Retinal bipolar cells are the first ‘projection neurons’ of the vertebrate visual system—all of the information needed for vision is relayed by this intraretinal connection. Each of the at least 13 distinct types of bipolar cells systematically transforms the photoreceptor input in a different way, thereby generating specific channels that encode stimulus properties, such as polarity, contrast, temporal profile and chromatic composition. As a result, bipolar cell output signals represent elementary ‘building blocks’ from which the microcircuits of the inner retina derive a feature-oriented description of the visual world.