(Image source: Lytro)

BY MADISON MACK

ANCHOR AUSTIN KIM
 

You're watching multisource tech video news analysis from Newsy.

For the past 180 years, photography has essentially worked the same way. A plane of light is recorded on some medium. The medium has changed quite a bit – from silver chloride and iodide all the way to computer memory.
 
But that could all change-- if a small startup is able to revolutionize photo technology by capturing the entire light field. The company’s founder explains the new technology on TechCrunchTV.
 
“Lightfield technology enables something like a Lytro camera to take all the information about the light flowing into the camera…”

“…the amount of light traveling in every direction at every point in space. So if you can kind of picture that light field and all those directions flowing into the camera and being recorded by a light field camera rather than a regular camera. That’s the difference.”

So what does this mean your photographs?
 
You’d be able to edit photos in new ways – like refocusing the image or changing its orientation – all after the fact.

A blogger for Business Insider says the technology quote “blew my brains to bits.”
 
“...conventional photography does not really capture the moment. It captures one angle, one set of light, and one focus of the moment. … With Ren’s light field camera, you actually capture the moment or at least all of the light that visually represents the moment. … Essentially, you can take a picture then figure out what you really wanted then go back through time and take that picture.”

But another startup CEO is a bit more apprehensive. On his blog – Alec Saunders says the average consumer won’t have much use for lightfield cameras.
 
“I think Lytro’s market choice is a pragmatic attempt to fit an early stage technology to a market. Consumers, however, mostly don’t care if their photographs aren’t perfect.  Most consumers don’t edit, color correct, balance light or contrast, etc...Consumers point, shoot and upload.”

A writer for TechCrunch says- sure, the technology is cool- but it won’t  matter if the company can’t make it affordable.
 
“Right now, the closest Ng will commit on price is somewhere between north of $1 and less than $10,000. That’s a pretty broad ballpark.... An equally important question is whether the user experience [will] be as simple as the company claims.”

The company is keeping quiet about potential release dates but says it we could see cameras quote “sometime this year”.

 

Transcript by Newsy.