First Look at the Chimera Active Diffusion Technology

One of the most interesting innovations that we found this year on NAB comes from Chimera (who teamed up with Zylight) to develop flexible electronic variable diffusion panel which can really make the lives of videographers (and some photographers as well) much easier.

The technology that Chimera developed is very interesting. It uses a transparent plastic which has a special layer with some metallic micro particles. When electricity is applied to this material it turns opaque. This happens gradually using a dimmer which is either connected to an AC or uses a 9V battery and can reduce the amount of light by about 1.5 stops.

A demonstration of the active Diffusion Technology in action

The current version is still a prototype and comes in different sizes and apparently many companies and manufacturers approached Chimera and want the company to create dedicated diffusers for their LEDs. We suspect that if this technology will have an attractive enough cost is can become the standard in future diffusion technology (we would even go as far as suggest that the power for it will come from the light itself.

We plan to have a talk with Chimera right after NAB to see when we will be able to test this technology.

We will be looking into several monitors in the near future so stay tuned for that. If you don’t want to miss any new photography product be sure to check out our product photography section. Also – check out our NAB 2017 coverage – here.

Iddo Genuth
Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.

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