After a rocky start with still photography, Lytro last year shifted to virtual reality and is now eyeing cinematographers and visual effects specialists with Lytro Cinema, a camera that allows for hefty video edits after the action is filmed.

This new system captures all the rays of light within a scene, so that each individual pixel has color, directional, and depth properties. This, according to Lytro, allows for shots that would have been impossible to achieve in the past.

As chief product officer Ariel Braunstein describes in the video below, video has long been a 2D medium while computer graphics tend to be 3D. Lytro Cinema, however, turns every frame in a video into a three-dimensional model. 

Videographers have an "infinite ability to focus and create any aperture," says Jon Karafin, Lytro's Head of Light Field Video. Shift camera to the left or right or in and out in post-production; it's "as if you had a green screen for every object."

With Lytro Camera, "decisions that have traditionally been made on set, like focus position and depth of field, can now be made computationally," according to Karafin. "We're on the cutting edge of what's possible in film production."

Lytro Cinema comprises a movie camera, server array for storage processing (which can also be done in the cloud), and software to edit Light Field data. The system offers the "highest resolution video sensor ever designed," capable of capturing 755 RAW megapixels at up to 300 FPS, Lytro says.

Data can be rendered in any format in post-production, including IMAX and RealD, enabling creative possibilities that have never existed up until now.

The system will be available in the third quarter of this year "to exclusive partners on a subscription basis," Lytro says.