This camera could well be one that came out too early. Hope the company and ideas survive. Could have been a true revolution in image capture, still or video.Lytro Illum
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Its physical design was such a beautiful blend of aesthetics and ergonomics. The hardware/software UI, even beyond the big touchscreen, was way ahead of its time. The 40 megaray capture and whatnot, allowing near infinite focus points to choose from in editing with a super shallow depth of field, was really cool.
A shame its sensor was only 4 megapixels, as most other aspects of its image quality were great. It had a great lens, good signal to noise ratio, and very nice dynamic range. I can still prefer lower resolution photos if they are clean and have good, REAL contrast. It's one of the reasons why most high-res flagship smartphone imagery, while impressive, just isn't pleasant to me.
That said, the Illum's resolution was just too low. No matter how clean you make 4 megapixels, it's still 4 megapixels. I've used CRTs with a higher resolution...
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Unedited pic of my gecko
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Here's a shot that shows the interesting ways the light ray sensor can distort images. It's an unedited, out of focus shot of a window at night. It's difficult to explain without reference, but the the deep hues of the blurred night sky, light reflecting off the window, and silhouette of the outside treeline were impossible to recreate in the bokeh of any other camera I had.
Might add more shots later later if I find them.
Peace.