>To start with, a large portion of the photography process has been removed — and not simply a technical part, but a creative part. There’s a reason focus is called focus and not something like “optical optimum” or “sharpness.” Focus is about making a decision as a photographer about what you’re taking a picture of. It’s clear that Ng is not of the same opinion: he describes focusing as “a chore,” and believes removing it simplifies the process.
You really seemed to miss the point here. The Lytro camera captures all possible focus settings, allowing the photographer to choose one later...or combine multiple settings together in a single image. This isn't the machine taking over the photographer's job, it's the machine increasing the choices available to the photographer. Similarly, you might not like images which have been heavily dodged/burned, but it certainly was a victory for artists when that technique was developed, allowing them to choose differing levels of exposure in the same image.
> The Lytro camera captures all possible focus settings.
There's a reason photographers prefer certain lenses for sharpness, which can be measured in lp/mm and I wonder how the Lytro compares there. The f/2 glass is probably decent for portraits and exhibits high levels of diffraction when shooting landscape images at f/22. If light field photography solves these problems then that would be very interesting to me. For $399 and shooting at 3-4 megapixels now, it will be a few years before this reaches the 18+ megapixel pro-am level and deals with pro-am criticism.
It seems you're always stuck with f/2, so there's no way to adjust the depth of field. That not only simplifies the process, it also takes away an important choice.
Physically, you're stuck at f/2 in the sense that that is the actual f-stop of the lens. The information exists to let you choose the focus and the depth of field of the desired display image after capturing the light field. This simplifies the capturing process, but allows for more complex post processing that is not possible with a normal camera.
Since you can focus at arbitrary points in the photo after the fact it should not be a huge stretch to make software that allows you to change the depth of field. Macro photographers already deal with this by using focus stacking.
No, we just differ on this point. As I said, "Focus is about making a decision as a photographer about what you’re taking a picture of." Lytro removes that decision.
It doesn't remove it, it just moves it to a later time, just like you do with white balance and exposure when shooting raw and then developing (with limitations, but I'm sure this has limitations too).
My thought here is that the finished work would always be a picture, not the fancy widget, otherwise the comparison would not even stand.
Well, but if the photographer passed the image along to the final human viewer in 'light field format', he would defer his artistic choices to that final human viewer.
At the end of every issue there was a thing called a fold in - it was one image with one caption which, when folded in a certain way, created a new image with an entirely contrasting message.
Imagine an image which, depending on the focus, changes the mood and message completely. I'm sure they will emerge.
Right now the images on the site are mainly tech demos but in the hands of someone able to think outside the box I'm sure we will see some striking new art.
You really seemed to miss the point here. The Lytro camera captures all possible focus settings, allowing the photographer to choose one later...or combine multiple settings together in a single image. This isn't the machine taking over the photographer's job, it's the machine increasing the choices available to the photographer. Similarly, you might not like images which have been heavily dodged/burned, but it certainly was a victory for artists when that technique was developed, allowing them to choose differing levels of exposure in the same image.