According to recent speculations, the next generation iPhone might be packing Light Field Cameras. If another excerpt from Adam Lashinsky’s upcoming book “Inside Apple” is a sign of things to come. Apparently Steve Jobs expressed a great interest in Lytro (the creator of the Lytro Light Field Camera) and even met with the CEO of the company to discuss plans before. In case you aren’t familiar with the concept of the Light Field Camera, it is a simple camera that lets people capture “the perfect shot” instead of having to deal with the hassles of setting up the right focus, shutter speed etc on the spot. Images captured with the camera can then be manipulated on a computer after the shooting is done.
The company’s CEO, Ren Ng, a brilliant computer scientist with a PhD from Stanford, immediately called Jobs, who picked up the phone and quickly said, “if you’re free this afternoon maybe we would could get together.” Ng, who is thirty-two, hurried to Palo Alto, showed Jobs a demo of Lytro’s technology, discussed cameras and product design with him, and, at Jobs’s request, agreed to send him an email outlining three things he’d like Lytro to do with Apple.
If we do see light field cameras in the next iPhone, consumers are going to take photographs with the iOS device very differently in the future. What do you think?