Friday 4 January 2013

Toshiba to make Lytro-like phone camera with over 30,000 mini-lenses

Wow! That's a lot of lenses to put into a small cellphone. Must be expensive.


What is LYTRO camera?



Lytro camera is a camera that allows users to change the focus of a picture after the picture is taken. Plenoptic cameras such as Lytro's are a new type of camera that dramatically changes photography for the first time since the 1800s.


Toshiba developing Lytro-like phone camera

Toshiba is developing a tiny digital camera module similar to the Lytro camera, which shoots tens of thousands of individual photos and then allows the user to pick the point of focus.

The new camera will have from 30,000 to 50,000 tiny lenses, yet still be small enough to fit in modern smartphones and tablets. The company aims to have a product ready for sale by March of 2014.

The concept is similar to that behind a much-hyped camera launched by California-based Lytro earlier this year. Lytro calls its technology "light field capture," and photos taken by the device can be adjusted for focus and perspective after they are taken.

"Lytro doesn't make semiconductors, so the camera module is a product that Toshiba is probably better-suited to make," said Toshiba spokesman Atsushi Ido.

Ido said the concept behind the camera module is similar to the compound eyes found in many insects. He said much of the processing involved in taking and combining the individual images with the new camera would likely be handled by the module's hardware.

Toshiba is among the world's largest manufacturers of CMOS image sensors, where it competes with rivals including Sony, Samsung and OmniVision. Toshiba is better known for its massive NAND flash operations, where it cranks out memory chips for hard drives and memory cards.


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