It’s not often that a revolutionary new concept in digital photography comes so far out of left field that it changes the way people may take photos in the future. Yesterday, the world saw the introduction of the Lytro camera and aside from looking like a kids kaleidoscope its a pretty incredible piece of hardware (and probably software too).

What makes the Lytro camera different is that it is a “light field” camera which captures every ray of light travelling through every point in space. Coupled with a constant aperture f/2 lens and 8x zoom, the 11 mega-ray light camera captures “living pictures” enabling you to take a picture instantly without autofocus, letting you choose your focal point AFTER the fact. You heard me right, you can just snap and focus later. Using the rear touch screen, you can zoom and focus on any point in the picture, eliminating many a problem photographers face with bad AF modules (or just bad eyes).

The Lytro comes in a US$399 8GB version which holds 350 pictures (Roughly 23MB per photo) and a US$499 18GB model. Pre orders are live at Lytro’s website and will ship in early 2012. Bear in mind though that the Lytro only supports Mac OS X 10.6 and above with a Windows app in development.

SOURCE via Engadget