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Light L16 front view

This calendar week, startup Light announced plans to sell a 52MP camera that creates DSLR-quality images, but is only the size of a smartphone. The Light L16 will practise this past combining images from multiple lower-resolution sensors — ten of its 16 sensors fire for each shot — into a single high-resolution paradigm. By cleverly combining images from some of its 35mm, 70mm, and 150mm fixed-focal-length lenses, the L16 can zoom from 35mm to 150mm (in 35mm equivalent terms). Lite expects the L16 to be bachelor in tardily summer of 2022 for $ane,700, but it is currently accepting a express number of pre-orders for units at $1,300.

The magic behind Light

The L16 has a touch-enabled screen that allows pinch to zoomWe've written in some detail how the multi-sensor Lite module works, but the gist of it is that several overlapping images are fused in software into a single epitome. Because each sensor is minor, the lenses needed are too minor, resulting in a thin device. In add-on, to provide telephoto capability, longer-focal-length lenses are placed in the unit sideways, and augmented with a mirror that allows them to capture images out of the front end of the photographic camera. Those mirrors are besides movable, which helps the Light bring as many imagers as possible to conduct for each zoom level.

Evidently this is easier to say than to do. The computational imaging work required to fuse the images is substantial, as the images have to be perfectly aligned in order to be merged successfully, and shutter and image readout timings have to exist advisedly controlled to avoid artifacts — peculiarly with moving subjects.

Forth with 52MP still images in JPEG, TIFF, and DNG (RAW), the L16 will exist able to capture 4K video, with optical zoom from 35mm to 150mm. It volition fifty-fifty be able to utilise its multiple sensors to capture single-shot HDR images, by setting them to differing exposures. It will feature a dual-tone born LED flash, although no hot shoe for an external wink.

When we first spoke with the Calorie-free founders, their vision was an $80 camera module that could be included in a smartphone. Apparently, creating and getting blueprint wins for something similar that takes years, and then the idea of producing a standalone version entirely nether their control as a first product makes a great deal of sense. If it sells well, information technology will help fund development of successive generations of the engineering.

At the wide end the L16 has a 35mm-equivalent focal length

At the broad end the L16 has a 35mm-equivalent focal length

By selecting different sensors and moving small mirrors the L16 can zoom in to a 150mm-equivalent focal length

By selecting unlike sensors and moving pocket-sized mirrors the L16 can zoom in to a 150mm-equivalent focal length

Volition your next DSLR be a Light L16 instead?

A closeup of the 16 sensors on the appropriately-named Light L16Standalone camera sales accept been tanking for several years now. The smartphone is by far the globe'south most popular camera, with point-and-shoots and DSLRs falling out of favor apace, and mirrorless fighting a rearguard activeness. But a smartphone-sized camera with all the features of a DSLR might merely exist enough to breathe life into the camera market. Lite isn't the first company to push button in this direction. The DxO ONE augments an iPhone with a dedicated 1-inch-format sensor photographic camera that produces 20MP images for $600, but the L16 aims much higher, with a much higher cost tag to friction match.

The sample images from the L16 are gorgeous, and the promises Calorie-free has fabricated virtually its functionality are impressive. But as other camera startups like Foveon, Lytro, and Pelican have learned, there is a big difference between prototypes and market success. I'thou looking forward to when the L16 is out in the wild and can be evaluated for real.