Gadgetory

light-filled photography is sort of a complicated idea to explain essentially the idea is that instead of capturing just one 2d plane of light with one subject in focus a camera can capture everything the light and the direction it's moving you don't think about focusing ever and you'll never have a blurry photo again theoretically the illumise technically light shows second camera after the odd kaleidoscopic camera released two years ago but this is the first real product it's made the first one made for people to use for serious work it's also the first light show that looks like a real camera or at least a camera crossed with a futuristic weapon the Illuma is a big heavy black and blue device I really like its look actually most of its body is its lens a huge round cylinder where everything special about light field photography takes place it has a few familiar camera trappings like a hot shoe and a shutter button plus a handful of customizable wheels and buttons but most of what you do with the Illume you do on the 4-inch display on the back it's angled so you can see it from above the standard position for the Illuma is about chest high held in two hands and it articulates so you can hold it at almost any angle virtually every settings change like white balance or shooting mode happens on this screen it's a good touchscreen and a nice clean simple interface but I do still like having a few buttons and dials on the camera more than almost any camera there are two distinct steps to using the Illume shooting and processing you're going to need both let's start with shooting the Illuma is a one inch sensor and a high-end qualcomm snapdragon processor it's big lens extends from 30 to 250 millimeters and it shoots at f/2 all the time but gives you the ability to later focus as high as f-16 basically there's crazy range in this camera unlike almost any other on the planet for regular plane pictures like we've always shot the Elune isn't very good it's 40 mega ray sensor doesn't produce especially sharp images and it's pretty bad in low-light but using the Illume to take standard DSLR pictures is a waste of your money and light roast technology this cameras meant for what light roll calls living pictures which let you and ultimately anyone play around with perspective and focus inside a photo it tells a different story as long as you do it right doing it right means having at least two subjects in your photo one close to the camera one further away it often means shooting from below where you'll get a better sense of depth in to the image there's a lot of staging required in getting a light-filled photo just right you can't quite just aim and click like you can with a regular digital camera that's kind of a problem honestly and it's partly a solvable one the Illume has what's called a light row button which maps the refocus of a range of your shot in blue and orange colors on the screen it gives you an immediate sense of what you'll be able to shoot and how you'll be able to interact with it later and it does mean getting the right shot a lot easier and it also kills the battery the looms autofocus is essentially useless there's no image stabilization either which makes shooting even harder you're better off just focusing manually which adds an entirely new level of complexity to this camera but with the right time and effort and a lot of trial and error it's possible to get great photos from the aluminum and the effect when it works is amazing the camera can focus on things literally touching its lens and with so much zoom and such bright aperture there's really nothing that's not in play except you know low light the lose biggest problem isn't what it's capable of though or even the challenge it can be to take great shots that's all part of the fun the real problem is that this product is just flat out not stable it crashes too frequently it freezes to the point of needing the battery to be pulled it can be really slow to load pictures slow to shoot them and just slow to turn on in the first place this camera is plenty complicated as it is and sure it's still a new technology but it's a $1,500 camera and it needs to get those things right the same goes for the processing software which is the other half of the Illuma Kwai ssin electro desktop lets you organize your photos edit them with a set of basic tools and share them to Lytro site or to anywhere on the web so people can see and play with them you can also use it to animate the photos guiding them through particular perspective and focus shifts and then sharing the finished products as a movie it's fairly simple software but it's impossibly clunky importing a lot of files at once cripples even a crazy powerful gaming laptop the whole thing crashes all the time and it's all just slow each light-filled pictures about fifty three megabytes takes about 30 seconds to import and process and can be a huge hassle to edit if you're willing to put up with its $1,499 price tag and its many many headaches by electro Illume this thing is a glimpse at the future when photos will truly come alive and electro might even be the company to pull it off but pulling it off will mean making it easier to shoot beautiful photos photos that are sharp am clearer in their own right and a user experience that doesn't make you want to pull your hair out late field photography is incredible I hope it takes over but I wouldn't tell anyone but the craziest photographers to really get into it just yet