Their product, called the L16, looks a little unusual, but its array of 16 cameras on the front allows it to be much more flexible and powerful than traditional point-and-shoot devices.
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The announcement of the L16 comes as a slight surprise, considering Light never explicitly mentioned any plans to build its own camera.
All the photos captured simultaneously by the 16 individual lenses of the L16 camera are then combined into one 52-megapixel image, thanks to the use of Light’s technology.
As the renderings showed and our interviews explained, the L16 packs in sixteen 13-megapixel camera modules at three different focal lengths – 35mm (5), 70mm (5) and 150mm (6) – for a total of 52-megapixels. When you hit the shutter button, 10 of these cameras capture the image, from various angles and focal lengths.
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Low light shooting is also taken care of by selecting the best multiple lenses for the job, before an algorithm stitches them together, making sure that everything is exposed correctly. The L16 uses a few of the data to expand the number of pixels in the image, while it uses other data to increase performance in areas such as dynamic range, noise, sharpness, etc. Even things like focus and depth of field can be adjusted after the image is taken, similar to cameras by Lytro. The L16 also offers Wi-Fi, which means you’ll be able to share your photos after you take ’em. Though it is not as expensive as the top-of-the-shelf camera, but you might still bite the bullet with its quite high price tag when you pre-order it starting today up until November 6 from company’s website. Whether or not that happens remains to be seen, but for now the Light L16 is priced at a whopping $1,699 and is expected to begin shipping late summer 2016. After that, the price will jump to $1,699. The L16 could be interesting to folks that like unique cameras, though.
