ITWire

Established in the 1950s, the Michaels camera museum is open to the public whenever the store is open, being located on the upper level of the store on the corner of Elizabeth and Lonsdale Streets in downtown Melbourne.

Entry is free and the museum contains many hundreds of examples of cameras old and new - well worth a look.

The Lytro camera is a startlingly new revelation on photography whereby instead of capturing a simple 2-dimensional image of a scene, it actually captures the light path of all rays reaching the sensor. This means (amongst other things) that a photo may have its focus changed by the viewer, opening up all kinds of possibilities.

Until now, the Lytro has only been available via the manufacturer's website but this week, founder Dr Ren Ng was in Australia to launch retail availability - the first country in the world (and the country where Dr Ng grew up) to do so.

While in the store, Dr Ng was on hand to sign units for the very first purchasers.

Yesterday, as part of the launch, Dr Ng presented a 16GB version of the camera to Peter Michaels, Managing Director of the Michaels camera stores (and the fourth generation of his family in that role).

For those visiting the museum, the Lytro has been placed on the lower shelf of the cabinet directly behind Peter Michaels in the photo above.

An interview with Dr Ren Ng and a review of the camera (after it takes a tour of Chile and New Zealand) will be published soon.