Camera Lytro Illum - first acquaintance

Less than six months later, I did meet with the second generation Lytro camera ordered in June (to be honest, it was sent back in September, but I was on another continent at that time). So now I understand what Lytro was able to achieve since the release of the first camera.

Equipment

There were three boxes in the package: one big and two small:





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Small boxes were not included in the standard package - they came as compensation for the delay in sending (initially, they promised to send the camera in August. However, this would not help me).



In the boxes were a camera strap (signed as Premium) and a strangely shaped battery:







In the big box was the camera itself, 6 small boxes and two booklets - “Quick start guide” and “Product information guide”. The first book says how to turn on the camera, the second is safety and, in case the user is interested in the details of working with the camera, refer to the site at http://manuals.lytro.com/illum/







In small boxes was the following set:



- one more battery;

- charger with cable;

- USB 3.0 cable;

- neutral filter 72 mm;

- big blend;

- a cloth to wipe the screen;

- another strap and 4 parts for attaching it to the camera.







What is different from the strap "Premium", I did not understand.

Appearance

The camera itself is large, but it feels light. Made of hard and very black plastic. On the case you can see 7 buttons, two wheels and two covers. Under one slot for the battery, under the other - a place for the card and USB connector. It is curious that neither the battery eject button nor the ejector spring is present — it must be pulled out of the socket.



























The buttons, by default, have the following functions:



- turning on;

- shutter;

- fixing shutter speed and ISO;

- two buttons to switch screen modes;

- two focus control buttons: autofocus and focus on hyperfocal distance. There is no such thing as autofocus when you press the trigger.



The wheels are used to control shutter speed and ISO, their meaning is different in different modes.



There are still two rings on the lens - zoom and focus. Zoom from 30 to 250 mm (35 mm equivalent). Focusing is needed because, despite all the light field technology, the achievable depth of field turns out to be limited: with EGF = 30 mm it is from about 1 meter to infinity, and at 250 mm - from about 10 meters to infinity (when adjusted to other distances will be appropriate). The current sharpness range is shown on a special scale on the screen.



The camera is mainly controlled by the touchscreen and is not very different from the others, but there are a couple of features.



First, the aperture value of her constantly: f / 2.0. Therefore, the exposure does not consist of shutter speed and aperture, but of shutter speed and ISO. Accordingly, instead of the usual set of PASM modes, the abbreviation PISM is used here. ISO varies from 80 to 3200, shutter speed - from 1/4000 to 32.



Secondly, when you click one of the buttons (Lytro button), a live distance histogram appears next to the distance scale, allowing you to select the correct focus. At the same time, “close” and “distant” objects are highlighted on the screen, as well as areas that are not in the zone of sharpness.





(picture from lytro.com)



What is the minimum distance to the subject, I do not understand. Approximately 10-15 cm with EGF = 30 mm. Special “macro mode” could not be found.

What's inside?

The size of the matrix is ​​7728 * 5368, which is approximately 41 megapixels. Pixel size is 1.4 microns, i.e. the total size is 10.8 * 7.5 mm, which gives a crop factor of 3.3. The microlens pitch is 20 microns, for a total of about 230,000 (the first generation camera had half as much). But the photos on the output are 2450 * 1634.



The camera is quite greedy in terms of memory consumption. One photo on the card takes 52.5 MB (this is a 10-bit raw file), plus 1.7 GB goes to the file with information about the camera itself (this is not a typo - there really is more than a gigabyte. The file contains 34 RAW calibration images, 50 MB each Fortunately, it is common to all photos on the card). Thus, the 8-gigabyte card fits a little more than a hundred photos. The situation on the computer is even worse - a set of files belonging to the same processed image takes 120 MB.



A “live” snapshot after preprocessing is represented as 7 photographs: they approximately correspond to the view from the center of the lens and from 6 points along the edge. The size of photos is 2022 * 1404 (for comparison: the first generation camera had 37 photos of 360 * 360 in size). In addition, there is a range map of size 541 * 376 (exactly one point on the microlens), but I still haven't checked what photo it belongs to. Most likely, to the central. Photos can be seen by "regular" means, without understanding the file structure: they are created as tiff files by the Export Living Picture command in Lytro Desktop - they can be edited by a third-party editor, and uploaded back to Lytro Desktop (however, I have not tried).

What can I get

In photo processing, there are several additional features.



First, in addition to the standard means of changing the brightness, contrast, etc., there is a simulator of the installation of the diaphragm. It can be selected from 1/1 to 1/16. 1/16 - “all in focus” mode, in this mode you can slightly shift the point of view. 1/1 - mode with DOF, even smaller than in the original photos. Here you can change the focus point - focus on different distances. The focus slider was not done - the program selects positions from the depth map.



On the intermediate values ​​of the aperture, you can, to a certain extent, do both refocusing and changing points of view.











Another unusual possibility is the implementation of a “tilt sensor”, when focusing takes place at different distances in different parts of the image. In this case, the calculations are honest, and not due to the blurring of the upper and lower edges.



After selecting the parameters, the picture can be exported as jpeg. It is possible to export a stereo pair (two pictures from f / 16, “taken” from different edges of the lens). The stereo pair is created in the form of cyan / red, or in the form of two images for “parallel” viewing (when the eyes are split apart). But, as it turned out, it is better to assemble a stereo pair from two tiff files - the result of automatic export has some problems with sharpness.







Since one shot can be viewed in different modes, it is possible to do animation - with a smooth change of focus, depth of field, position, and even crop. True, to manage it is not at all easy, I can hardly get even the simplest things.



Ready photos can be, as before, upload to the gallery pictures.lytro.com and share them on Facebook. As it turned out, the current state of the animation is loaded along with the photo, so users are encouraged to think through the “story” they want to tell with their photo.