Quote from: RacePhoto on October 20, 2011, 14:50

... Now that would be 3D TV! 

You watched too much Star Trek. Not gonna happen in the next 100 years - for regular consumers anyway.

Might not be as long as that.  This is very basic but they say they will have a holographic TV on sale by the end of 2012.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/9393762.stm

The Lytro camera released today outputs 11 megarays or around 1 Megapixel with 1080px on its height. No word on the width but I'm betting 1200px.   Hardly stock material. 

In a few generations it will be an incredible tool in the arsenal but right now it is pretty useless besides net pic sharing.  In Macro imaging and microscopy where you usually have to layer and merge several depth exposures this camera could revolutionize those markets.

Lets hope the technology survives until it matures in the market.  I have a Lytro order option right now that lapses in a week. Somehow I don't think it is enough resolution to buy it.   At 3MP it would be a different story, 1MP is just too low.

I bet you thats an already heavily upsampled resolution.

This thread has themes last heard in the late 90s and early 00s, "digital will never replace film".

  I wouldn't bet my testicales on any predictions that suggest "it" won't happen.  Nobody knows what sort of "its" are out there.  The only certainty is that we will be surprised.

This technology is very early days, just as digital camera were a little over a decade ago.  Look where we are now.

Ken

Just because some people are still living in caves somewhere, it doesn't mean we haven't moved out and taken up factory make clothes, shopping for food instead of hunting it or riding in vehicles instead of on animals.  There are still people who don't believe film has been replaced by digital. For myself, as soon as I got a 6MP camera I stopped shooting film. For professionals and publication it took a little longer. The Internet is electronic and demands speed as well, and film doesn't have that.

Now 3D? It's like turbine cars, hovercraft and everyone with an airplane in their garage. It's the stuff that nice articles about the future are made of, but impracticable and lacks the basic functionality that people require. You want to read a book? Now you can use a Kindle. Want to watch TV, you carry one on your phone.

3D isn't part of the necessary function of watching. That's all. Advantage to 3D TV is you can watch standard TV on it, which the rest of these products of the past, couldn't do.

How's your stereoscope? Technology that's over 100 years old. Wouldn't people still be using it if there was some kind of demand? White Realist stereo cameras, the Nimslo camera that produced 3D prints. (I think Nishiki bought that?) This is nice, a Nimslo digital printer could bring the technology back. Yes I own one of the first cameras, it's in the storage box for old cameras.
 Back to the point. Demand, cost and functionality. A toy camera for $300 that takes extra large depth of field images, that can't really be viewed as prints, slides, or even 3D. It's all hypothetical.

Remember smell-o-vision, yes someone really made it. Disc camera? (UGH!) How's that new Polaroid doing that prints from a digital camera, in your hand? Hey, the $100 Flip video camera? Gone April 2011. Kodak Advantix? And for every 100 of these schemes that come and go, one might make it. Next thing someone comes along and points out, "Hey people said it was folly, but look now." Funny how the people making that point forget about the other 100 inventions that were useless novelty and toys.

3D television and movies, the kind that need special glasses, will suffer the same as they have in the past. Passing fad.

Anyone still have a Quad tape player or record player? SQ or QS with the decoder. Why not? Stereo was good because it was an improvement in realism over mono. Why didn't quad make it? It's a natural? Want another passing fad? CDs and DVDs. LOL

Personally I think this is revolutionary technology, a paradigm shift. The tech is in is infancy, this is a first step, an embryonic version of something that in a few years, maybe five, will completely change photography. Think about it, deciding after the fact, where to place focus, how much to be in or out of focus. I see so much potential here it's mind boggling. It's either going to put me out of work as a photographer or allow me more creative freedom then ever before. Awesome.