- Trypophobia is the popular term for a fear of
irregularly spaced holes or bumps,
and if that sounds like you,
you might want to look away now.
This is the L16.
A one of a kind device that its manufacturer calls
the camera of the future.
But at this point it's such a work in progress
that it feels much more like a prototype from the past.
I'm Mr. Mobile and these are the peaks and the pitfalls
of the pricey Light L16.
(electronic music)
A big touch screen,
an Android operating system,
a symmetrical rectangular chassis.
The L16 might look like a smart phone in pictures,
but pick it up in person
and you'll see that it's a much more substantial slab
than the biggest of Samsungs.
That makes sense because it's not really meant
to do battle with the smart phones of the world.
It's aimed at professional photographers instead
who are more likely to edit their images on a computer
in Lightroom than Instagram them from a phone.
The hand feel reflects that.
At 435 grams this thing demands two hands,
which will find their places easily
on the casing's textured rubber grips.
Compared to a Micro Four Thirds camera,
like this GH4,
the L16 is actually pretty petite
and it eliminates almost all the buttons,
knobs and switches in favor of that tapable,
five inch display.
Thankfully a physical shutter button stays put
with good springy action
and a nice firm half-press to focus to tent.
Below that is a small touch panel that looks ready
to do some thumb zooming,
but as of press time it wasn't yet activated
in the device's software.
Also awaiting future activation is
the proprietary accessory port on the bottom
and its neighboring three and a half
millimeter headphone jack.
Well actually the headphone jack is active,
but there's very little to listen to at this point
since you can't yet record video on the L16.
That's a feature coming down the road.
Those gaps contribute to the feeling
that this is a prototype,
which makes sense because Light seems more interested in
licensing its camera technology to other companies
than just selling L16s.
And that technology is definitely the most
interesting thing about this device.
The camera's used different focal lengths
from 28 up to 150 millimeters and they're also assigned
different exposure values per photo.
Manipulating this when shooting is about as easy
as with a smart phone.
You pinch to zoom,
tap to focus or if you want to switch to manual mode,
you get sliders that are pretty easy to figure out.
When you snap the shot,
10 of the sensors fire at once.
With the software stitching the overlapping
13 megapixel images into a single large canvas.
The file size varies but most of mine have weighed in
between 51 and 81 megapixels.
A far cry from your smart phone's typical 12 megapixels.
They're saved in a special format,
which lets you manipulate them using
the Lumen Desktop software so you can do things like
change focus and apply depth effects after the fact.
The promise of this technology is what convinced me
to buy this review device.
Light says the L16 should capture photos
with exceptional dynamic range
and it should feature excellent
low light performance as well.
I don't have the expertise or the equipment
to test that claim as well as I'd like,
so I took a walk down the road
to my good friends at Reviewed.com
here in Cambridge Mass who were good enough
to point the L16 at their equipment
for a quick testing session.
The Imatest results were promising.
Reviewed said the L16 does a good job of
"preserving shadow detail and limiting noise
in the lab environment which is
a key limiting factor that typically reduces
the dynamic range in smart phone photos".
I was encouraged by that finding,
and when my L16 got a software update
that added local tone mapping I was even more hopeful.
But sadly my results out in the real world
have been almost universally disappointing.
In a vacuum some of the L16s photos have been passable,
but shooting alongside a Pixel 2XL,
there hasn't been a single instance
where I preferred the L16s picture.
I understand this camera wasn't made to go toe to toe
with the smart phone and I'm also very aware
that the Pixel 2 has one of the
best phone cameras on the market,
but given the L16's pedigree and Light's big promises
compared to DSLRs,
I expected much better performance than this.
And the unfinished nature of the software means
there's no quick way to get photos off the unit
without connecting it to a computer.
I've read that there's a way to do this
through the built-in browser,
but that browser has terms of service
and a privacy notice that don't load
so no thanks.
If you're a pro-photographer who's used to plugging
into a computer and using desktop software
to get the most out of your pictures,
than the L16 and its Lumen program
will probably feel quite familiar.
There are some useful tools built in
including edge clean up capability
to correct portrait shots.
That's great but it's there to correct
for yet another disappointment.
The L16 is substantially worse than some smart phones
at applying the depth effects that you expect
from a portrait.
So you've got mediocre image quality
in a package that barely fits in a pocket,
no video capability yet
and no native wireless sharing
from the device to third party aps yet.
At this point the only things I still like about the L16
are its daytime landscape photos.
Oh and its tripod mount.
Now Light is constantly releasing updates
and seems very invested in its community of L16 owners,
so maybe we can expect encouraging developments
down the line as we saw with
the initially disappointing and now acceptable
Essential Phone thanks in no small part to a price cut.
If you're an experimental photographer
who's just in it for the tech,
there's certainly plenty of potential to drool over here.
And I'm sure we will see this technology
or at least the lessons from it bleed over
into cameras and other devices in the coming years.
But as for the L16 itself,
well for 2000 bucks I can't recommend it
to anyone at this point.
But I do recommend you visit Thrifter.com.
I try to keep my sponsor offers relevant
to the video at hand where I can
and Thrifter has sniffed out a great deal
on a Canon T6i with lens for 500 bucks.
Thrifter is a new way to say money
by shopping based on value and not hype.
Hit the link in the description
for that Canon deal or for savings on everything
from gadgets to homegoods at Thrifter.com.
On our way out a big thanks to Reviewed.com
for their help understanding the L16
and check out the description for links
to some true pro-photographer reviews of this device.
Until next time thanks for watching.
Please subscribe and stay mobile my friends.