#lytro studio

For one, it doesn’t like the extreme temperature of the harsh wintery North, totally shutting down into a dead silence when exposed momentarily. Twenty below freezing is, to be fair, not exactly a temperature most camera can withstand anyway.

The Lytro Illum can deliver some decent stills if you know how to go about crafting your meticulous shot followed by a rather awkward workflow on a beefy computer. This skill sure come in very handy when you simply cannot find a subject set to stack your shot with.  Yes, I do shoot it with my Manfrotto LED array mounted on its hot shoe when ambient light is weak, knowing the Illum’s  inability to properly focus in low lights.

In addition, the Lytro desktop 5 will occasionally crash on the Microsoft Windows 10 operating system, making relaunching the app a slight inconvenience, when compared to her Mac OS X variant, which it totally refuse to even run on.

The experience of my first-week shooting with a Lytro Illum can be described pretty much like using my Lensbaby, or a flying drone for that matter. It’s not for everyone, and only serve a very, very niche application area - one that I believe can only become compelling,  when much more time is invested to first study a preempted scene.

The learning curve is very steep, and a huge dose of patience is required. They are not lying when they said that you need the most powerful hardware to process each piece of work. You do.

Ideally, a more powerful hardware is needed. But practically, my 3-year-old 16GB Quad-core Macbook Pro should do, provided I don’t shoot exclusively with the Lytro Illum on any planned trip. I will strongly suggest the use of a tripod should you wish to join me to dabble with the camera for any real assignments.

In all, the Lytro Illum is one unforgiving camera to use, and not recommended for an amateur or enthusiast; but rather for someone who embrace joy in suffering each meticulous step towards the art of delivering a compelling visual story.

Will I keep it? Sure I will! Its my Christmas present of 2017!