Lytro Light Field Camera

To publish a “review” of the Lytro as it is today is, in a way, very premature. But it’s also only fair. The product is shipping and, to an extent, complete. But given the number of features and planned improvements in the pipes, a review today will be obsolete in a few months. Nevertheless, an initial judgment on the device must be made.

So here is what can be said of the Lytro in a form that can only really be called a public beta.

Pros

    Camera is well-built and extremely easy to operate
    Uniqueness of the imaging technique makes you think differently about photography
    Could be good for kids

Cons

    Image quality isn’t particularly good
    Composition options are, in some ways, extremely limited
    Many desirable ways to manage and adjust your photos are absent

A quick explanation is probably in order for people who have not handled the camera. The Lytro Light Field Camera lets you take pictures in which you can adjust the focus after the fact. It has two modes: everyday, in which you only control the zoom and shutter release, and creative, which lets you zoom more, focus closer, and control the depth of field more — but you have to manually tell it where to focus, which is kind of backwards for a device meant to remove the process of focusing from the equation.

The photos, or “living photos” as they call them, can then be transferred to your computer and uploaded to Lytro’s website, where you can then embed or share them elsewhere online.

We recently got to talk with Lytro founder Ren Ng and their director of photography, Eric Cheng, at an event in San Francisco. I cornered them for a few minutes to talk about the product and their plans for the future.


Hardware and design

The designers of the Lytro camera itself should be congratulated for creating a device that is unique, functional, and attractive all at once. That’s not easy to do. The square-prism shape is strange at first, being unlike almost any camera on the market, but once you think of it more as a kind of telescope than a camera as far as handling is concerned, it’s quite natural.

The shutter button is easy to find and pleasant to activate; the touch-sensitive zoom area is responsive; the textured rubber finish is grippy and attractive; overall the feeling of the device is one of solidity and simplicity. It’ll survive a fall or a splash of coffee and look good doing it.

My main criticism hardware-wise is the screen. It’s extremely small and the resolution (hence sharpness and ability to display your photos properly) is poor. It’s responsive to touch, but it can’t display much and getting the focus point right in creative mode can be a pain. It’s also difficult to tell how your pictures turned out in playback mode: the screen often just isn’t good enough to display the nuances of the focus shift. Many times I thought I’d captured a good one only to be disappointed, though sometimes I was pleasantly surprised with the opposite, as well.

One other minor potential concern is that the grid in the rubber might fill with grit and grime over time, but it’s hard to say for sure, only having had the camera for short while.

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