http://www.dpreview.com/articles/7237351494/lytro-light-field-camera-first-look-with-ren-ng

Just four months after announcing its intention to transform photography, camera startup Lytro has announced its first product. The company’s ‘light field camera’ may not look or work like anything currently on the market but, with an asking price starting at $399, it’s clear that the company can conform to conventional expectations.

This is really interesting, they’ve specifically gone back to scratch to design something functional for the purpose, this camera design is no longer based on the traditional film-based shape. Note that this rarely happens, cars for instance could look quite different but manufacturers appear to baulk a the risk of introducing something too different…

And the way the camera works is quite revolutionary as well. It has no moving parts, but a set of lenses that work together with the CCD to also capture information about where light came from. This allows it to “focus after the fact”, on pretty much any object in the picture. So, you can take photos more quickly as the system doesn’t need to focus, and you can re-focus on something else later. Quite brilliant!