We have all become much more aware of the elements of visually appealing video content. You need to have good lighting, a comfortable space, and most importantly, a good webcam. The Lumina 4K AI Webcam offers itself as the right solution for your webcam needs. I took some time to test the Lumina webcam to see how the features measured up. Here’s a look at what I found.
Who is the Lumina webcam made for?
The Lumina Webcam is designed to deliver a professional quality video solution that can be easily adjusted. So remote workers who rely on video meetings will benefit, as will anyone who connects with clients from their home office. The Lumina is also a good fit for your personal webcam needs, like video calls to distant family members, or recording video blogs for your own website.
Lumina webcam features
4K resolution
The Lumina webcam broadcasts your image in high definition 4K resolution. 4K refers to the number of pixels displayed horizontally, in this case, 4000 pixels across. You’re getting professional image quality with 4K, so you’ll look great in your videos. Though remember to brush your teeth! And on a more serious note, 4K video requires a robust amount of data bandwidth to be fully realized. And that’s why the most popular video conferencing services like Zoom or Microsoft Teams limit the resolution to 720p. So for streaming meetings, you won’t see any advantage to using the Lumina’s maximum resolution. Fortunately it is easy to change the resolution whenever you need. You’ll get the most benefit from the Lumina’s 4K resolution in your recorded video content.
Ultra-wide lens and Field of View
Your regular webcam lens can only capture so much of the background around you, making your image more crowded than you want it to be. The Lumina’s ultra-wide sensor is 24.84mm wide, which is almost 4 times wider than some of its competitors. Lumina’s ultra-wide lens will give you a fuller overall image, which will improve the quality. Of course, that means you need to pay attention to the staging of the room behind you, unless you’re planning to blur it all out.
Your camera’s field of view (FoV) is overall area that the camera can capture. The size of the FoV is measured by the angle from the camera lens to the edge of the field. The ultra-wide lens gives you a configurable field of vision of 65 degrees to 95 degrees. And this means you can choose how much of the space around you the camera includes in the video stream.
AI adjustment
You may be overwhelmed by the amount of granular control the Lumina webcam gives you over the image quality. The good news is that there’s an AI happy to do the work for you. The AI can make all the adjustments in real time to ensure that your video image stays consistent in appearance, clarity, and focus. I was more than happy to let the machine handle all of the adjustment duties, and it performed very well.
You may be wondering how a webcam can run its own AI. In fact, the AI runs on your PC and does its magic from there. So, a Chromebook or budget PC workstations may not have enough spare system capacity to run the AI smoothly while doing other tasks as well. The Lumina webcam doesn’t need any system resources if you use it without the AI running.
Depth sensing technology
I have frequently been the blurry moving object in the video meeting. I can’t help that I fidget. And that’s why the depth sensing and motion tracking capacity of the Lumina works so well for me. The Lumina keeps track of where the subject is located in relation to the other aspects in the frame, and the Lumina AI adjusts the image and focus of the camera to compensate for any change in motion or distance from the camera. It worked very well for me.
Background blurring
I enjoy the learning opportunity that product reviewing gives me. In this case, I learned of the photography term “the bokeh effect”. Bokeh is a Japanese term that roughly means “blurry”. And the bokeh effect refers to the blurring of the background of an image to accentuate the subject of the image. The Lumina webcam AI modifies the out-of-focus component of the video image to make you look better. We all need a little AI help to look our best, don’t we? In testing, the background blurring was well done. I didn’t see any strange jagged visual artifacts as the AI adjusted the focus.
Adaptive colour correction
The Lumina Webcam AI can apply and adjust colour correction to the image, while maintaining a consistent skin tone. I tried to challenge the correction by suddenly putting on a bright neon hat, but the Lumina was easily able to compensate for the colour change in the image.
Privacy cover
The Lumina has a magnetic shield that you can place over the camera lens to ensure that no accidental image recording takes place. You might think this isn’t something you need, but it’s more useful than you imagine. If you spend enough time with a webcam setup in your space, you will forget that it’s there. And that means there’s a chance you’ll wander past it in a state of undress while it’s still running. Cover the lens, and save your pride. It happens to everybody.
Customizable software settings
All of the various features offered by the Lumina are manually adjustable to you, the user. For the experienced video producer, this gives you the control you need to finely tune the image to your exact specifications. I was able to easily find each setting and change it to meet various different lighting and background situations.
Final thoughts on the Lumina webcam
I’ve come to appreciate the value of a high quality webcam after testing the Lumina. I had not realized how mediocre my built-in webcam was until I could compare the video quality with a better one. My videos recorded in 4K were detailed and of professional quality. And in streaming meetings, the image was clear, stable, and visually appealing. The Lumina webcam is an excellent addition to your home office or content creation station. For more help picking a webcam, you can take a look at how to select the right webcam for your home office.
The Lumina webcam is available now at bestbuy.ca in gold, rose gold, atomic grey, and silver.
