Instagram and LYTRO - Photography RANT

Over the past few months I have gotten some many requests to give my opinion on the LYTRO Camera. What do I think about it, do I hate it, do I think it is gong to be the coolest thing ever, so on and so forth. Well I will get to my thoughts on the camera in just a min.

First I want to talk about instagram, which is a program that 14 million people are using on their iphones and IOS devices. I really enjoy the challenge of using instagram to one capture pictures and two process the image. If you have never used or heard of instagram it is a photography ap for the iphone and IOS devices only that allows you to capture, ad filters and share your images with your social stream.

My rant on this program comes form people who instead of doing everything from capturing to processing to sharing with the program. People are taking pictures with their DSLR processing them in the computer than uploading them to instagram totally bypassing the purpose of the program in my opinion. I guess it goes back to my feels on not cropping and filling the frame in the camera. I really feel that it is a form of cheating to go beyond what the program allows you to do which is capture, process and share and start using other cameras and programs to get images that you cant get in camera.

Now I think its great that people want to share their images with people but to me instagram is meant to capture, edit and post.

Onto the LYTRO, I am kind of tired of hearing this is the wave of the futre, its the invention of the year, its going to change everything. I have put a lot of thought into my feelings on the LYTRO light field camera. I think we can not be scared or afraid of something new. I think we need to embrace new technologies and find out how it works for us.

The issue with the current LYTRO is that the sample images lack creativity. They only try to show you that you can take a picture of a really hot model but than change the focus to show the lamp post in the background. Just because you have the ability to change the focus doesn’t mean that you should or that it will work in every situation.

That is really what it comes down to, just because you can take a picture of bike spokes with a hot girl in the background doesn’t mean that it is going to be a good image when you change the focus. With all of this said I really would like to try out this camera and see if I can find a use for its technology. I am all for new products and advances in technology that may help me tell my story better. But I don’t think the LYTRO is there just yet or at least they have not done a good job showing non gimmicky samples up to this point.