new cameras

Hi, my husband showed me an article in Science News, Jan. 28, 2012 edition, that talks about The Digital Camera Revolution. It says some new cameras are coming out. They are the Frankencamera, Big Shot, a throwaway, panoramic ball camera, the Pelican camera and the Lytro. Anyone know anything about these, and do you think they will be pricey? Thanks.

My two cents:

I think there's a reason this was in Science News, not a photography publication. The reason being, some of the concepts are revolutionary and very cool from a science and education point of view, but they won't revolutionize photography.

The Lytro is an amazing idea, it lets you choose the point of focus *after* you've already taken a picture. The technology behind it is as innovative and forward-thinking as it could possibly be! But the implementation is where it's still lacking; it's a small sensor in a strange format with a limited amount of internal memory. Work that technology into a full-frame camera sensor and put some Nikkor or Canon L glass in front of it, and then it might change the photography world.

The Big Shot -- at least from what I've read -- is more about education than actually taking good photos. Its aim is to let students build their own camera to learn how it works and learn about taking pictures. But it's not going to be an optical wonder. It will probably produce photos with the kind of quality you'd get from an off-brand digital camera you picked up online for $50.

The only thing from Pelican that I'm aware of is in phone cameras. That's something they could very well revolutionize, and I'm sure we'd all like it if the cameras in our phones took better pictures. But I don't see phone cameras being the wave of the future for photography.

So they're all cool and all innovative ideas, but they each have a primary area of interest that isn't quite the photography industry. At least not yet.

They are popular hot photo-gizmo topics. Many of these are still in prototype form, and not a readily available product.

Frankencamera refers to a camera system that is very user customizable both in hardware and software. Such a system would most likely be created for professionals, enthusiasts, and specialized needs so I would think it would be quality gear and potentially quite expensive.

The Big Shot is a build-it-yourself digital camera kit. Since it's for kids and classes so it will need to be cheap.

The Pelican Imaging camera is an array camera. It takes many small, lower quality photos, and combines them into one higher quality photo. One advantage is that it can be very thin. This is likely to be used in cell phones and such.

The Lytro allows adjustment of the DOF after the exposure is made. You can buy a Lytro camera, but it looks like a web cam to me. Possibly this technology could move to other, more serious camera designs?

The Throwable Pano Ball camera is a ball with 36 cell phone cams. It it thrown in the air, and makes a full spherical pano photo. Neat idea. Low quality photos.

Here's the article:
www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/3375...al_Camera_Revolution

I personally think the Lytro will completely change photography. Probably not for another 10 years or so, but I definitely think that prefocusing an image will go the way of the dodo.

Interesting read... all this from a single pinhole camera begining.