Lytro runs on Android To run the Illum Light Field Camera, Lytro chose a customized (“forked”) version of Google’s Android operating system. Interestingly, the camera also employs a quad-core Snapdragon 800 (or 801, depending on the source) processor, which powers current Android flagship smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S5, the HTC One M8 or the LG G2. The camera’s code name is “Blitzen” The first-generation camera was internally known as “Firefly”. Prior to receiving its official name “Illum” (pronounced like “ill-loom”), it was referred to as “Blitzen”. Light Field Sensor: 1-Inch CMOS Goodness At the heart of the camera lies a 1-inch CMOS sensor that is coupled with a custom microlens array, providing 40 Megaray resolution, or 4-5 Megapixel effective image resolution. This is a big step up from the first generation camera’s 1/2.3 inch sensor with 11 Megaray resolution. Less Glass, More Software A conventional 70-200 mm Canon lens has about 22 glass pieces. In contrast, the Lytro Illum has a much wider zoom range of 30-250 mm yet contains only 13 pieces of glass. And it weighs only about one fifth compared to a (theoretical) conventional lens with the same key features (e.g. an f/2.0 aperture). In an Engadget article, Ren Ng explains how this is possible: According to Ng, that’s because in the Canon lens, “a lot of the glass is used to work correcting aberrations in light. It needs the curvature of the light to make the photons land on the sensor to form the image that you want.” With the Lytro’s unique image sensor, however, it’s able to figure out the direction of the light ray using computation and software instead. “It’s thinner, lighter and it has a bigger zoom range and a bigger aperture than you could ever gotten conventionally,” said Ng. “We’re doing in software what physical pieces of glass had historically to do.”