While conventional cameras capture a single high-resolution focal plane and light field cameras sacrifice resolution to "re-focus" via software after the fact, the CMU Split-Lohmann camera provides a middle ground, using an adaptive computational lens to physically focus every part of the image independently. This allows it to capture a "deep-focus" image where objects at multiple distances are sharp simultaneously, maintaining the high resolution of a conventional camera while achieving the depth flexibility of a light field camera without the blur or data loss.
Something I find interesting is that while holograms and the CMU camera both manipulate the "phase" of light, they do so for opposite reasons: a hologram records phase to recreate a 3D volume, whereas the CMU camera modulates phase to fix a 2D image.
Processing was as simple as "click on the thing you want in focus". and 4MP was just fine for casual use it was targetting
That’s a bad recipe for casual and professional users alike. Can’t ingest into your workflow quickly, images are low res, can’t improve the image, and your smartphone was better just missing one, admittedly neat, feature. If that existed in phones people would use it like crazy I imagine.
Too narrow of a use case IMO, too many compromises for one feature, hence why it failed.
Loss, i.e. equivalent aperture is a different matter and I think this would imply quite a light loss.
We’re talking about a specific camera, the lytros, which had a 4MP resolution. I’m not saying there was a limitation in the technology broadly speaking. Just that this camera was not worth it for the time. It’s sacrificed too much for one feature and at $400 it just didn’t sell
I remember a friend, who was a photography buff, was quite excited about the camera. But he didn't actually buy one.
https://imaging.cs.cmu.edu/svaf/static/pdfs/Spatially_Varyin...
Lytro as I understand it, trades a huge amount of resolution for the focusing capability. Some ridiculous amount, like the user gets to see just 1/8th of the pixels on the sensor.
In a way, I'd say rather than too early it was too late. Because autofocus was already quite good and getting better. You don't need to sacrifice all that resolution when you can just have good AF to start with. Refocusing in post is a very rare need if you got the focus right initially.
And time has only made that even worse. Modern autofocus is darn near magic, and people love their high resolution photos.
A pro will show up with a 300mm f/2.8, a tripod, a camera with good AF and high ISO, and the skills, plan and patience to catch birds in flight.
But all that stuff is expensive. The consumer way to approximate the lack of a good lens is a small, high res sensor. That only works in bright light, but you can get good results with affordable equipment in the right conditions. Greatly reducing the resolution is far from optimal when you can't have a big fancy lens to compensate.
And where is focus the hardest? Mostly where you want to have high detail. Wildlife, macro, sports.
It's also possible to generate a depth map from a single shot, to use as a starting point for a 3D model.
They're pretty neat cameras. The relatively low output resolution is the main downside. They would also have greatly benefited from consulting with more photographers on the UI of the hardware and software. There's way too much dependency on using the touchscreen instead of dedicated physical controls.
The more recent cameras can detect birds specifically and are great at tracking them.
> It's also possible to generate a depth map from a single shot, to use as a starting point for a 3D model.
That is true, but is a very niche need. Wonderful if you do need it, but it's a small market.