Since launching in 2011 Lytro, a miniaturized light field camera, has steadily rolled out a number of updates and new colors. After all, not everything needs to be updated with a new model every year! And today the company is unlocking a new feature that’s been hidden since day one: Wi-Fi
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Though Lytro early adopters might not know it, every one of those little light field cameras actually has a WiFi chip embedded inside, lying dormant until the company decides to flip the switch. Well, that time has finally come in the form of a firmware update, and wouldn’t you know it, it coincides nicely with the release of a new iOS app as well. Dubbed Lytro Mobile, the app connects with the device over WiFi (naturally), letting you view its contents on your favorite iOS device. Simply select the Camera feature in the app, and it’ll prompt you to swipe the Lytro’s menu drawer until you see the WiFi logo as shown in the picture above. Tap it, follow the on-screen instructions, and voilà, you’re now able to upload your images directly to Lytro.com either over a cellular or WiFi connection, no USB plug required.
Like the Lytro desktop app, the mobile version lets you refocus a picture and change its center of perspective via Perspective Shift. You can also add captions and geotagging data, and share your living pictures via Facebook, Twitter, email or SMS. Along with letting you see what’s on your camera itself, the app also gives you access to a mobile version of the Lytro website. You can check your profile, view the most popular and most recently uploaded pictures and “like” any photo that strikes your fancy. Interestingly, the app also lets you create an animated GIF out of a living picture — simply select either “refocus” or “perspective shift” on any of your Lytro shots to have one of those two animations added to your camera roll (we’ve included an example GIF after the break). Last but not least, the Lytro Mobile app has a series of tips for Lytro owners to learn more about their camera. To learn more about the app, check out the screenshots, video and release after the break. Or you can just head to the App Store link to download it right now.
Filed under: Cameras
Source: Lytro Mobile (App Store)
It sure doesn’t seem like many people have bought Lytro’s crazy light-field camera (the one that lets you focus your photos after you take them) — but if you’re one of those who did: go plug that thing in. Lytro has just released a firmware update that enables the camera’s dormant Wi-Fi chip, along with an iOS app that lets you wirelessly access and share your photos.
Oh, and it makes super trippy animated GIFs!
Check out the demo we shot with Lytro’s Director Of Photography, Eric Cheng:
(I’ll go ahead and forgive Eric for pronouncing “GIF” with a hard G there at the end. We all know it’s pronounced like “jiff,” despite what Alexia might say.)
Even if you own a Lytro, there’s a pretty good chance you didn’t know there was a Wi-Fi chip inside. Surprise! The company hadn’t really mentioned it much until now, as it previously served no purpose. When the FCC’s teardown of the Lytro revealed the chip shortly before the device’s release a year-and-a-half ago, the company responded to inquiries about it with “Connectivity is important to us, and we’re working on it.”
The Lytro Mobile app’s main purpose is to serve as an on-the-go interface for uploading, tweaking, and sharing photos from a Lytro camera without having to hook it up to a computer. All of your photos are pulled into the application over the air, where they can be geotagged, refocused and perspective-shifted on a screen that’s a good bit more finger-friendly than the relatively tiny one found on the Lytro itself. New photos will show up in the app as you shoot them, with a transfer time of around 5 or 6 seconds. You can also peruse photos shared among the Lytro community.
The company also confirmed to us that an Android app is on the way, though they declined to pin down a date for it. A Wi-Fi-enabled syncing app for the Mac or PC, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to be on their roadmap.
Plus, as mentioned, you can make totally crazy looking GIFs. Check out these total dreamboat (*cough*) examples of my big dumb head recording the above video. On the left is the parallax shifting effect; on the right is the foreground/background refocusing effect (And in the center of each is my busted-ass iPhone cable):
Once you’re on the new firmware, connecting your Lytro to your iPhone is pretty dang simple: you swipe up on the Lytro’s screen to bring up the taskbar, and hit the little Wi-Fi icon to turn your Lytro into a hotspot. You connect your iPhone to the Lytro’s Wi-Fi signal, launch the app, and you’re set.
You can find the free Lytro Mobile app for iOS here.
For those who have not heard about the Lytro camera, it’s basically a camera that allows users to shoot their photos first, and choose which points to focus later on. It is pretty handy as it allows photographers to capture the moment without having to worry about having the correct focus. Interestingly a report on Bloomberg has suggested that Nokia could be interested in a similar technology and could be looking to invest in a Californian startup company which creates Lytro-style camera technology which could be slim enough to fit into mobile phones.
Considering that Nokia has been known in the past to create phones where the emphasis has been placed on the camera, the idea of Nokia pursuing such technology would not be a stretch of the imagination. The company in question is called Pelican Imaging which produces a sensor array similar to the Lytro in which the focal point in a photo can be applied after the photo has been taken. What makes it “better” is the fact that through its technology and algorithmic processing, it can do away with the extra lens required by Lytro’s field technique, ultimately allowing it to be squeezed into a mobile phone.
While this is an interesting feature, we’re not sure if it would make or break a consumer’s decision to purchase a phone, although it would probably end up appealing to photography enthusiasts who want the best camera they can get out of their phone.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: iOS 7 Allegedly Gets Detailed Ahead Of WWDC, iPhone Rumored To Be Arriving On Boost Mobile’s Network, 
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Some of you guys might have heard of the Lytro camera, a camera which basically snaps photos first and allows you to focus on different parts of the image later. Pretty handy in a situation where you just want to capture the moment rather than worry about having the right focus. In any case wouldn’t it be cool if our smartphones could do something similar? While such technology has yet to make their way into our smartphones, an app by the name of FocusTwist can help you achieve that effect, albeit by cheating a little.
Basically what the app does is that it snaps a series of images and brackets the focuses, and then by combining them, users will be able to choose different parts of the image that they want the focus to be on. We have yet to try the app out for ourselves, but it seems that it might not be perfect as the user will be required to stand still while the app snaps the series of photos. Priced at $2, for those looking for an interesting way to snap photos or get that Lytro effect, it can be downloaded via the iTunes App Store.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Match.com Survey Finds That iPhone Users Go On More First-Dates Than Other Smartphone Users, Purported iPhone 5S SIM Tray Suggests Gold And Gray Color Options [Rumor], 
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As neat as they are, the Lytro camera’s re-focusing tricks aren’t going to convince most of us to replace our highly pocketable cameraphones. So a California company called DigitalOptics has found a way to give us the best of both worlds with a new ultra-thin sensor that promises Lytro-like tricks. More »
If you haven’t yet experienced the world of light field photography, it’s time to step into the Lytro. (See what I did there?)
The Lytro camera is a brand new form of photographic technology that produces what the company calls a “living photo.” This means that the user has the ability to change the focus from the foreground to background, shift perspective, and add cool color filters to the photos. But this is only the beginning.
What truly makes Lytro unique isn’t the hardware — though the camera itself is undeniably innovative. The most interesting thing about Lytro is that it’s almost more of a software company than a hardware business.
With this new form of technology that captures not only the plane of light, but the direction of the light, there is a ton of data to mine out of each photo.
This means that the possibilities are endless, since Lytro simply has to adjust the software to introduce new features. We spoke with Eric Cheng, Director of Photography at Lytro, who hinted that there’s plenty more in store for Lytro users. And the beauty is that it all comes to you over software updates — no hardware upgrades required.
OK, 2012 wasn’t the greatest year for tech, but it wasn’t a total bust either. Wade through the glut of comically oversized phones, tiny tablets and fruit company refreshes, and you’re bound to come across a few shiny needles in that crummy haystack. Here, in no particular order, are the 10 most important gadgets of the year. More »
Toshiba is readying a Lytro-style camera that could allow photos taken on smartphones and tablets to be refocused after they’re captured, with a complex lens assembly creating data-dense adjustable images. The camera, which is expected to be commercialized in late 2013, grabs 500,000 pictures in one take, The Asahi Shimbum reports, thanks to an identical number of lenses in front of the sensor, each taking a shot with slightly different focus settings.
The resulting image can be refocused among each of those 500,000 focal settings, with the end result being a post-capture choice over what is crisp in the frame and what is blurred. Toshiba says the camera module can also be used for video capture, again with greater flexibility over what is kept in focus.
However, since the module is able to precisely gauge the distance between different objects within the frame, it’s possible to do some chromakey-style editing. The camera can retain a foreground subject, for instance, and replace the background with an alternative scene, something which usually requires post-processing if the effect is to be particularly believable.
The lenses themselves are a mere 0.03mm in diameter, and are arranged in front of a sensor 5 x 7 mm in size; altogether, the camera module itself measures roughly 1cm square. That’s considerably smaller than the “light field” technology Lytro developed for its eponymous camera, which is limited to stills not video, and while impressing early reviewers with its flexibility, was criticized for the generally underwhelming quality of its shots.
Toshiba is pushing the module among phone and tablet manufacturers; we’d also like to see it in life-logging systems like Google Glass and Kickstarter success Memoto, where being able to retroactively focus on different elements of the frame (and not bother with settings during filming) could be very useful. No word on how it compares in price to a typical module, nor indeed what resolution the final images are.
[via Engadget]
Toshiba reveals Lytro-style refocus camera module for 2013 is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Imagine for a second that your smartphone could snap in-focus images every single time. Kind of like the Lytro camera you can buy today. While it might seem like a pipe dream, we might actually see it in the next two years thanks to Toshiba. More »
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