The Light L16 – a multi-aperture computational camera

Re:The Light L16 – a multi-aperture computational camera by unicornporn on Thursday October 08, 2015 @02:20AM (#10351199)

My first thoughts as a working professional for 11 years (retouch, photographer and later videographer).

Forget a raw file format (that you will be able to use in LR/PS) and the flexibility and editing headroom it gives you. Perhaps there will be some specialist proprietary software like for the Lytro (that will be unsupported in 10 years, leaving you with unusable files). Considering this I really hope, as The Verge article says, "the output isn't as punchy" (which normally means contrasty and saturated).

The lack of a raw file format will also mean that I can forget DCP camera profiles to normalize the output with my other cameras.

What we know nothing about: what will AF be like? What will the dynamic range be like (considering they're stitching, not stacking, smartphone sensors)? Noise will probably be OK as you can downsample. But Sony is and Canon has 42/49 MP FF cameras out that doesn't need downsampling to look good. A year from now (when Light comes out) more cameras will have followed.

Focal length range is a bit strange. 35mm equiv is a bit on the long side to be an all-round solution. 24-70 would have been OK for me, but I realize that's personal.

Perhaps we shouldn't expect the death of the MILC/DSLR because of this camera just yet. Many hobbyist though, has left both the compact and the MILC/DSLR for a more enjoyable smartphone experience. Perhaps it could lure them back to buying a camera (without a phone in it)

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Re:The Light L16 – a multi-aperture computational camera by jerich on Thursday October 08, 2015 @02:53AM (#10351262)

If you take a look through the FAQ, they do say that they are designing it to work within common photography workflows, giving example formats of JPEG, TIFF, and raw DNG (though I'm assuming the DNG is after their proprietary postprocessing, not a set of the true raw sensor outputs). They're asking for input going forward, so take a few minutes to express your concerns about workflow and maybe it will be a better product for it.

I believe they are doing quite a bit of stacking, as they say they are processing up to 130 megapixels from 10 sensors to get the final image. There should definitely be a dynamic range improvement. I hope they can somehow apply their processing to video streams and provide a wide dynamic range (maybe even HDR) video, but I'd be surprised if they can do more than provide a cellphone-like 4K stream from a single sensor.

Focus speed shouldn't be an issue. I'm guessing it's using tiny cellphone-sized camera sensors, so even at the f/2.4 printed around the lens, they'll have massive depth of field. It looks like they even have the DOF printed on each lens: 10cm-infinity for the 35mm lenses, 40cm-inf for the 70mm, and 100cm-inf for the 150mm. Any focusing will be done computationally at post-processing time.

I'm interested in the concept; I just hope they're a little more developer-friendly then Lytro turned out to be. I know there's a lot of proprietary secret sauce going on with the computational post-processing, but if they can open up their system just a bit to let the crowd in to poke around, there's probably a lot of unique creative opportunities.

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Re:The Light L16 – a multi-aperture computational camera by unicornporn on Thursday October 08, 2015 @04:43AM (#10351541)

Thanks for an excellent reply! Well, I had totally overlooked the FAQ and I see now that they are hoping to deliver DNG, and it doesn't seem to be the demosaiced linear DNG variant (which is very good). As you say it most certainly needs to be processed/exported (either in camera or in post) to DNG. If the software lives as long as the camera, that's fine by me. Many camera makers already "cook" their raws so perhaps this doesn't need to be bad.

> Any focusing will be done computationally at post-processing time.

I catch myself being stuck in old ways of thinking. Again you are right and you just threw some fuel on my excitement fire.

I must say I love the innovation that new actors are bringing to the market. However, I will remain a bit skeptical until release. A lot can happen in a year.

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Re:The Light L16 – a multi-aperture computational camera by foota on Thursday October 08, 2015 @03:02AM (#10351280)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't it be entirely possible for them to also save the raw sensor files along with the processed secret sauce image?

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Re:The Light L16 – a multi-aperture computational camera by alkonaut on Thursday October 08, 2015 @05:49AM (#10351715)

Tes, the "raw" data in this case would just be a bunch of sensor readouts from the different sensors. In order to make a useful image you would simply need a computer version of the same software that sits in the camera. The same is true for all raw converters: they do the same job as the camera would when snapping a jpeg. In this case, a bit more involved than just applying a mapping and sensor pattern filter like a normal digital camera, but still essentially the same thing.

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