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I agree that focusing after the fact has limited appeal, but there are some interesting long-term ramifications of this technology. Today, much of lens correction are done in hardware, by adding more lens elements, which makes the hardware larger, heavier and more expensive. Some corrections can be done in software these days (barrel/pincushion distortion, chromatic aberration), but not all. What they've been able to do with this camera is move a lot of those corrections into software, allowing them to use a simpler, cheaper lens with a very large aperture. The constant F/2 aperture is unheard of in a lens with such a large zoom range. Besides aberrations, there's another issue with using traditional large-aperture lenses: focusing takes time, and it's not always accurate. With the Lytro, I imagine that you can take pictures instantly without needing to focus, and you can get perfect focus in post-processing. From what I've seen in the sample gallery, image quality isn't great compared to regular camera/lens combinations in the same price range. This camera might not be for everyone, but I really hope the technology continues to improve and eventually become mainstream. |