Light field cameras are out

The Lytro light field camera on which we reported earlier, receives a mixed review. Apparently the camera does not work too well in bad light conditions.
The camera snaps pictures that you can refocus later on.So there's only a snap button on a tiny camera.
I think that this idea hitting the market exactly at the moment that we are shifting from paper to screens for viewing photos, makes this a promising technology.

Light field camera

The eye and conventional camera's capture the colour and intensity of light. They need to focus to get a sharp image for a certain distance.

Light field camera's also capture the direction of the light rays.
This allows you to reprocess and refocus the light information afterwards.
Storing this extra information takes up about 200 times the space of a classical picture. So the camera's have to sacrifice resolution to keep picture storage size within limits.
Lytro will bring a consumer light field camera to the market next year.  An 8GB version costs $400 and stores 350 pictures.

You can refocus some pictures in a demo at their site.