The Lytro Light Field Camera ($499.99 direct) has received a lot more ink than any photographic tool in recent memory. In addition to recording the color and luminosity of light it also captures its direction—making it possible to focus a photo after you've tripped the shutter. The camera lives up to this promise, but the photos it captures are of generally poor quality and the Lytro has the worst ergonomic design of any camera I've ever used. When you combine this with the Lytro's relatively high price—$400 for an 8GB model and $500 for one with 16GB of storage—you get a product that isn't ready for prime time.

Design and Controls

The Light Field Camera doesn't look like a camera at all. It is a long rectangular cuboid with two square ends—the front is the element of the lens and the rear is the LCD. It measures 1.6 by 1.6 by 4.4 inches (HWD), and at 7.6 ounces, the Lytro feels quite heavy for its size. It's available in three colors—Graphite and Electric Blue versions, each with 8GB of storage, and a Red Hot edition with 16GB internal memory.

There's no way to add a memory card to expand storage, so you'll have to decide on how much storage you need before purchasing the camera. Each file is about 16MB in size, so you can expect to store about 500 photos on the 8GB version and 1,000 on the 16GB version. The battery is also built into the camera—you can charge it via a USB port using the included cable. I ran the camera down to 50 percent charge after shooting around 125 photos. 

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The rear LCD is about 1.5 inches in size—which is very small for framing shots. Worse yet, it's pretty dismal in terms of sharpness and viewing angle—its resolution is 128 by 128 pixels, which is only a little over 16,000 total dots. It's tough to make out what's in focus, and it's tough to get shots from interesting angles. Shooting certain subjects straight on with the Lytro can be somewhat pointless—so you'll find yourself getting down to the ground to get interesting low-angle compositions.

As far as controls go, the camera doesn't have many—just a Shutter button and a touch-sensitive zoom slider. The slider is very clunky to use. You have to slide your finger on an almost invisible ridge, located behind the shutter button, from left to right to zoom in, and vice versa to zoom out. The Lytro isn't shaped like any other camera that I've used. There's no handgrip, which changes the way that you hold the camera. I held it in my right hand, with my left finger on the shutter button, and steadied the Lytro with my left hand. This let me adjust the zoom with my left index finger and manipulate the touch screen with my left thumb. To say that this is an awkward way to use a camera is an understatement, but it's the best method I could come up with. 

The camera's lens has a rather long 8x zoom range, which covers an approximate 35-280mm focal range. But you won't be able to access all of the zoom in the Lytro's default mode. You'll be limited to a 35-123mm field of view, unless you switch to the camera's Creative Mode. I was able to get more interesting results in this mode. It allows you to focus closer—as close as a few inches away from the lens—but does so at the cost of being able to focus to infinity. Using Creative Mode effectively requires you to tap the touch screen LCD and select the main focus point of the image. This kills the camera's promise to let you fire away without the need to focus, but makes it possible to achieve more dramatic refocusing effects. The detail shot of a pink elephant statue, shown above, was shot in Creative Mode. The selected focus point was on the cocoon in the eye.