Lytro (1st generation)

Lytro (1st generation)
Basic Info
Type	Camera
Developer	Lytro
Announcement Date	19 October 2011
Release Date	February 2012
Price	US$399 (8 GB), US$499 (16 GB) at launch
Storage
Storage	8 GB or 16 GB internal flash (no memory card slot)
Display
Display	1.52 inch back-lit LCD, glass touchscreen, 128 x 128 pixels
Optics
Optics	8x optical zoom, constant f/2, 43-344 mm (35 mm equivalent), 8 elements in 5 groups
Audio
Camera	11-megaray light field sensor; 1080 x 1080 pixel output
Connectivity
Ports	Micro-USB
WiFi	802.11b/g/n (enabled by firmware v1.2 in June 2013)
Power	Built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery
Device
Dimensions	41 x 41 x 112 mm (1.61 x 1.61 x 4.41 in)
Weight	214 g (7.55 oz)
Material	Anodized aluminum skin, silicone rubber grip
Color	Graphite, Electric Blue, Red Hot, Seaglass, Moxie Pink, Cobalt, Champagne

The Lytro (1st generation) is a lightfield camera from Lytro. Sold as the Lytro Light Field Camera, it was announced on 19 October 2011 and was the first camera the company released. Its pictures can be refocused after they are taken. Instead of recording one focused image, the camera places a microlens array in front of its image sensor so that it records the direction of incoming light rays as well as their intensity; software then uses this data to change the focus point and, after a December 2012 software update, to shift the viewpoint of a picture.

It stores light field data in a .lfp file.

Multiple different colors were made. There was an initial release in February 2012. Then there was a release of more colors in October 2012. There was a release of more colors in November 2013.

The camera's final pictures were 1080 x 1080 pixels, a resolution that Digital Photography Review found too low for much more than sharing on Facebook. In November 2015 Lytro announced Lytro Immerge, a light field camera system for cinematic virtual reality video.

Reviewed 27 September 2026. Checked the archived Lytro spec page and firmware release notes, the optics.miloush.net and LightField Forum hardware and color data, DPReview, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Fortune, CSM, TechRadar, UploadVR and Road to VR articles, the Stanford tech report and Ng's UC Berkeley bio against every new claim. About review dates.

History

Background

The camera is based on light field photography research that Lytro founder Ren Ng carried out at Stanford University. In a 2005 Stanford technical report, Ng, Marc Levoy, Mathieu Brédif, Gene Duval, Mark Horowitz and Pat Hanrahan described a hand-held plenoptic camera that samples the 4D light field on its sensor in a single exposure. A microlens array placed between the main lens and the sensor records how much light arrives along each ray, and the recorded rays can be reprocessed into sharp photographs focused at different depths after the picture is taken. Ng's doctoral dissertation, "Digital Light Field Photography", was submitted to Stanford's computer science department in 2006. Ng completed his Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford and received the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for 2006. He founded Lytro to commercialize this research.

In an August 2011 interview with Digital Photography Review, before the camera was shown, Ng explained that by placing "an array of microlenses some distance in front of an imaging sensor", points of light arriving through the lens are scattered across multiple photosites.

Announcement and release

Lytro announced the camera on 19 October 2011 and opened pre-orders on its website. Two models were offered: an 8 GB version for US$399 in Electric Blue or Graphite, rated at about 350 pictures, and a 16 GB version for US$499 in Red Hot, rated at about 750 pictures. Shipping was planned for early 2012. At launch, the desktop software was available for Mac OS X, with a Windows version promised for 2012. Ng told Fortune that the camera "lets people shoot first and think later."

On 1 March 2012, VentureBeat reported that Lytro had begun shipping cameras, four months after it began taking pre-orders. The article put the company's funding at about US$50 million, from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, NEA and K9 Ventures.

On 9 October 2012 the camera went on sale through Amazon, Best Buy and Target in the United States, alongside Lytro's online store. Two new 8 GB colors were added at the same time: Moxie Pink, sold only through Target, and Seaglass, sold through Lytro.com. Cobalt and Champagne versions followed in November 2013. According to LightField Forum, those two colors were sold through the Apple Online Store.

Colors

Color	Storage	Introduced	Notes
Graphite	8 GB	February 2012	Launch model
Electric Blue	8 GB	February 2012	Launch model
Red Hot	16 GB	February 2012	Launch model
Orange	16 GB	February 2012	Limited edition for Lytro employees, according to LightField Forum
Moxie Pink	8 GB	October 2012	Sold only through Target
Seaglass	8 GB	October 2012	Sold through Lytro.com
Cobalt	16 GB	November 2013	Apple Online Store
Champagne	8 GB	November 2013	Apple Online Store

Later years

Lytro announced its second camera, the Lytro Illum, on 22 April 2014. It had a 40-megaray sensor and a list price of US$1,599. In 2015 the company moved into virtual reality, and in November of that year it announced Lytro Immerge, a camera made of rings of light field cameras that was designed to let viewers move within about one meter of the capture point with six degrees of freedom.

Lytro shut down its pictures.lytro.com sharing service in late 2017, which ended online sharing of interactive "living pictures" from its cameras. After the closure, the Lytro desktop application remained, but it could only adjust and animate the light field images and export them to conventional formats such as .jpg, .mov and .gif, which lose the ability to be refocused. On 27 March 2018 Lytro announced that it would stop taking on new productions or providing professional services. Google hired some of its staff and acquired some of its assets.

Hardware

It uses a CMOS sensor with a microlens array. The microlenses are arranged hexagonally.

All the microlenses are the same focal length. The pitch is 13.89 microns. They are placed at 25 microns in front of the CMOS sensor. The MLA is not parallel to the sensor edge.

The CMOS sensor is an Aptina MT9F002, which has a 1.4 micron pixel size. The same analysis counts roughly 129,100 microlenses and reports that the sensor image is cropped to 3,280 x 3,280 pixels. Lytro's own specifications give a light field sensor size of 4.6 x 4.6 mm, 100 pixels per microlens and 11 "megarays", which Lytro defined as the number of light rays captured by the sensor.

The screen resolution is 128 x 128 pixels.

The body is a long square tube of anodized aluminum with a silicone rubber grip. The lens is at one end and the touchscreen at the other. The physical controls are a power button, a shutter button and a touch-sensitive zoom slider built into the grip; a magnetic lens cap covers the lens. There is no memory card slot, so pictures are kept in internal memory.

At announcement, Digital Photography Review listed the lens as 35-280 mm equivalent. Lytro's later specifications page gives 43-344 mm.

Specifications (Lytro)

Item	Specification
Lens	Constant f/2 aperture; 8x optical zoom; 43-344 mm (35 mm equivalent); 8 elements in 5 groups
Light field sensor	4.6 x 4.6 mm; 100 pixels per microlens; 11 megarays
Output	1:1 aspect ratio; 1080 x 1080 pixels; .lfp (light field picture) files
Display	1.52 inch (diagonal) back-lit LCD; glass touchscreen
Storage	8 GB (about 350 living pictures) or 16 GB (about 750 living pictures) internal flash
Exposure	Full Auto; Full Manual; Shutter Priority (1/250-8 seconds); ISO Priority (80-3200); exposure lock; 4-stop ND filter
Battery	Built-in rechargeable lithium-ion; charged over Micro-USB
Wireless	802.11b/g/n; WPA2
Size	41 x 41 x 112 mm (1.61 x 1.61 x 4.41 in)
Weight	214 g (7.55 oz)
In the box	Camera, lens cap, Micro-USB cable, wrist strap, cleaning cloth

The optics.miloush.net analysis identifies the battery as a 3.7 V, 2,100 mAh (7.77 Wh) lithium-ion cell and the wireless chip as a Marvell Avastar 88W8787A16, which supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0+HS and FM radio.

Software and features

Pictures are viewed and refocused on the camera, in the free Lytro Desktop application, and, until 2017, on Lytro's website. Lytro called the interactive images "living pictures". According to TechRadar, the camera has two shooting modes. Everyday mode is fully automatic and keeps as much of the scene as possible in the refocusable range. Creative mode lets the photographer set the starting focus point. In Everyday mode the zoom is limited to the 43-150 mm range.

Major software updates

Date	Update	Changes
9 October 2012	Camera firmware v1.1	Added manual control of shutter speed and ISO, a neutral density filter setting and auto exposure lock
4 December 2012	Lytro Desktop update	Added Perspective Shift and nine Living Filters; both work on pictures taken before the update
19 June 2013	Camera firmware v1.2 and Lytro Mobile	Turned on the camera's previously disabled Wi-Fi hardware and released the Lytro Mobile app for iPhone and iPod Touch
7 October 2013	Camera firmware v1.2.2	Fixed slow loading of pictures in Lytro Mobile; Lytro described it as the final first-generation firmware update, with no further updates planned

Perspective Shift lets a viewer move the point of view of a picture left, right, up and down after it has been taken. It works on computers, mobile devices and in pictures shared on the web, Facebook and Twitter. TechRadar wrote that pictures with Perspective Shift "look three-dimensional" without special viewing equipment. The Living Filters use the depth information in the light field; they were named Carnival, Crayon, Glass, Line Art, Mosaic, Blur+, Pop, Film Noir and 8-Track.

The Lytro Mobile app could browse the camera's pictures over Wi-Fi, refocus them, change their perspective, share them and create animated GIFs.

Reception

In its February 2012 review, Digital Photography Review praised the design, the user interface and the simple workflow. Reviewer Richard Butler found the output resolution "simply too low to make it useful for much more than Facebook" and also reported slow autofocus in Creative mode and cross-hatch banding at high ISO. He wrote that "it feels like a product arriving before the underlying technology is really ready."

VentureBeat's Heather Kelly wrote that early reviews praised the underlying technology more than the camera itself. She also listed limitations including the small image size and the lack of a flash and video recording.

TechRadar's review listed focus shifting, ease of use and build quality as strengths, and the LCD, low image resolution and price as weaknesses. It found image quality comparable to a smartphone and reported chromatic aberration and low dynamic range. Its verdict called the camera "a novelty purchase until established camera manufacturers integrate the tech", while noting that it could help macro photographers.

See also

• Lytro
• Lytro Immerge
• Light field
• Light field capture
• Microlens array