Greetings and salutations!
About three years ago I was taking a photography class at the local college entitled, “Photography processes and materials”. During the class, we were discussing depth of field and how to manipulate it. Depth of field, or DoF, by definition is “the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image.” To put it in layman terms, it’s that cool effect where only part of the picture is in focus. It is a technique that is used when the photographer wants to isolate the subject of the image. We see this effect everywhere. It is very popular in sport images where you want to highlight the athlete and not the fans behind them or with wedding photos where you want the happy couple to command the image without the distractions of an inebriated cousin photo-bombing in the background.
During the discussion, our professor mentioned a new mythical technology where a camera would be able to digitally capture not only the single plane of focus, but gather all data about the visible light in the camera's field of view. Then, with all of this information, you could go back to the photo in post-production, and manually select where you would like your focus to be. Wow.
So, we flash forward a few years and I find myself looking for a topic to illustrate something that is unique to digital photography and wonder if this elusive beast has ever come to fruition. I did a search for “new innovations in photography” and lo and behold, there has been a sighting of this white whale! The technology even had a name. It’s called “A light-field camera”.
A light-field camera, also called a plenoptic camera, is a camera that uses a microlens array to capture 4D light field information about a scene. The first company to produce one of these cameras for the average consumer is a company named Lytro. The Lytro camera is the first camera that records the entire light field instead of a 2D image. The main feature of the camera is what they refer to as “perspective shift”. Perspective Shift allows you to interactively change your point of view in a picture after you've taken the picture.
So, what does this mean on a practical level? Well, for one thing, this could very well be the end of the blurry picture. No more missed opportunities because I forgot to turn off my manual focus or when my auto focus decided that the tree behind my subject was the more interesting aspect of my shot. As a photographer, you can understand my excitement for such a technology.
Then the inevitable question, how much is this going to set me back? The world of photographic technology is infamous for its astronomical price tags for cutting edge gear. I visited the Lytro website and found that their camera costs around $300 bucks. This is far out of my budget for something that seems barely out of the R&D lab. Disheartened and disillusioned, I put my wallet away and dream of a day that this technology will be available at a more acceptable price point, until…I notice on the website the “available on the app store” logo.
Now armed with an iTunes gift card, I headed to the site and there it is. Unbelievably, they have an app that will simulate the effect with my iPad, all for 99 cents. With the app, “focalyz”, you are able to take a single shot and manually select where the focus is going to lie. After fiddling with it, it does produce what it claims, albeit on a rather low tech level. Below I've placed some examples of the shot I took.
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In this picture, you can see that the focus of the
image is primarily on the blue mug in the foreground.
The picture in the background is blurry.
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Now, with the poke of my finger, the photo
in the frame behind the mug becomes clearer
and the mug becomes a bit out of focus.
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Just for the record, I realize that I sound like Jack with a fistful of magic beans. Furthermore, I know that this technology is not as big as flying cars or robot butlers. What I do know is this: This program is not a defining breakthrough but more so, what lies in the future for digital photography. Just as now, when we look back at the not so distant past and laugh at the cutting edge video game world of “pong”, I believe that we will remember these kitschy little apps with the same fondness. This illustrates but a mere glimpse into what is in store for the ever evolving world of digital photography. –Tim
More on light field camera technology can be found at https://www.lytro.com/
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