Lytro intends to share its next-generation camera technology

Lytro and their light field photo technology is an interesting combination to say the least. Well, what good is there if you were to keep all the good stuff just to yourself? Lytro intends the other companies to make use of its light field photo technology so that they will be able to introduce improvement to their devices instead of just for the field of photography alone. Hence, in order to ensure that this happens, Lytro has decided to introduce the Lytro Development Kit (LDK) under the guise of its Platform initiative.

The grand promise of Lytro has been a camera that you can snap photos with and not worry about whether you got the focus right. In an industry defined by speed and sharpness, that’s a revolutionary idea. But one of the big problems realizing that vision has been Lytro’s hardware, which has been expensive and disappointing. So today, the company is opening up its technology with the Lytro Development Kit (LDK), which allows others to create their own specialty cameras. The first customers include NASA and the US Department of Defense, along with private companies in fields like energy and healthcare. That means light-field cameras in hospitals, battlefields, and even outer space.