Lytro Who? Toshiba Developing Refocusing Camera for Phones

Lytro was the first to commercialize the idea of taking photos that you can refocus later, but now others are getting in on the concept.

Toshiba has developed a camera that also takes photos with adjustable focus, only this one can fit in a cellphone. Toshiba's camera module is small -- a square shape that measures 0.4 of an inch per side -- making it ideal as a phone camera. Packed inside it, though, are no less than 500,000 individual lenses, each just 0.001 inch in diameter.

[More from Mashable: Your Lytro Photos Just Got Upgraded]

As the initial report in Japan's The Asahi Shimbun newspaper describes, each lens captures light slightly differently than the others, which the image processor can interpret to change which subject is in focus after the fact.

The idea of a lens array with many different lenses is similar to how insects view the world. The compound eyes of a fly have hundreds of different optical units, which the fly's brain can process to give it a complete picture of its environment. Similarly, 3D cameras use two lenses (or two parts of the same lens) to capture slightly different pictures of the same scene to produce a 3D effect.

[More from Mashable: Now You Can Shift the Perspective of Your Lytro Photos]

Although the concept is similar to the Lytro camera, the technology is somewhat different. The Lytro uses an elaborate single lens along with a special image sensor that can capture the direction data of light rays in addition to their color and intensity, a technology it calls light-field photography. That data is fed into a proprietary image processor to create images you can later refocus or shift perspective.

In previous interviews with Lytro executives, they told Mashable there was nothing holding back the idea of putting the technology in a cellphone. Although the company's distinctive stick-of-butter-shaped camera is relatively large, much of its size is due to the 8x optical zoom lens, which could be replaced with a much smaller one to fit in a phone.

No word on when Toshiba's camera unit will make it into phones, if ever. We've contacted the company for comment and will update the story if and when we hear back.

Would you like to see refocusing come to phone cameras? How much extra would you pay for a phone that lets you take photos you can refocus later? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, visualdensity

Unboxing the Lytro

The Lytro packaging is thankfully sparse and simple, with very little unnecessary plastic.

Click here to view this gallery.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lytro-toshiba-developing-refocusing-camera-phones-121018572.html

ghost ship tiger woods masters jet crash virginia beach petrino clayton kershaw tyler perry face transplant