Lytro Desktop Download
Celina Ruffel
Sharing your Living Pictures.
Your Living Pictures can now be shared across multiple social channels. You can now choose to upload your pictures to the Gallery on pictures.lytro.com or you can post to your favorite social media sites with the click of a button.
Lytro has introduced updates for its ILLUM light field camera and desktop software. ILLUM 2.0 provides an almost generational leap for the camera itself, providing a re-designed user interface and making it possible to view and interact with full living pictures in camera. You can now view living images on the camera the same way you would view them embedded in web pages and on the desktop software. Full with aperture preview as well, ranging from F1.0 to F16. And in case you've forgotten some of our earlier coverage of the Illum, F1.0 gets you 30-250mm F3.2 full-frame equivalent lens performance with respect to depth-of-field.
It's great that they keep updating the firmware and desktop software to add more features. However, I don't understand the addition of phase detection AF. I thought the whole point of Lytro is that you don't have to focus in the first place because the focus could be chosen afterward. So I don't understand what difference it makes to add phase detection.
I am not saying that light field cameras cannot be used seriously, but imho we are not yet there. It requires an even higher resolution sensor (60MP instead of 40), thus even more camera computing power, even faster desktop PCs to process the image. It also requires technical and usability improvements so that getting the focus right is not harder and slower than on a conventional camera. (Currently it is rather a science ...)
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Correct. The number of jpgs the camera or Lytro desktop software generates depends on some algorithm that probably involves doing graph cuts to find as many useful unique focal planes as there are in the image and generating a jpg at each one.
Lytro cameras are equipped to capture 3D information in one exposure without the need for structured illumination, allowing greyscale depth maps of the captured image to be created using the Lytro desktop software. These consumer-grade light-field cameras (Lytro) provide a cost-effective method of measuring the depth of multiple objects which is suitable for many applications. But, the greyscale depth maps generated using the Lytro cameras are in relative depth scale and hence not suitable for engineering applications where absolute depth is essential. In this research, camera control variables, environmental sensitivity, depth distortion characteristics, and the effective working range of first- and second-generation Lytro cameras were evaluated. In addition, a depth measuring technique to deliver 3D output depth maps represented in SI units (metres) is discussed in detail exhibiting the suitability of consumer-grade Lytro cameras suitability in metrological applications without significant modifications.
There is also a virtual camera option that gives you a tilt shift effect. You can choose the amount of tilt and rotation. The Lytro desktop gives you other options as well. One of them is to animate your photos and create videos where you see the change of focus point for example. Exporting a 1080p video also takes a long time, considering that the video is just 20 seconds long.
You might have missed the passing reference in our intro, but the Lytro camera doesn't output your run-of-the-mill JPEG. Instead all that directional light information is stuffed into a custom format the company calls a "Light field picture file," or .lfp for short. Ergo, to do anything with a picture that originated from a Lytro camera, you'll naturally need the company's accompanying homegrown desktop application. The good news is the installer's preloaded on the camera -- just plug it in and follow the prompts to make your way through the installer package. But we hope you also caught that installer package nuance, as here comes the bad news. For now, Lytro's desktop software is Mac only (requiring 10.6.6 or above), although the company says a Windows version will follow at some point this year.
Upon firing up the desktop software for the first time, you'll realize you have to complete a one-time backup of the camera's calibration data before proceeding. After conquering that, .lfp files start copying to the disk (with previously starred images given first bidding), while the suite simultaneously begins processing each RAW-like .lfp into something the desktop suite can digest. You'll know when the processing is complete, as one by one, grayscale thumbnails give way to color replacements, which means they're ready for some TLC, courtesy of the suite's rudimentary editing chops.
The final piece of the software puzzle relates to sharing. Upon logging into a lytro.com account, one can upload captures to their own gallery on the company's website. Pictures uploaded can be publicly visible or private and additionally the desktop software supports direct uploads to a connected Facebook account. Choosing the latter creates an inline "living" Flash-powered embed on the social network, which friends can then interact with by refocusing inline on Facebook to their hearts content. Additionally there's support for Twitter and HTML embeds, although you'll have to navigate over to the intended picture in the Lytro gallery portal and click share buttons to complete those tasks from your browser.
quicklist: 5title: Raspberry Pi text: A $25 computer. That's the Raspberry Pi. But it's not a computer like you might imagine, it's just the guts of a very-low powered, Linux desktop. For $25 you get all the components of a small desktop which is capable of running a web browser and word processing. It has the ports to hook up a display and a mouse, but you will need to buy those separately. Raspberry Pi is a non-profit company with the goal of getting its cheap computer in the hands of children in the developing world. The $25 computer has sold out for now, but should be available in a couple of weeks, says the company. media: 15840596
I still have my 950 and FC-E8 (wonderful bit of glass) although haven't used either in maybe 10 years (8-15 on 5Dsr these days for Panos).
Although CUDA on a GTX1070/80 in your desktop PC would probably leave your "super" in the dust :-)