Lytro Light Field Camera

Light field photography is the first really, truly groundbreaking new technology in photography since the advent of digital. Lytro’s founder pioneered the technology a few years ago, and wasted no time applying it to a consumer product. We got to spend about an hour shooting around with a pre-production model of the Lytro Light Field Camera during CES 2012. Team Lytro gathered a few dozen journalists and industry affiliates in the lobby of the Wynn hotel for a test run.

The camera itself has a nice build and a cool design, with a few brushed-metal color finishes. Though we didn’t get to play around with our photos in Lytro’s software (or even see the final compressed images yet), the light field engine is built into the camera, so we had a bit of first-hand experience re-focusing our own pictures. We were told that the interface was still in beta and there would be some tweaks before the release version, but what they showed us was a good start. It’s touch-based, which is normally a non starter for cameras, but it’s useful for the tap-to-focus feature during playback.

We’ll soft-pedal most of our criticisms, since we were continually reminded that we were shooting with a pre-production build and some components could be replaced before the official launch. But no high-res LCD or foolproof UI can correct the camera’s weird handling. It just felt bizarre to shoot pictures with a stick.

Looking at it from a broader perspective, the concept behind the Light Field Camera is undeniably great, but our initial impression is that it doesn’t have the goods to be the blockbuster, mass-market camera that Lytro wants it to be. The light field technology either needs to be integrated into a more complete camera system to justify the price, or rolled out in a much cheaper package to attract a mass audience.

This original Lytro Light Field Camera is a one trick pony, a point-and-shoot camera with an extra feature. $400 is a fair price for new tech, but this isn’t some magical, all-powerful gizmo that bypasses the principles of photography. Photos can never be out of focus, which is groundbreaking, but the light field technology doesn’t solve other problems like motion blur. The post-shot adjustable focus is the single feature sets it apart from a $130 point-and-shoot; where’s the incentive for your aunt or grandma to spend three times the cash on some odd-looking box from an unknown brand?

We’ll give it a more thorough run-through in a few months when it’s released, but we’ll need to decide if it’s worth running through our image quality tests. Lytro’s director of photography, Eric Cheng, told us straight up that the Light Field Camera will get “trounced” if we evaluate it like a regular camera, shooting resolution charts and noise tests, and comparing it to a standard camera misses the point, anyway. We’re not so sure about that last part, but a groundbreaking product like this one deserves a proper run-through.