From IBC 2026 in Amsterdam, this special report examines how AI is moving from experimentation into real production workflows while filmmakers renew their search for optical character. It also presents ELYSAS's MUSE PRIME philosophy, Melted Bokeh signature, and roadmap toward a unified system of nine primes and two cinema zooms.
GLOBAL IMAGING BRIEF
As software and AI standardize more of the production chain, differentiation is moving toward complete ecosystems and distinctive image character. For cinema-lens makers, the opportunity is to combine modern reliability, large-format coverage, and system consistency with an optical signature that gives creators a recognizable language.
Full perspective
In September 2026, the global broadcast, cinema, streaming, and professional-imaging industries converged once again in Amsterdam for IBC. The question has changed. The industry is no longer asking whether artificial intelligence will arrive, but how it can be put to work across content creation, live production, cloud workflows, intelligent editing, automated localization, personalized distribution, and agentic operations.
IBC 2026 emphasized shifting business models, transformative technologies, and the evolving relationship between people, creativity, and technology. One signal stood out: competition is moving beyond individual hardware products toward the transformation of the entire imaging and production ecosystem. Yet as digital technology becomes more powerful, filmmakers are also rediscovering the value of images formed by real optics.
AI remains one of the defining themes of IBC 2026, but the discussion has advanced beyond generative AI as an isolated tool. Attention is shifting toward AI agents, real-time workflows, and integration with professional production infrastructure. Starting from a live feed, AI can already participate in localization, personalization, subtitling, content interpretation, highlight generation, and the creation of platform-specific versions.
In sports broadcasting, the same transition appears in real-time interaction, intelligent reframing, mobile-first production, and personalized viewing. From acquisition to final delivery, more stages of filmmaking, live sport, and commercial production will be coordinated by software, cloud infrastructure, and AI. The countertrend is equally important: when technically clean images become easier to create, giving an image a character of its own becomes harder and more valuable.
For two decades, digital cinematography has pursued higher resolution, wider dynamic range, greater sensitivity, lower noise, more accurate color, and higher lens MTF. These advances created an extraordinary level of technical image quality. As cameras and lenses approach greater technical perfection, however, cinematographers face a different question: where will visual difference come from?
The renewed interest in vintage lenses, the continued popularity of anamorphic cinematography, and the emphasis on bokeh, flare, contrast, focus fall-off, skin-tone rendering, and spatial depth all point in the same direction. A lens is no longer valued only as an instrument for technical accuracy. It is becoming a visual language again.
Across IBC, Cine Gear, NAB, and other professional-imaging events, two themes continue to converge: large format and optical character. As full-frame and larger sensors become common in professional cinema cameras, image circle, off-axis behavior, spatial rendering, and consistency across focal lengths become increasingly important.
Cinematographers do not necessarily want lenses to become perfectly neutral pieces of glass. They need the reliability demanded by modern production while retaining an identifiable optical signature. Balancing measurable performance with artistic expression is therefore one of the most difficult and consequential tasks in contemporary cinema-lens design.
Against this industry backdrop, Chinese cinema-lens brand ELYSAS is proposing its own answer. MUSE PRIME did not begin with the goal of making another set of sharper lenses. It began with a more fundamental question: when light enters a lens, how should that light arrive at the sensor?
Traditional evaluation often concentrates on resolving performance at the focal plane. ELYSAS describes a broader five-zone view that considers foreground defocus, the plane of focus, background defocus, the image center, and off-axis areas as one visual system. In this philosophy, a lens should not design only the focus; it should design the space around the focus.
Melted Bokeh is one of the visual signatures ELYSAS associates with MUSE PRIME. The objective is not simply larger bokeh or a more aggressively defocused background. The emphasis is on how the image moves from the focal plane into out-of-focus space: the subject progresses from definition into softness while the background appears to melt gradually rather than separate abruptly.
In cinematography, bokeh is not only a question of whether the background looks attractive. It changes how an audience perceives depth, distance, emotion, and the relationship between a character and the surrounding world. That transition is part of the lens's narrative behavior, not merely a decorative effect.
As of IBC 2026, the MUSE PRIME family comprises seven professional cinema primes: 25mm, 32mm, 40mm, 50mm, 75mm, 100mm, and 135mm. The core focal lengths provide fast T1.8 apertures, while the series is intended to balance optical performance with the mechanical precision, handling, and cross-lens consistency required on professional sets.
ELYSAS states that an 18mm and a 200mm are planned for the next stage, extending the prime family from ultra-wide to true telephoto coverage. The 18mm is intended for architecture, automotive work, landscapes, virtual production, and expansive environments. The 200mm would add portrait close-ups, documentary and nature work, distant subjects, and stronger spatial compression while retaining the family's visual character.
The next phase is not limited to additional prime focal lengths. ELYSAS also plans two professional cinema zooms. This is a strategic expansion because narrative films, commercials, documentaries, automotive cinematography, nature work, and large productions frequently require crews to move between primes and zooms.
The key design question is whether the visual language can remain coherent during that change. The planned zooms are therefore intended to continue MUSE PRIME's optical DNA in color, contrast, skin tones, flare, bokeh, and overall character. If the roadmap is completed, the system would comprise nine primes and two zooms: eleven professional cinema lenses designed around one visual identity.
The value of eleven lenses is not the number of SKUs. It is the ability to give cinematographers eleven ways to frame an image while preserving a coherent language. Moving from 40mm to 135mm should not introduce an unrelated approach to color, contrast, or image character, and moving from a prime to a zoom should not force a production to rebuild its visual identity.
A mature cinema-lens system allows directors of photography to move freely across focal lengths and shooting configurations while protecting continuity. ELYSAS is therefore positioning MUSE PRIME not simply as a growing catalogue of primes, but as a professional cinema optical system organized around consistent optical DNA.
MUSE PRIME is also exploring optical personalization. Drawing on optical design, mechanical engineering, coating, precision manufacturing, and lens assembly, ELYSAS says it can evaluate project-specific adjustments to bokeh, flare, contrast, perceived sharpness, highlight rendering, and coating characteristics. Feasibility depends on the desired look and the technical requirements of the project.
This points to a provocative future for high-end cinema optics: lenses may evolve from standardized products into instruments that reflect an individual cinematographer's visual language. Like a musician's instrument, the tool does not replace creative judgment; it changes how a familiar story can carry a different emotion.
AI can generate images, replace backgrounds, reframe compositions, transform color, and create worlds that never physically existed. But when light from the real world passes through real glass, shaped by curvature, refractive index, aberrations, coatings, aperture geometry, and focus before reaching a sensor, the image carries a physical signature that cannot always be reduced to an MTF chart.
Cinematographers can see that signature, and audiences can feel it. In an era increasingly defined by artificial intelligence, the purpose of a cinema lens may no longer be only to record reality accurately. Its greater role may be to choose how reality should be seen.
IBC 2026 signals that cameras, sensors, AI, cloud production, and real-time workflows will continue to advance. At the same time, cinematography is rediscovering qualities that resist simple specification: how highlights roll away, how a face transitions into the background, how skin tones coexist with the environment, how an out-of-focus image breathes, and how flare enters a frame. These questions are bringing optics back to the heart of cinematography.
For ELYSAS, this is the meaning of BREATHE LIGHT: light should not simply pass through a lens; it should breathe through it. From the seven current MUSE PRIME lenses to the planned 18mm, 200mm, and two future zooms, the ambition is to create eleven ways of seeing the world, united by one optical DNA and one visual language. As filmmaking enters the AI era, the enduring questions remain: how do we understand light, how do we want to see the world, and what should the optical language of the next generation of cinema become?
Original source
This contributed special report was supplied for publication by the author and edited into GLOBAL IMAGING BRIEF's bilingual format. ELYSAS product characteristics and future lens plans are presented as company statements and roadmap intentions as of September 13, 2026. IBC programme context and current ELYSAS information are linked below.