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New digital image startup Lytro has unveiled upcoming digital cameras based on the firm’s radical light-field sensor.
The physical design is as radical as the sensor inside with the Lytro cameras looking more like square lipstick than traditional cameras. Inside the Lytro sensor captures information on light direction as well as the colours and levels that ordinary cameras do.
Lytro claims the innovation represents camera 3.0, one step up from camera 2.0 of digital photography. The devices, which the company will sell direct in the first quarter of 2012, contain 8GB to 16GB of storage and will cost around $400, not cheap.
The Lytro party trick, as it were, is that the sensor enables setting of depth of field and focus after images have been taken. The software required to do so will only be available on the Mac when the cameras arrive early next year.
Quite why is anyone’s guess. Mac fans will be able to pick up a lipstick game in blue, red or graphite. Which is nice.
