Light's L16 computational camera gets a wider zoom and double the internal memory

By Daven Mathies July 6, 2016

Making the L16 Prototypes

In October of last year, a company nobody had heard of introduced a product that promised to revolutionize the way we take pictures. That company was Light, and the product was the L16 camera, which put 16 small lens and sensor modules into one device, combining the power of each through computational photography to create “DSLR quality” images. This week, Light announced some key improvements to the hardware.

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First up, as detailed by PetaPixel, the planned 35-150mm (full frame equivalent) lens has been extended on the wide end to 28mm. In a blog post, Light says this move was in response to feedback from pre-order customers. The company says the new, wider lens will make for “more dramatic landscapes, more interesting street and architectural photos, and a more versatile camera overall.”

Second, Light has doubled the already respectable 128GB of internal memory. The company says it was able to secure “early access to a limited supply of a 256GB internal memory parts” and will provide the upgrade at no additional charge to current pre-order customers. This is good news, since the L16’s 52MP photos likely require a fair amount of space. Whether the boosted capacity will be made permanent is unclear, but it would certainly make the camera’s $1,700 price tag a little easier to stomach.

The final announcement made in Light’s July update was that it received $30 million in series C funding from GV (formally Google Ventures). Needless to say, that’s a significant chunk of a change. Light says it “will put these funds to good use as we scale our global supply chain to meet overwhelming demand.”

Overwhelming demand is right: the L16 has yet to ship, but a statement on the company’s homepage says the camera is sold out until 2017. In fact, Light has stopped taking pre-orders altogether. Interested buyers can sign up to be notified when pre-orders reopen, but it sounds like the wait could be quite a while. Apparently, revolutions don’t happen overnight.

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Daven is a contributing writer to the photography section. He has been with Digital Trends since 2016 and has been writing…

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