Lytro has officially killed off its online sharing platform for light-field images

I think they are trying to portray that it's something very sophisticated when in reality it's just multiple images recorded by the micro lenses of the same scene.
If not please explain.

Steve Sanacore:

"when in reality it's just multiple images recorded by the micro lenses of the same scene."

Not really.

For an explanation you can read the Ng PhD.

It's not multiple images of the same scene. It's accessing, and processing, visual data (the light field) not seen by normal sensors, human eyes, film, etc.

Steve Sanacore: HowaboutRAW is right, it is a nifty technology, recording light and directions, so that it can really be refocused. The cost of that is large files with a small resolution (only 540x540 pixels on first lytro!). So you get a gimmicky little camera with a very small touch screen to view and refocus, or you have to upload them to the lytro web site and view them from there (via link if 'integrated' in your site) where their app does the refocusing work.
Their whole marketing was about viewing on the web via their site.
Today no Lytro site? No viewing on the web! Rip-off or what?

540x540 pixels

@Bobthearch Is that better or worse, that they dropped a feature rather than going bust?

Sometimes companies have to change what they do, in order not to go bust.

You spread criticism thickly and even offered a back-handed compliment (in other words, an insult) against early adopters. I was neither foolish nor trusting and I would never take advice from someone who intently neglects punctuation and grammar.

i did not call lytro early adopters foolish ....i called them people who

"believed in your vision and spent money"

in a future sense i said anyone going forward would be foolish to support lytro cinema efforts now that the company's anti consumer behavior is now public record

Brother .........Tell you what, i'll remember to put a period at the end of a sentence, if you promise to read with more care and comprehension.

cheers and a beer

Yes, I have a hosting account with BlueHost. It cost me $150 for three years. That's less than $5 per month. I'm hosting two sites on it so far (one for a client and two for myself), and they are all faster than Amazon, if I remember correctly. (I tested the speed compared to a bunch of famous sites, like Facebook, which is really fast, Google, which is faster, SpaceX.com, which was the fastest, American Airlines at AA.com, which is pretty slow, Yahoo.com, and a bunch of others.) It's a shared hosting platform. The platform Lytro used might have cost them a bit more, but they still need a website today, right? I'm sure they have plenty of space on the platform they have. If not, they could have exported their sharing site and put it on a hosting server like mine, most likely. They probably just didn't want to go through the expense, which might have cost a few grand. This is all speculation though. We have no idea what they set up or how much money they were spending on hosting.

No, I only played with the software at the camera shop. We downloaded the image and played with it on the computer there. One could select a point to focus for example looking at a person and a Bush I could focus on the Bush and noticed a trash bag, then we selected the person of the Bush and that person was in focus. It was “cool” but not something I wanted like Canon IS binoculars ;)

There is nothing necessarily wrong with the Lytro "trick." It's a valid solution and at the time, nothing else could do it. The only real problem was Lytro's solution to the problem was cumbersome and awkward for consumers and professional photographers. Now Lytro is concentrating on industrial applications.

But again, the concept was valid, and the reason we know this is that the concept Lytro was after, is fully mainstream now and in the pockets of millions of people. Lytro used their technology to acquire depth information to enable focus control in post. iOS and Android devices now include similar capabilities in mainstream smartphone cameras, like in iOS Portrait Mode where a depth map generated by dual phone cameras is used to produce various depth/focus effects in post.

How phones get their depth map is maybe not as technically good as Lytro, but the phone methods are good enough where it counts, and is not subject to the same resolution limitations.

What is "living image" format? Do you lose something by using the desktop app?

HAR, care to cite any film credits?

Suntan:

You can contact Lytro, though various contracts may limit what they can say about specific films.

This is tech is a big deal.

there will be wonderful lytro created cinema content .... oooooo!

... unfortunately if you they to watch the films 2 years from now you will be greeted with an error message

Suntan:

No, I'm not backing down from my claim.

Lytro has the camera. DPR ran a link to a demonstration more than a year (and ran the announcement of a new movie camera last week).

You can contact Lytro, though various contracts may limit what they can say about specific films.

You understand that it's no that a whole movie would be shot with a Lytro movie camera?

It's just that it can do things no Red or Arri system can.

Right. So not backing down from your claim, but not providing any evidence for it either... Makes sense.

one would think lytro would appear in credits along with all the other tech and film credits

i guess in a few years we will know

Suntan:

Why would I do any such thing?

You can find the DPR article yourself.

I'm not claiming that the Lytro movie camera system has been used in any specific movie. I'm pointing out that it exists, has been demonstrated, and does much more than greenscreen.

Learn to read, instead of reading something I didn't post.

Also Red and Arri are not systems that replace greenscreens.

Make sense?

https://www.lytro.com/cinema

Keep doubling down man. That's the way to win an argument. Just keep doubling down.

Suntan:

So you really didn't follow the greenscreen point?

Not a surprise.

Nor is it really a surprise that you ignored the point that I'd never claimed use in a specific movie.

That all being said: Lytro movie cameras, and a super computer, allow effects to be inserted into real, non-animated, footage that would simply be impossible with images shot using a conventional movie camera.

That you are incurious is not my failing.

there will be a vr performance of lenord cohens hallelujah using the lightfeild
canera its looks insanely complex and difficult in use and postproduction ....but promises all sorts of new tricks and workflow thingies for insanely high res
vr content ......
im beginning to think lytro killed their live pic site specifically because both cameras they made had very lackluster resolution way behind the curve for most still photography to pull off the multi focus trick their software allowed

im thinking now this pulling the plug was to stop anyone from looking at lytro images as them move into super high res vr creation and get a crappy impression of lytro lightfeild technology... i dont think saving money had anything to do with it ....is my revised opinion

cosinaphile:

The multi focus thing is not simply software, it's the hardware too.

yes of course ...but it is the software on their site that allowed living pictures to be shared that they killed ....originally i felt they stopped the sharing thing cause they moved on and didnt care about their customers

now i think its a corporate face strategy moving into a 40 000 dollar cinema space they want now reference visible of the poor stills they produced

If you do not own the tool, then you are under mercy of the leaser/renter.
You never "subscribe" to anything, as subscribtion means you get to keep everything you received up to the point when you cancel your subscription.

Renting and leasing is what Adobe does, what Phase One does (partially) and many many other. Once you cancel your lease or rent, "they come and pick tools away" and you are left with nothing.