Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Invisage to Unveil QuantumCinema

InVisage announces an advance screening of its new short film, “Prix,” at the Mill Valley Film Festival. “Prix” was produced on a smartphone image sensor with InVisage’s QuantumFilm technology, and demonstrates for the first time an expanded dynamic range mode called QuantumCinema.

QuantumCinema is a capability specific to InVisage’s QuantumFilm camera sensor that allows for more details to be captured simultaneously in both low and bright light. Conventional digital image sensors rely on silicon to sense light linearly and therefore saturate when too much light enters the sensor. In contrast, photochemical film has a non-linear response that can preserve details in more extreme light conditions. With the greater shift from film to digital cameras, digital camera users have had to compromise on dynamic range in exchange for convenience. QuantumFilm sensors, however, behave more like film in that they also have a non-linear response to light, which allows for the expanded dynamic range of QuantumCinema. The screening of “Prix” will mark the first time footage taken in QuantumCinema mode is shown to the public.

InVisage is bringing amazing cinema-quality images to smartphones and mobile devices,” said InVisage President and CEO Jess Lee. “With this panel and the worldwide release of ‘Prix,’ we’re kicking off a broader conversation on the huge impact camera technologies have had on film and will continue to have in future.

The company publishes its Prix cinema trailer on Youtube:



Invision's Facebook page has a nice collection behind the scene pictures:

10 comments:

  1. Here is a link from 2011 to 7 Superb Short Films Shot With Cellphones - Mashable:
    http://mashable.com/2011/03/28/films-shot-with-mobile-phones/

    You can watch the whole film (all seven of them). They are pretty good. In the Invisage trailer I didn't see any significant improvement but then again, perhaps I am just not a cinematographer.
    It is too bad, because the overexposure latitude of the Digital Film Sensor, aka Quanta Image Sensor that I am working on is exactly that of film. I guess I better trademark QuantaFilm soon.

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  2. Nice shots !

    I’m not an expert, but it feels like the image suffer from a kind of “flat” colors, compared to a linear sensor response where colors can be someway more “enhanced”. A demosaicing color process is probably linked to that. I would compare these pictures to a logarithmic sensor and the log compression, without any subsequent demosaicing on it. Specially on the Red color where orange and red seems to be quite similar.

    Anyway, always good to see news things from Sensor companies but personally I still need more “enhanced” colors images :)

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  3. Ok my 12 year old son and his buddies would laugh their head off at this name. Great example of marketing by someone that doesn't have an entire command of the English language subtleties. Reminds me of a company in Alameda years ago named Lapis who tried to introduce their brand into France only to find out it meant literally "going #1". Aside from this, obvious magenta bias showing up again caused by the color shift.

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  4. The video looks like an old and restored movie in 1950!

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  5. I think it looks like old technicolor. Very strange color rendering.

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  6. You can shoot a movie with any camera. That doesn't make the camera a good one.

    I agree the color is odd. It might be RGB, but I'll bet the spectral response curves would make a color scientist cry.

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  7. Last week at the SEMI conference in Dresden there was presentation of InVisage. They show the movie at this conference as well. During the presentation it was all about the BIGGEST, HIGHEST, GREATEST, BEST, .... In the Q&A session I asked a couple of questions, but that was not appreciated by the speaker. When I asked after dark performance, his answer was that this could only be revealed under NDA .... Then he turned his head to someone else for the next question to avoid that I was going further in discussion.
    I admire new technologies (that is my job and my business !), but I hate this empty statements of BIGGEST, LARGEST, etc. Please give us some numbers so that we can compare technologies with each other. And as long as InVisage is not willing to give numbers, in my opinion they have to hide something.

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  8. I think someone just applied a disgusting LUT so that's why the colors are weird.. but those colors remind me of a kodak ccd atually.. interesting

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  9. I love it!

    "In contrast, photochemical film has a non-linear response that can preserve details in more extreme light conditions."

    Yeah... it used to be called "reciprocity-failure" and was never a desirable FEATURE of film!

    Ha, ha, ha!!!

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    Replies
    1. I'm sorry but I think you don't understand reciprocity failure. What you quoted is not reciprocity failure, but instead describes the normal D-log H characteristic of film which remains highly desired by photographers and cinematographers.

      Reciprocity failure refers to the same H yielding different results depending on the exposure time.

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