It Came From Silicon Valley

July 26, 2012

Home again and to use a bad pun the return flight flew by. Both Kim and I are surprised how fast eleven hours in a tube can go. The home felines were happy to see us and gave us what for for being away.

I want to share one last set of photos we took one the trip with a Lytro Camera and talk a little about usage experience. This unique camera started shipping earlier this year and has intrigued some of the camera enthusiasts at my work due to it allowing a user to refocus an image after being taken. Take a look at this image I took of Sydney at Sagrada Família which should come up with Sydney’s face out of focus. Now click on her face (anywhere) and she should be brought into focus. Pretty cool huh? I also liked what read about the camera and found its form factor interesting but was reluctant to buy until I could test it operationally, i.e. on the road. Luckily Russell Selph who purchased one allowed me to borrow his with the promise I would report back. So…

The shape made it quite portable and easy to carry. I became quite good at being able to turn it on and manipulate it with one hand while holding my DSLR in the other. And the unique look of the camera brought the intrigued look and started several conversations in various places. A taste if the future from Silicon Valley. The picture taken results in a square image versus the rectangle shape in my DSLR and this was problematic to me. In order to take best advantage of the refocus ability you had to have items both near and far in the image and the square image made framing more difficult and I felt I had to compromise on too many issues. The camera did ok when the object was close but not great. If trying to capture image where nothing was closer than 6 feet or so the refocus ability never comes in to play unless you were doing a trick shot like this one. I also found the LCD touchscreen a bit problematic to frame with when trying to line up a special shot that I had to hold the camera at an odd angle, the image became distorted thus hard to frame.

Another thing is the resulting image can only be viewed with software that needs to be loaded on the viewing computer or at the Lytro Web site,

The result? I find the camera fun to use and will follow future developments with the company and the technology but I will wait until the next generation of cameras before (maybe) buying.The current camera is great for the artistic image (if you have time) however for the average user this may be beyond their time or inclination. So wait with me although I plan to borrow Russ’s camera in the future. Please. Russ?

Below are some select images, I hope you enjoy them.

A fun trip that had just the right compoents. All hotels were great and can be recommended. Thanks to Nancy and her crew at Ladera Travel for their help on this journey.

Lytro Images

 

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