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Comment by tdj | Hacker News Reader

There was a pretty good interview with their CTO a few months ago on Imaging Resource. Much more technical than what you see on the site, also gives a glimpse on what they were thinking when they were developing this.

http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2015/04/27/light-interv...

Personally I think the money shot is the synthetic DoF simulation on the skater:

https://light.co/content/2-gallery/gallery_modal_11.jpg https://light.co/content/2-gallery/gallery_modal_06.jpg

The subject isolation properties is a pretty big reason why people still bother with large-sensor cameras. As an amaterur, I don't have big demands for image quality, so I only bring my D60 or F4 when I want subject isolation. Otherwise I'm pretty happy with my smartphone as a camera (Lumia 930).

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I too am interested in this for shallow dof, and was excited at the idea that these lenses are effectively f1.2. But there's no way that skater shot is f1.2-equivalent. In fact, there are no sample shots anywhere I can see that back up that claim.

No, that's not like f/1.2 on a full-frame camera. But you have to consider the sensor size, and thus multiply by the crop factor. Most photographers know this about focal length (50mm on full-frame becomes a 100mm lens on micro four thirds), but it seems people forget that the same goes for aperture. f/1.2 on a full-frame becomes a f/2.4 on m43, so you'll need an even bigger (smaller number) aperture to have the same effect on a smaller sensor.

I'm guessing these sensors are way smaller than m43 even, so that f/1.2 won't produce anything near the stunning bokeh it would on a full-frame camera.

Yes, though if that's their angle the marketing line is very misleading: they're discussing focal length as 35mm-equivalent, I had assumed they were doing the same with aperture.

Actually once you have information on depth (which isbwhat they get from multiple camera perspectives), and your bas image at near-infinite DoF you can pretty much dial your depth of field however you want. Actually your next limit is how accurately you can measure depth, and that is limited by the distances between the individual sensors.. With a longer baseline you could do pretty thin focused slices, and blur the rest.

In some of the photos the bokeh looks right weird. But for a version 1 of a product I think this is really cool.

Care to point out specific examples? Curious what you see, exactly

https://light.co/content/2-gallery/gallery_image_2.jpg

checkout the white outline around the knight, it has a halo. Then the fuzzy bokeh looks stepped somehow.

100% agreed

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