Lytros and NASA

Photography has always been an artform of angles, light, and focus–getting the right shot, in the right moment, using optics to capture motion and detail. Lytro, a digital photography company, has a product that allows for photographers to worry less about one of the finer details of getting the perfect snap: the problem of focus, and the company seeks to open up the software to imaging applications beyond consumer cameras.

The Lytro Illum, released earlier this year, is a new light field camera for professionals, with a body that looks like a real DSLR camera, excellent cutting edge of a larger sensor and a lot of computing power. The special lens set and software enable the camera to take images with a gamut of focal lengths enabling software to then later change the focus of the image: a computer can then make near things sharp and distinct, or instead blur the near to bring detail to far objects. All from the same image.

This sort of multi-focus technology in cameras has attracted the attention of NASA and even the US Department of Defense.

How does Lyto work?

The main innovation behind Lytro has been in enabling a camera to take a multi-focus photograph: essentially the media produced contains a wide gamut of possible focal lengths (or field). The end result: after a photograph is taken software can take over and refocus the photograph from near to far–no need to re-shoot the photo, all the data is already there. This capability is accomplished by a complex array of optics in the camera and multiple microlenses that bring light to a massive sensor.

The company is now taking the potential of the light field to next level with the introduction of Lytro Platform, a proprietary tech, to anybody who wants to partner with the company.

The goal of the Lytro Platform is to “bring the transformational power of the light field to an entirely new set of imaging applications for the first time,” and first product to be released as part of the Lytro Platform is the Lytro Development Kit (LDK).

The LDK costs $20K and “provides imaging researchers with the highest degree of control of Lytro’s advanced light field capture devices and processing engine.” The LDK includes not only the software components you need to work with the revolutionary cameras. The kit contains the 41-megapixel sensor, a C-Mount f/2.0 lens, a focal plane shutter, and other hardware used to create an image, along with a number of on-camera scripts, desktop tools, and a Pyhton API and other software.

“With access to Lytro’s advanced light field capture devices and processing engine, a new wave of pioneers in holography, microscopy, architecture, security and many more imaging fields can reimagine and customize their products,” says the press release. “For instance, customers could optimize a special lens for analyzing soil samples, or customize a thermal sensor to analyze individuals’ heat signatures.”

NASA’s sensor partnership with Lytro

The US space agency NASA is likely to use light field cameras in future missions where space explorers wish to adjust the focus after taking the photo.

The cameras would be used to go for missions to other planets. With the use of the light field cameras, NASA presumably wants to make it possible to see things not possible with other cameras.

The Department of Defense is examining whether the technology could be used to improve the night vision capabilities of soldiers. Other partners include General Sensing, the Army Night Vision, and Electronic Sensors Directorate and other industrial partners.

Image credit: https://www.lytro.com/