Oberkochen, Germany, July 18, 2023. ZEISS has acquired Ncam Technologies Ltd, the UK-based camera tracking company.
Why?
Christophe Casenave, head of cine products at ZEISS, said, “We are happy to be combining Ncam’s unique tracking technology with ZEISS’s longstanding expertise in cinema lenses, lens data and the cinema market. This enables us to think beyond current camera tracking capabilities to offer new ideas—especially for visual effects, virtual production and other applications.” Brice Michoud, Head of Research and Development at Ncam said, “The team is excited to be working together with our new colleagues at ZEISS on the next step in camera tracking technology and making it available to more users than ever before.”
Ncam was founded in 2012, with locations in London and Los Angeles. Combining global resources of Ncam and ZEISS will lead to improved customer support and exciting innovations in moving pictures.
Wait, wait. What actually is camera tracking?
As Ncam’s Camera Tracking System FAQs explain, “Camera tracking is a process that involves following a camera’s position in a physical space…to give productions the ability to accurately track (know where the camera is) at all times, so that virtual backgrounds, set extensions, and CGI elements are composited correctly into a scene. Camera trackers are often used to composite LED wall or green screen cinematography with CG elements (also called in-camera visual effects, or ICVFX).”
What’s special about Ncam?
The Ncam camera tracking system can work in any environment, indoors or outdoors, with compact hardware mounted directly on the camera. This lets you visualize live AR, MR & XR, real-time CGI environments, set extensions, and CGI elements on set, directly in-camera.
What does this acquisition mean?
ZEISS is expanding its technology portfolio for the cinema, broadcast, and visual effects industries. This appears to be a natural progression for ZEISS in its cinema product line which currently includes Supreme Prime and Supreme Prime Radiance, Cinema Zoom and CP.3 lenses as well as their recent focus on lens metadata with CinCraft Mapper. Together, ZEISS and Ncam are planning to demystify and democratize tracking and VFX for professional productions.
ZEISS said that they plan to “ensure that every new feature and improvement brought to the technology will also benefit existing Ncam users and will offer a compelling upgrade program. A first product announcement will follow later this summer.”
