“Ok, so all you do is make sure you are close enough to me to get a nice background blur, but not so close that you cut my legs of. And remember I want to be in front of the building, but not blocking it. Now just press the release button half way, drag the camera to the side a little so that the building is centered and I’m slightly next to it and fully press the release button.”
Each holiday I try to have at least one picture of me taken, but while I like photography, the people I travel with usually don’t know just how to use a DSLR camera. Sometimes the shot comes out well. Often, I end up being the big blur in front of an iconic landmark or missing a few limbs. Adobe is making some effort to de-blur images, but there is no way of telling how well this will work in the field, or when it is coming out.
Meanwhile, the people at http://www.lytro.com/ are going to start selling a camera that will allow photographers to refocus the image after it’s shot. Basically, eliminating the need to focus by yourself.
The first models are obviously going to suffer some problems. The resolution of the finished image for instance, is quite tiny. I’m not sure what the actual numbers are, but I’ve read that it’ll be around 2 megapixel. More then enough for Facebook, but not nearly good enough for print work. Also, looking at the test images, it seems as though the background will never be completely in focus.
I do like that the lens has a constant f2 aperture. That’s a lot wider then any standard compact camera offers, so images will definitely have a nice strong depth of field in most cases. And I like the form factor of the camera though. I can see myself saying “stand there and press the one single button on the camera.” No matter how little a person knows about photography, they will find it hard to really mess up a shot with this cam.
