I have a few cameras.  One in particular I haven’t had a chance to play with… yet.  Its a Lytro camera that has the ability to capture some of the three dimensional information about the scene (rather than just the flat focus plane).

It has been a few years decades since I’ve been to the domes at Mitchell Park.  I went there, I think, most recently in grade school. While much of it I recall being at a different height, and a bit bigger, its very much the same as I remember it back then.

The primary purpose was to play with the camera, see what it could do.  I knew that the camera was best when there were things at many different distances in the scene to take advantage of the refocus and perspective shift in the scene – a botanical garden was the place to go.

Some things about the camera… speaking as a serious amateur photographer (definition of amateur: I haven’t sold enough photographs to cover the amount I’ve spent on camera equipment)…

Its a neat toy tool that lets you capture a different range of phonographs than you would normally capture. The square format is one that can be off putting to some, and it becomes difficult to rethink the composition (I find panoramic easier to compose in than square). It does take more thought about the composition to make use of the ‘living picture’ where you can refocus it (its not a traditional camera and using it as such doesn’t use it to its full extent). Its form factor allows/encourages you to go for those photos at the full arms length. It doesn’t appear to have much dynamic range (shooting a photo with something in the shadows and something in the sunlight gets something in the sunlight over exposed). The live filters are indeed neat to play with. The inherent digital nature of the device and media makes it something that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to use (pseudo)professionally, but can be a nice device for playing with (again, I think of it more as a toy).

All that said, it is really neat.

My full gallery can be seen at pictures.lytro.com/shagie