Digital Home Thoughts: Lytro's Allows You to Worry About Focus After You Shoot

"Well, a company by the name of Lytro (sounds a bit like diet supplement or something) has apparently solved all those issues by creating a technology that will let you take the photo first and focus it later on your computer, according to a New York Times article."

Lytro has been making the news with their announcement of a camera that can capture an incredible depth of field first for post-processing depth of field effects later, but part of me wonders whether photographers want to spend more time in front of the computer as it is already? Even for a personal shoot, I easily wind up with 10-20 photos I want to keep, and spending the bare minimum 5 minutes in an image editing program for each means 1-2 hours in front of the computer!

Talk of technology in DSLRs seems a bit premature; Lytro seems to be targeting consumers with their first camera, and are going it alone without licensing the tech to the usual camera manufacturers. Application in a DSLR might be used to correct back and front focus issues however. Maybe a smart DSLR could keep the data as metadata, and present the option to move the focus distance in a RAW editor. But once again, do photographers want to spend more time in post-processing?

As for consumer compacts, this might be a way to get depth of field effects without buying a large sensor camera that is likely to be larger and more complicated to use. I wonder if the average consumer will be that interested in such a camera though. Maybe Lytro should just license the tech to mobile phone companies instead; that could well be a real win right there.