[cayal]

I think Lytro lost some of the magic for me when I realized it was just utilizing a depth map to generate an iris blur. Looks like the same deal for the 3d effect, around edges you can see reconstruction artifacts. I'm impressed by the fact one lens can capture depth, but with two lenses at a narrow aperture they could create the same effect in higher resolution and quality.

[MBCook]

My understanding is that the camera's file format is essentially a stack of JPEGs and a depth map. That's how the camera can do it's own refocusing without needing a huge processor. It's not generating the image from the light field, it's combining regions of a series of JPEG images.

I was really disappointed when I found that out. I thought the software on the computer was to process the raw data, but I guess not.

I still might be interested, but the the form factor is odd. Worse is that since they decided to go with that shape, they had to make the screen very very tiny.

It's an interesting product, considering it's the first of it's kind on the consumer market. I hope there is a version 2, because I think it could be very interesting. If it could shoot video, that could be pretty fascinating.

Heck, tell other people how to use the format. A series of focal planes and a depth map? Seems like hackers might be able to come up with some pretty fun stuff.

[nrp]

This is actually not the case. I wrote a tool to pull apart the file format: https://github.com/nrpatel/lfptools

The image is stored as a raw Bayer array on the camera. The conversion to stacked JPEG occurs on the computer. The camera has a pretty beefy DSP on board to do live refocusing on the preview.

[jgeorge]

The camera's raw format is indeed an entire light field (I've used nrp's tools, they're great). The camera import software creates a layered JPEG out of the raw data for uploading and sharing, since the size and the amount of math involved in refocusing the raw image on the fly is significant.