Lytro Light Field Camera Digital Camera Review

Image Quality

The Lytro captures light field photos—pictures that can be focused and refocused after the shot is taken. But they're still made up of the same red, green, and blue pixels as any other "regular" two-dimensional photo, so we can (and should) judge their quality like any other "regular" two-dimensional photo. At their best, they can look pretty good. The shallow depth-of-field effect (sharp subject, blurry everything else) lends a more "pro" look to the photos than most point-and-shoots can pull off (though it's impossible to have everything in focus like it pretty much is with point-and-shoots; it's a trade-off, but a favorable one we think). Colors are a bit flat and even moderately dim shots look grainy and desaturated, but that's nothing out of the ordinary for a cheap compact camera. Sharpness, though, is the worst we've measured in years. It's not really a surprise, since the Lytro can only crank out 1-megapixel JPEGs. That's really only enough detail for small online sharing. But hey, this is the world's sole commercial light field camera right now, so we can forgive some of the image quality issues.