Great point, Stefan. Thanks for asking (and appreciate the kind words about our upcoming Lume Pad)!
To answer your question, we’ve got to first look at the design and go from there.
OK, let’s talk about camera (and other component) placement. It’s kind of like a game of Tetris getting all the pieces into place to create this high-end tablet. We’ve got to make room for everything – including our 10.8 inch display – and still balance out the thermal management. That’s why we’re laying out the camera the way you see [here].
Leia has developed disparity guidelines for the 3D Lightfield content to look good on the display. Without getting too into the weeds, the rule of thumb is that the optimal stereo camera baseline to record content at distance d is about d/100.
Most commonly, people are taking portrait shots, pictures of pets and (your favorite 
) food. In those cases, the 15mm baseline is pretty ideal.
Now, let’s assume for a second the board design allowed us to go wider, say human interocular 63mm. The optimal recording distance would be 6m (~20ft).
Then all those portrait and food shots would be 4x too large. We use computer vision tricks to synthesize views at the comfortable disparity level, but at that 4x level, you start seeing artifacts and things can get messy.
NOW FOR THE GOOD NEWS: Leia’s developed several techniques to record landscapes with a very wide effective baseline. We’re talking using orbiting drone aerial shots and producing stunning results….but we’re going to have to leave it at that tease for now. We will have more to reveal very soon on that front.
And, yes, you always have the option to use your favorite 3D recording device and visualize the content on the pad as we are fully compatible with SBS, both for photos and videos.
Hope that helps address your concern and that you’re able to join the Lume Pad family.
Again, thanks for the comment!
-DarrenG from the Leia team
