Lytro Announces Illum Light-Field Camera

A couple years back, Lytro released a camera that allowed you to capture the entire light field when you were taking pictures. This gave you the ability to refocus images around any object within them. There was a lot of excitement around this revolutionary technology, but when the camera finally came to market, it received mixed reviews, with owners saying the camera didn’t quite live up to their expectations.

Now Lytro is back with their second act, the Lytro Illum. The Illum camera overcomes many of the limitations of the first model: It’s higher-resolution, doesn’t just shoot square photos, and it gives the photographer much more flexibility in customizing exactly how the camera captures the “light field.” And as you can see, it’s quite large, reportedly weighing in at a hefty 2.07 pounds.

On paper, the Illum sounds like a winner. It’s got a 8x zoom lens, an SD slot for storage, and a 40-megaray CMOS sensor working alongside a Snapdragon processor, which gives you 4MP images with refocusing abilities. Of course, the biggest hurdle the Illum faces is getting people to drop $1599 on one.

Visit www.lytro.com to learn more about the Lytro Illum.