective in the foreground and background and keep everything in nidus at the same time . Extended depth - of - playing area algorithms essentially patch together a photo by taking the sharpest part of every likely moving-picture show you would get from a Lytro television camera shot . It ’s almost like taking a serial of photos with different focal points , cutting out all the moment that are actually in focus , and then paste it all together .
Living Pictures
The Lytro company forebode LFP images " survive pictures . " That ’s because you’re able to share these images through a special program forebode the Lytro Web . The weapons platform indorse the software system that permit you trade the nidus on an image . By divvy up your photo on this political platform , you’re able to let other people explore your photos and change the focus as often as they care .
you could also choose to keep your data file stack away topically on your computer , viewing them with the Lytro Desktop software . This computer software also gives you the ability to trade the focus on any mental image snapped with the Lytro camera any time you care . While the LFP file contain all the information about the light field of the paradigm you ’ve snapped , the software contain the hardening of instructions want to trade out the focal points .
One of the downsides to the light subject field picture taking approach is that simulacrum files tend to be large . They ’re swelled because beguile all the information within a light field of operations takes up a quite a little of data space . A typical LFP file is around 16 megabytes . By contrast , a typical JPEG image on the World Wide Web may only be 30 kilobytes or smaller .
Another downside is that you ca n’t apportion an LFP figure of speech outside of the Lytro web weapons platform . If you require to share an LFP , you first must upload it to Lytro Web . Then you may send the link to whomever you like .
you may convince LFP files into JPEG files but there ’s a catch . A JPEG ca n’t corroborate the living moving picture format – in other intelligence , you ca n’t shift the focus . To export an LFP as a JPEG , first you have to choose which focal point you desire in your image . As a JPEG , your painting will be unchangeable – it ’s just a normaldigital photo .
Will light - playing area picture taking eliminate the penury to build up picture taking skill like composition and stress ? In the short term , it seems like the Lytro ’s limitations will foreclose it from eliminating the difficult employment and artistic attainment serious lensman develop over year of practice . But perhaps in the future these tv camera will make it easy to just point , fool away and focus on whatever you care later .
Here ’s an example of a Living Picture . This image was captured by Lytro community penis hanlin . cluck on the Eiffel Tower in the backcloth bring it into focus . sink in on the exemplar in the foreground interchange the focus back again .
When I first heard about the Lytro tv camera , I was astonish . I ’m used to photographs being comparatively static . I ’m conversant with make nonaged edits and tweaking configurations in the digital picture taking creation but there are some hard limits you go up against that I did n’t think you could get around . The Lytro television camera opened up my eyes to other possibilities . I even got to play with one in the springtime of 2012 at a wardrobe event . Sadly , they made me give it back before I could run out of doors , taking photos in a fiendish photographic scene .
