Light L16, A Review of the First Computational Camera
The first “computational camera” to hit the market is supposedly shipping since more than two weeks, and yet no early user has published any unboxing video, full resolution picture or any kind of review. I am one of the many early backers, and I guess I am not the only one who is following the events with a bit of anxiety. It is not just that we are eager to put our hands on the new toy. We fear that once we receive the long waited box we will be disappointed by its content.
I gathered all the technical information available on L16 and analyzed them in order to write something that will read like a review of the camera, highlighting its potential and its shortcomings. I also conjured a couple of hypotheses about the information delay. All in all, I hope this article will help you understand what to expect from Light L16.
Is L16 actually out there?
I think the first pieces are already out the hands of some lucky costumers, and here is why they haven’t yet shared publicly anything about the camera yet. The production has not ramped up yet, so Light is likely shipping just a few units per day. And who are the lucky costumers receiving them? Beta testers (and maybe some influencers and/or journalists) which will have signed an NDA which doesn’t allow them to release any information about the camera until a certain date.
The question is, why would Light not want these early users to share their opinion (and their high resolution files) with the public?
Worst case scenario, the camera works visibly worst than expected. Maybe it is not that good in low light, maybe it gives too many artifacts, maybe post-production requires too much time to get decent pics, whatever it is, users are going to be at least mildly disappointed. In this situation, it is pretty likely that if the first users shared their bad opinion on the product, lots of people would ask for a refund before even receiving the camera, and Light would end up not being able to sell even their first batch. In other words, total failure.
If the bad opinions got out later, they would be partly covered by the noise of tons of enthusiastic reviews from less expert users. And most importantly, people wouldn’t have time to ask for a refund before receiving their camera, and you can bet much more people would keep it anyway, once they have it. All it would take would be promising that everything will be fixed with the next software update, which will arrive after 3 months when you can’t return the camera anymore… I have seen this happen with other crowdfunded projects.
A less worrisome scenario is that the software still need some important updates, that will actually improve the user experience and/or picture quality, so Light doesn’t want its customers to be scared away by something that will be soon fixed. Once the update is out, Light will allow its first users to release their pics in the wild.
The virtual review
Light has finally published 3 full resolution pics (find them at the bottom of this gallery). On a first glance they look very promising, don’t they?
But looking at the details one may start to question the actual performance of the camera for two reasons.
First, none of these pictures is shot in challenging conditions, like low light or high contrast scene. So how does Light L16 perform in challenging conditions? Nobody knows! But I am not so confident it will give very good results, otherwise, these would be the first kind of pictures a smart marketing department would show. Let’s hope that Light simply doesn’t have a very smart marketing department…
Second, if you zoom to 100% you can see several small artifacts and slightly blurred areas. This may be in part due to the JPG compression, but I guess that it is also the result of the pictures fusion process. Hopefully the next updates of Light’s software will improve the process, but I think that complex objects like grass and three branches will keep giving troubles.
On the other hand, when you don’t have this kind of problems, the picture quality is exceptional. Just take a look to the following picture and its 100% crop. Amazing!
Light.co also explained the technology behind L16. Following are my considerations on the most interesting technical specifications.
Variable resolution and (and sharpness)
As Light.co explains in this page, sharpness and resolution are not constant at all the available focal lengths. As you can see from the following graph, they peak at 35 and 75 mmm, and are the worst at 69mm and 150mm. How worst? Resolution soars from 52MP to 13MP. Yes, that is right: you lose more than 3/4 of the resolution at 69mm and at maximum focal length.
The same (simplifying a lot) goes for sharpness. When resolution peaks, L16 can use several overlapping pictures to gather data all around the image. This allows the picture to be sharp from corner to corner, which is great. On a DSLR one can obtain this level of sharpens only with good lenses or using smaller apertures, otherwise the areas of a picture closer to the edges tend to be much less sharp than the ones closer to the center.
When the resolution reaches the bottom, also sharpness does. This doesn’t mean the picture will look blurred, though. You just will not have an image that is super sharp from corner to corner, but, as it would happen with any other camera at full aperture, sharpness will decrease moving from the center of the image to its edges.
The variable resolution caught me by surprise. I don’t remember Light explaining it when they launched their campaign. I admit, it is something one could have imagined considering how the camera works, nevertheless, I did not, and I guess most of the other early backers had the same lack of imagination. Speaking of imagination, who, at the e time, didn’t think “150mm is not bad for a compact camera, but if you can also crop from a 40–50 MP picture shot at 150mm, it’s almost like having one of those super expensive bazooka on a reflex!” Well, not the case. You can still crop a bit from a 13MP file, in particular if you are not going to print, but not as much as you may have expected.
On the other hand a sharp picture from edge to edge shooting at full aperture is something difficult to obtain even with a DSLR. Definitively a nice surprise!
Always full aperture
The lens of Light L16 don’t have an adjustable diaphragm, this means the camera always shot at full aperture. Light reassures it is not a problem: aperture is what we would use to control depth of field, and thanks to its technology, L16 can adjust depth of field in post production. While this is true, a few issues remain.
If you are shooting a very bright scene and want to use a long exposure (for example to make flowing water look like mist), reducing the aperture is the only option (on a conventional camera you could also use a ND filter, but, at least for now, there are no ND filters available for the L16).
The problem is even bigger for videos. As we knew from the beginning, Light L16 uses only one lens at a time to shot videos. If there is no diaphragm on that lens, you can’t adjust the depth of field, no way to fix it in post. Furthermore, if you are shooting a bright scene (outdoor in a sunny day, for example), not being able to compensate for the amount of light means you will have to use a too fast shutter speed, which will lead to a choppy video. Again, this is something you could fix using an ND filter, and in some situations reducing the aperture would not be enough anyway, hopefully someone will design and sell ND filters for Light L16.
“Fake” bokeh
As it happens with the new iPhones, the blur of the out of focus part of the image is not due to optics but to image processing. This results in a bokeh that is quite different from the one you would get with a DSLR camera (and a good lens).
This is the only image I could find showing how Light L16 renders points of light:
Now confront them with the ones in this picture shoot with a DSLR:
The way points of light are rendered by a DSLR gives the image a distinctive feel. With a DSLR you get well defined translucent circles (or hexagons, heptagons etc, depending on the lens diaphragm construction), while with Light L16 you get blurred blobs. Some may prefer one style some may prefer the other, but they are definitively different, and I hope Light will develop an algorithm that will allow its camera to render a bokeh more similar to the one DSLRs provide.
Android OS
As we already know Light L16 is based on Android OS. Light has not yet confirmed one will be able to install third party apps, but from the user manual they posted online we know, at least, that the camera will have a web browser and we will be able to share pictures using it. From what I read in the manual I think we will be likely able to install third party apps, but I can’t tell for sure.
Image processing using the desktop software
This page on Light.co describes some of the main adjustments one can do using Lumen, the desktop image processing software developed specifically for the L16 camera.
Depth of field. Thanks to the multiple sensors design, L16 is able to build a depth map of a picture and allow the user to decide at which distance the image should start to blur.
Once you have adjusted the depth of field you can use several instrument to improve the image and correct the inconsistencies that Lumen may have caused blending the images that compose your picture. For example, you can select an area and match its depth (and so how much it is going to be blurred) with another area. You can smooth the blending zone between areas that are in focus and areas that are blurred; you can fix jugged edges on larger in-focus object. These last two are exactly what they seems: tools to fix problem caused by the image blending, which is so complicated that the software is not able to get it always 100% right, thus the option to correct things manually.
Once done you can export your pics in DNG or JPG.
Lumen doesn’t seem to allow any other kind of correction, so for the finer editing you will want to export your pics in DNG and upload them in a different software like Adobe Lightroom, Apple Photos etc.
Image processing in camera
Image processing in camera is a totally different beast and kind of disappointing. When you take a pic, the camera creates a thumbnail using the data from only one sensor. If you then want to edit the picture in camera, the software will pick data from only 5 of the sensors (instead of 10 as it would happen using the desktop software) and use them to create a 5 MP picture (instead of 52 MP). Light says this is to save battery life. While that is true for sure, I think the main problem would be that processing all those data would take too long using a mobile processor, resulting in a terrible user experience.
Non removable battery
This is another first from Light. A part from being the first computational camera ever produced, Light L16 is also the first camera (in general) to sport a non-removable battery. And there is a good reason: it makes no sense! It’s not a phone, nobody cares if it is going to be 2mm thicker, but I am pretty sure many passionate photographers will care about being able to swap a dead battery for a fresh one in the middle of long shooting session. And again, it is not a phone that you change every one or two years, it is a 1600$ camera, its life span should not be limited by a component that is doomed to fail as soon as a battery does. Hopefully, Light will provide an option to replace the battery at a decent price.
256 GB memory
The L16 was planned to have an internal fixed memory instead of an expandable memory since the beginning. No surprise here. I think this choice is due to the fact that storing data from 10 sensors all at once would require to much bandwidth for a normal SD card.
Light doesn’t tell how many pictures can be stored in this space, but I guess it will fit one or two thousands pictures. How did I come to this figure? A 50MP raw file from the new Canon 5DS weighs 60MB, and I expect a raw file from Light L16 to be two or three times bigger, since it stores data from 10 partly overlapping pictures. A formatted 256GB hard drive has about 250GB available, the OS and apps will likely take at least another 10GB, so 240/0.15=1600 pictures.
Final thoughts
If Light didn’t guarantee a 90 days return option, I probably would have already asked for a refund of my pre-order. Luckily, Light is confident enough about its product to offer three months to evaluate it and decide if you want to keep it, and I am too curious to pass on this opportunity to be one of the first owners of such an innovative photography tool.
Rest assured though, that once I have the camera in my hands I will test it thoroughly, share all my results, and will not hesitate to return it if I feel like it is not going to actually help me capture all those picture I missed when I did not bring my trusted DSLR with me.
