Focus

Here's something that'll make your head spin, just a little... you know how when you're taking a photo you need to focus your image before you take it? What if you could leave that decision to after you'd taken the shot? What if you could decide to re-focus a picture you'd already shot? Enter the Lytro light field camera.

The secret to this idea of focusing and re-focusing an image after it's been shot is in the way it's shot. I'd try to explain in my own words, but I think the website does a better job of it:

Recording light fields requires an innovative, entirely new kind of sensor called a light field sensor. The light field sensor captures the color, intensity and vector direction of the rays of light. This directional information is completely lost with traditional camera sensors, which simply add up all the light rays and record them as a single amount of light.

So, with all of this data stored in this image file, you can adjust the focus -- quite dramatically -- after you've taken the shot. Both the blog for this product and the how-to videos talk about staging a photo or looking for a specific type of shot to take to get the most out of this camera... it's not the sort of thing that works well when you take a picture of two people standing next to each other against a wall, for example. You need to establish the various depths-of-field in the shot in order to really see it work.

TotW: Ropes That Way

So, getting back out of that dream-pop, electro-pop vibe that I've been featuring here for a few weeks, let's pick a bit of a sludgy blues-rock track.

Enter the Dirty Ghosts. I don't know a lot about this band -- okay, almost nothing -- but I like what I'm hearing. I'm a sucker for this dirty, muddy guitar-tone and the female vocals are perfect on this track; raw, honest and just a little strained. There are a lot of sounds and instrumentation going on here and there, but it never seems forced or overwhelming. As a whole, the song has a great, steady driving beat to it that just pulls you along and that chorus -- "...and I'll never gonna leave you with a rope " -- just gets lodged in your ears for hours.

It sounds familiar and fresh at the same time; it's got a bit of a 90s grunge sound, without sounding re-hashed. It's a great song to crank on your way to the beach or a night out. And, if you still enjoy music videos, this one has officially been posted to YouTube for your viewing pleasure.

» Listen: Dirty Ghosts - Ropes That Way