If you give a kid a camera…

I was in the kitchen preparing dinner when I heard Miss L shout to me, “Hey Mommy! Can I take you picture?”

There, in her tiny little hands, was my giant dSLR camera and she was grinning and walking towards me. I shrieked & asked her to please put the camera down on the couch. Well, that elicited some giant crocodile tears and a wail of, “I just want to take your picture mommy!” echoing throughout the house.

“Wait here one second L,” I said and quickly ran upstairs to the camera cabinet for a look. There, at the tippy top of the cabinet, was a box with my very first digital camera in it: my precious Pentax Optio S. (I used to keep it in an Altoids tin!)

It’s small, it’s got small buttons, a rechargeable battery, uses SD cards and it has a viewfinder and a screen to look at. And it’s old and kind of beat up but everything still works like a charm! In other words, it’s the perfect REAL toy for Miss to play with.

Since she got it in her hands, she’s been going around the house taking photos of our knees, her fingers, and lots of blurry objects. But her favorite photographic subject is definitely Memphis.

No matter where Memphis is in the house, Miss L will find her and start snapping photos. She always asks first though, “Memphis? You wanna take a picture? You…. you wanna have your picture taken?”

“Say CHEEEEEESE”

“Oh yes. That was a good one!”

Here’s a small sample of the photos Miss L has taken in the past few weeks (on  her camera):

You may have read all about them in the New York Times, Engadget or maybe this is the first time you’ve seen this boxy little thing.

I’m not going to lie. I want one of these Lytro cameras. BADLY. And for absolutely no good reason.

That’s why I know it’s bound to be the “oh my gosh you have everything so why don’t you get one of these” gifts of the 2011 holiday season. Because when you yearn for gadgetry that is so darn cool but isn’t necessarily needed (hello people who are upgrading their iPhone 4’s to 4S’s), it’s bound to cause an illogical ruckus.

So what does this weird little camera do? Well… instead of capturing just the light that you’ve instructed it to capture in that instance, it captures all of the light possible. ALL OF THE LIGHT. And then you can manipulate your pictures later on your computer to choose the composition you want.

Don’t worry about focusing on a subject. You’ll chose how you want the picture to focus later. Just snap the photo and go. And when you upload it online, your viewers can choose how they want to focus the image as well. Just check out the example above, or in the photo gallery. Click on the photo and refocus it how ever you’d like!

Essentially, you have no more shutter and focusing delay. It’s the picture available the exact instant you want it. Weird, huh?

Oh… and the images are inherently 3-D too. So soon you’ll be able to show them on your 3-D TV and wow your friends with really cool slideshows of random family vacations. (this is an upcoming feature…)

And while I realize how revolutionary this is and crazy cool in tech terms, I have absolutely no practical application for it whatsoever in my real life.

I’m thinking that the true gift of Lytro is that it’s the gamechanger… the technology that will catapult digital cameras into being more than just digital replicas of film cameras.

But yeah… I kinda want to still have one and be super cool.

If you’re thinking about getting one, they’re $399 for the 350 picture model or $499 for 750 pictures.