An underwater housing for the Lytro camera has been all that was stopping the pioneering light field camera from documenting real reefs with the new photographic dimension, until now. The Lytro camera which we’ve thoroughly used to document light field of aquariums has been taken to a real reef in Indonesia where director of photography for the company, and accomplished underwater diver Eric Cheng.
As you can see in these light field images below, the underwater Lytro housing performsaed admirably allowing for some really awesome photographs to be produced. Not only can you refocus these thoughtfully crafted light field images by clicking anywhere on the screen, click and drag will make the entire field of view come into focus.
https://pictures.lytro.com/echeng/pictures/509692
As great as these underwater lytro photographs are, it will be a while still until the layperson can enjoy the same kind of freedom using their own Lytro underwater housing. The underwater Lytro housing used by Mr. Cheng is a prototype housing designed by Nauticam which combined with some custom firmware allowed the camera to be used underwater using just taps and button presses instead of gestures.
https://pictures.lytro.com/echeng/pictures/509693
Of course as with regular dive photography some additional light was provided to prevent the pictures from becoming just blue and green. For this light field photo shoot a pair of two Light & Motion SOLA 2000 lights were used. But can you imagine how crazy it would be to combine the power of light field photos of the Lytro with fluorescence imagine equipment like the NightSea SOLA LED dive light to create living pictures of fluorescent reef life?
Read the full rundown of the Lytro’s underwater photo shoot over at Wetpixel.
https://pictures.lytro.com/echeng/pictures/509699
