Admit it: when you heard about the Lytro Light Field and Illum cameras, you wanted there to be a Lytro Cinema Camera. The ability to refocus and determine your image’s depth of field after the time of capture would be invaluable to nearly any production. Today, Lytro announces just that—the Lytro Cinema. Not just a camera, Lytro Cinema is a system that involves a camera that captures an immense amount of visual information, servers to store and process that information in the cloud, and other software and hardware tools to harness that information and use it in part of your production.
The camera itself is a gargantuan beast, boasting 755-megapixel raw video capturing at up to 300 frames per second with up to 16 stops of dynamic range. Those are impressive figures by any standard. But, while specs on paper are of some importance, the ways that the images captured by the camera can be manipulated is far more impressive. To describe the sheer capabilities of Lytro Cinema precisely is difficult, because there is currently nothing available that can match the experience this system promises to bring. Because of the vast amounts of information captured by the system, aesthetic and practical decisions that are normally locked in by the DP in the heat of a production schedule are no longer fixed. Focus pulls will be spot-on and impossibly smooth, shutter angle for motion blur can be determined based on the scene’s content, shots can be sped up and slowed down as if they were filmed like that in the first place. All of these factors, and more, can be determined straight from the comfort of an editing suite—after the principal photography is wrapped up.
While it’s easy to ponder the applications of such a system in mainstream cinematography, VFX is really where Lytro Cinema can truly shine. The wealth of information recorded by Lytro Cinema creates a 3D environment that can be easily combined with a 3D composition. Keying out subjects from a frame becomes seamless—and doesn’t require a chroma green or blue screen—as parts of the scene can be isolated in 3D space and then incorporated into a computer-generated universe.
Packed with bleeding-edge technology, Lytro Cinema is sure to be a game changer when it makes its way to the industry. With NAB around the corner, more details on Lytro Cinema will be revealed. Be sure to check back on the B&H Explora blog for more announcements on new and exciting gear from NAB.
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