Lytro light field camera—the only camera that captures life in living pictures.

Sounds great, isn’t it?

I guess you are not sure what I’m talking about: I know it; my first impression was the same.

So, let’s track from the beginning. A few months ago Lytro’s founder and CEO Ren Ng  announced about their intention to start a ‘picture revolution’. As he stated their light field camera may not look or work like anything currently on the market.

But what is light field camera?

The light field camera captures light differently. It doesn’t focus light down into a single pixel as a conventional camera does. It splits the information across multiple pixels. This technique allows images to be recalculated with different focus points and the camera doesn’t need to be focused on a single point. Ren Ng says:  “‘We don’t have to focus when you take the shot. There’s no moving motors, which allows an instant shutter.”

What makes light field camera special?

1. The ability to re-focus images minutes, days or years after the shot.
2. The ability to interact with the images without any cumbersome software.
3. The ability to view images in 3D.
4. The ability to capture 11 million rays of light instantly.
5. The combination of 8x zoom lens with an f/2 aperture and eleven elements.
6. Glass touch-screen, which lets you frame your shots and browse previously taken images.
7. The ability to share with friends:  Easily share from the desktop or from Lytro.com to friends and family on Facebook, Twitter, email or your blog.
8. Small pocketable form: it measures about 4.4-inches long, weighs 8oz, and features a 1.46-inch LCD touch- screen.
9. Affordable price: It comes in three versions

• Red Hot–$499, 750 pictures/16GB
• Graphite–$399 pictures/8GB
• Electric Blue–$399 pictures/8GB

Lytro camera was officially introduced on October 19 but cameras are expected to be out early in 2012. However, you can preorder the light field camera at Lytro’s official site https://www.lytro.com/camera.

Entering the site don’t forget to navigate their ‘picture gallery’, there you can ‘play’ with early light field camera photos and find out how it really works.

I haven’t yet touched one of these magic pieces of Lytro camera but I’m pretty sure that this is going to be the most significant photography-related event of the year.