Beautiful photos but USELESS for AVERAGE HOMES
922814
The photos are beautiful but the ideas are USELESS for AVERAGE HOMES. It's because I don't need the majority of the merchandise shown here. I can use those sold in Ikea or Walmart. They work and they're much cheaper.
3145617
Nice camera, awesome images but as it was told to me by the support team - "The LYTRO ILLUM is next generation technology that makes your computer as important as the camera in the image capture process, and requires recent GPU hardware to process the data we're collecting. Systems that do not meet minimum system requirements (or are potentially borderline) either won't work at all, or may not provide a good user experience. We're not doing this lightly; capturing and processing 40 million light rays and all the data in the resulting 50MB RAW file is no small task. There's a lot of heavy computation and rendering involved. Customers with laptops computers may want to consider getting a desktop or tower system which have much better bang-for-the-buck propositions."
So I am returning this camera and sticking with my Canon 50D.
2922060
I bought this camera based on the other great reviews here... I am not sure if these guys actually own the camera or have ever compared it to others in the market.  The camera can not do auto white balance, thus is very bad for low light or conventional light bulbs.  It will look good in the store with florescent lights or in the sun with bright lighting.  The camera also claims to have night shot, which works very poor.  It does not do IR for night shot it just has a flash light type light on it that turns on and then it increases the aperture time to  seconds, so it takes tow images per second, so the images become rally grainy and slow.

The worst part about the camera is that It clams to have Digital Image Stabilization, but unfortunately that is only true on the video portion, if you read the fine print the image stabilization is not available on Still images, so you can never get a good still image unless you are out in the sun.

There are many better choices, sony and Panasonic to name two, the Panasonics have the best image stabilization, they do it optically.  Sony does not do a bad job but Panasonic 3CCD model does it the best.  Although the advance functions on the Panasonics are a little hard to get around I feel it still wins the race.
1366831
I bought this camera to replace a Nokia point-and-click and was hoping this would be easy to use and produce decent quality photos... Not so much.

There is an annoying time lapse in between photos and changing settings - it's just not quick to respond.  The photos are often blurry - especially if you want to take a photo of something close up.  Regardless of using the proper setting, if you want to take a photo of still blades of grass - expect the photo to be poor quality and weirdly focused.  I considered sending it back right away, that's how instantly unimpressed we were.  It takes photos and it sits around the house somewhere, but it's not what we were hoping for.
3610833
Beautiful book but mostly useless for my North east urban life. If you live in the country or have more of an outdoor porch space for some of the stuff that just needs sunny spaces to try you might get more out of it
2194279
At first I posted great reviews for this camera.  I had taken some out door shots and video...viewing them at reduced size everything looked fantastic.  Then I started taking indoor shots and editing my full-size images.  Wow, what a huge let down.  This camera isn't good value for the money.  It's $200+ of disappointment.

I took some indoor shots...wow...unbelievably awful.  Unless you're taking indoor photos in a room lit with insanely bright light, then expect to get tons of noise in your photos.  I could hardly salvage any photos that could be printed above 5x7 because the noise is so bad.  Tried to take photos during a special occasion dinner in a restaurant (restaurant was somewhat dimly lit as most are) and ALL BUT THREE of my photos were blurry and filled with noise (and I took 25 photos!!).  I'm leaving for vacation in two weeks and have returned this camera for a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3.  Yeah, it's $90 more, but I think that's more than worth it to correct the Sony's horrible indoor picture quality--plus the DMC-ZS3 adds a TON of extra features (and 12x zoom).  EVERY image taken with the DSC-W290 is grainy.  Will it be fine for 4x6 and 5x7 images?  Sure.  If you want anything bigger than that, or expect to crop and zoom out of full-size images, then forget it.  This camera takes the softest photos I've seen in its class.  It's just a major disappointment on every level.

Spend another $75-$100 and get a camera with great image quality.  Sony has tried to pack this one with all of the latest features and forget one important thing...it's a camera--it's supposed to take good photos.  It doesn't.
3932397
This camera is acceptable in bright daylight, but lower light situations result in grainy pictures.  It was really noticeable.  I was disppointed and returned it--other people may like the effect, though.  I am ordering the Kodak P850.  Kodak is known for its vibrant colors and it costs less.  Best of luck to all!
1746964
Amazingly Poor Pictures!  There is NO DATE SET on the camera, either visable on the output or stored as a file creation date.  On the other hand, the idea behind the design of the camera is ingenuous, especially the little flip out screen to take selfies.  Plus, the handy Standard USB interface means you will NEVER lose a proprietary cable.  Also, it uses MicroSD cards up to 16GB, which is all you would ever need on a camera with this many megapixels.  Too bad though, the screen is completely unviewable IF you have enough light to generate grade C- quality pictures, so you are taking the best it can blindly.  And, for selfies, the focal length is such that if you take one, in enough light, and you manage to get your face in the picture, then your face will consume nearly the entire picture.  I was going to give this a three-star because the design idea is SOO great.  But, I didn't buy a great idea, I bought a camera, and even as cheap as it is, I expect it to take pictures that aren't blurry.  Put in better optics Vivitar.
2714749
I really wanted to like this camera, but outdoor photos often come out blurred. Indoor performance is a JOKE. The flash sometimes comes on, but not always when it is needed, and the shutter performance is painstakingly slow as well. By the time the shutter actually works, your desired shot is long missed! I almost threw this camera against the wall in utter frustration when attempting to get some key shots at a birthday party! One would expect a lot more from a name like Nikon!
4907946
Excellent quality photos, but so many bewildering features that I can only master about 20% of them. My biggest complaint is that the camera comes with no owner manual. Yes, I downloaded one, but it runs 52 pp. when printed out on ordinary size paper. That is not handy for study purposes or to take along on a trip.
506032
Quality of the photographs wasn't impressive. However, it is a good book to place in a doctor's office or on a coffee table if needed. This is not a good book for someone who loves photography and wants to see photos of nature, because they will criticize the quality. Many of the photos are much less impressive, beauty-wise, than I would have expected (I mean, you'd think they'd choose only "wow" photos, right?).
2839323
I bought this two years ago for a trip to Europe. The pictures are amazing. However, when I began to start making YouTube videos I decided to use this camera, too. I found out that it does have the ability to add on any attachments, like lighting on top or a microphone. Which was a major disappointment.

The picture quality is amazing for pictures, not videos, and it does not stack up to a Nikon or Canon DSLR which my friends use. However, those are so expensive, and I'm stuck with this lemon.
2899763
THANKS, ONLY THAT INTERNAL MEMORY IS TOO LOW , VERY LOW QUALITY . THE HOUSE IS VERY LOW RESOLUTION .
2738566
I cannot say how disappointed I was with the D3300.  Maybe I expected too much.  The physical quality is there - it is solid, feels good and looks good.  However the features really were discouraging for a relatively expensive camera.  All the color manipulation effects, etc. that they spent so much time and real estate on are just toys you might expect in a cell phone app or a cheap pocket camera - not in a $600 DSLR with RAW output. Totally useless.  Yes - it has HDR - but as an EFFECT that sort of posterizes the picture - not anything remotely related to real HDR.  I cannot imagine that anyone would take the time to dig through menus and dials and set up some crazy color effect that can be done so easily afterwards in a cheap photo app, just for a couple of shots. Turned me RIGHT OFF!  The only feature that worked well was the panorama, but not as well as most phones.

It doesn't have vivid color to pump up the saturation a bit, it has SUPER VIVID so everything looks like a cartoon.

In addition to all the useless features, it seemed to under-expose my daylight photos a bit, and had a hard time focusing in a couple of shots.  To be honest - I tested it only for an hour or so before packing it up and shipping it right back to the dealer. Without at LEAST auto-bracketing,  I'll save my money for a 5300.

Sorry - As I said - as Nikon pro user of many years, maybe I expected too much, but my Canon S100 pocket camera has much more useful features and near equal image quality for 1/4 the price.  I expected more from Nikon than a DSLR version of a smartphone app. Not a camera for a real photographers, IMHO.
2849374
I bought this camera just a few days before my sister's wedding. She didn't have a photographer and I wanted a new camera to take on an upcoming vacation. So it arrived the day before the wedding and I took it outside to snap some test pics. I have to say outdoors in the sun this camera takes beautiful pictures.  Wedding day arrived and the wedding was held indoors in the evening. Before the ceremony we all gathered to take pictures and I was extremely disappointed with my new camera. I tried all the different settings, adjusted lights in the room but the pictures still came out grainy and would not focus properly. Bottom line this camera is great for outdoor landscapes but for portraits and indoor scenes I don't recommend it.
3372817
I ended up returning this camera. I purchased it for a vacation, and I wanted a mid-level point-and-shoot that would deliver better photos than my iPhone 7 plus, but would fit in my travel purse, unlike my Nikon DSLR. I knew it wouldn't compare to my DSLR camera, but it honestly did not perform much better than my phone, so given the price, I returned it. The two areas of photo quality  that I was specifically disappointed in were low-light photos and zoomed-in photos. I have a ten-year-old Sony digital point-and-shoot that does a comparable job in these areas.
2497998
The camera is super sensitive even when set on low....I get way too many notifications due to bugs flying in front of the camera.  For the price I am not real impressed with any of the features or clarity of the picture.....aside from working with Alexa this camera is over priced in my opinion.