Billed as the world’s first cinematic smartcase, Lumenati, the company behind this invention, intend to take digital filmography to a professional level that has never before been achieved. Imagine going to watch a movie or your favorite TV show being filmed, only to see producers taking an iPhone out of their pocket and begin filming. Seems unlikely? Not anymore. Called the Lumenati CS1, it is a case for iPhone 6 and 6 plus (sorry Android fans, the makers promise yours will come another day), that promises to transform your phone into a professional filming device. The device works like this: you place your smart phone into the case, which looks conveniently like an old school film camera, and thanks to an included app, you can begin filming anything around you in professional detail thanks to camera lenses that offer unparalleled detail when filming.
According to the makers, the Lumenati CS1 uses “an optical-quality glass lensing system” which vary from telephoto lenses to wide angle lenses to give users access to professional cinematography that was previously unavailable on any commercial phone. With an ergonomically designed handle and what they bill as “simple, intuitive trigger,” the Lumenati CS1 is meant to replicate the look and feel of old-school cameras. I actually like the look of it, although I’ll admit that at first I thought that it was one of the worst looking camera’s I’d ever seen. But it grows on you the longer you look at it.
With the camera designed to take interchangeable lenses, what else does the Lumenati CS1 offer users? To help make their product really a professional tool for video, it needed an app that was similarly as impressive as their physical product was. Lumenati seems to have risen to the challenge and developed an app that combines shot and captures features, such as automatically adding clips in sequential order and adding an option to easily change frames per second. They also added in powerful editing tools that enable user to add in music, text, and edit individual clips in a batch as opposed to the whole video at one time.
Since I haven’t used it yet, I can’t speak to the image quality produced, but the makers promise some of the best videos ever shot on an iPhone camera. I suppose it’s hard to argue with their claim when it has auto and manual focus, image stabilization, and exposure control. It does look like it’s shaping up to be the best filming accessory ever released for iPhone, let alone any phone. Given that the Kickstarter campaign has already more than doubled its initial funding goal, it appears as though there is strong demand for quality filming accessories to help make the daily phone user into a professional cinematographer.
Kickstarter: The World’s First Cinematic Smartcase
Photo credit: Lumenati
