Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. HOMEPAGE

This simple photo shows something amazing about the next generation of smartphone cameras

Move the slider above back and forth to compare two images. Can you spot the difference between them? Here's a hint: Look at the freeway overpass in the distance.

Advertisement

These two photos have different depths-of-field — intensities of difference between their in-focus and out-of-focus elements — but they appear to have come from the same snap of a camera, untouched by Photoshop.

light l16 camera
Light

That might seem like a simple enough gimmick, but it actually represents one of the most important shifts in the entire history of photography. 

Both images are said to come from an as-yet unreleased camera, the L16, from a company named Light.  That the L16 can pull this trick off is just the tip of an iceberg of features Light wants to put in your pocket.

If it works, Light's technology will empower you to shoot better photos and make powerful edits to your images without any technical background.

Advertisement

Light says that its L16 can shoot the type of high-quality images you'd normally need a massive, expensive camera for, but on a device with the footprint of a chunky smartphone. If the company delivers on that claim, this is the most exciting new development in photography since the shift from film to digital. How does it deliver on this promise? With 16 lenses and sensors to produce a single, computationally generated image.

This is significant not only for people who go out and buy the L16, but anyone who owns a smartphone. After proving the underlying principles on the pricey, exclusive L16, Light has plans to bring its tech to Androids and iPhones within a few years.

And that is when you'll understand that computational imaging — what Light is creating — is the future of photography.

What this means for you when you take pictures

One important feature of computational imaging is that several important settings that cameras (or photographers) currently select before the shot will now be adjustable after the fact. Those include ISO (or the sensitivity of the camera's sensor to light,) focus, and depth-of-field.

Advertisement

In other words, it will make it much easier for casual shooters to mess with the more technical settings on their photos without artificial effects like Instagram filters. Just as importantly, it will make it possible to revive many poorly focused or exposed shots from the digital graveyard.

(Notably, Light isn't the first camera to let users alter focus. A previous company, Lytro, offered the technology on a one-megapixel device, but has pivoted away from the consumer market.)

Here's how all this works

The individual cameras on the L16 have fixed, relatively narrow apertures of f/2.4. Aperture is the width of the hole in a lens that allows light in, and wider apertures produce more intense depth-of-field effects. When you see a photo with the background or foreground prettily blurred out, that's a shallow depth of field.

This photo, shot at f/2.8, has a wide depth of field so everything is in focus:

Advertisement
rrl_0797
Rafi Letzter/Tech Insider

This photo, shot at f/1.4 (lower numbers mean wider apertures) has a shallow depth of field so only one person is in focus:

shallow depth of field
Rafi Letzter/Tech Insider

Because of the way the L16 collects and interprets light from its several sensors, it allows users to modify depth-of-field after the fact to look like the product of a much wider aperture, according to Light's chief technology officer Rajiv Laroia. That means you can take a photo of a turkey with kids grinning in the background, then decide later whether to keep the kids sharp in the shot or cause them to optically blur away.

turkey
Rafi Letzter/Tech Insider

The possibilities here are astounding

Laroia told Tech Insider in an email that "eventually" Light will also be able to mimic the bokehs, or textures of the out-of-focus parts of an image, of a variety of existing lens types. That should be a more niche feature, but will nonetheless be exciting to anyone who geeks out over making a photo look like it came from a fancy Nikon, Zeiss, or Leica lens.

Right now, though, the product is still in development; we haven't gotten our hands on one to confirm everything works as well as its designers claim.

Advertisement

Still, assuming the L16 works as described, computational photography will be the most disruptive technology to hit photography in a generation. And that's great for professional photogs, sure, but it's even greater for the average human being snapping photos on their phone.

Photography
Advertisement
Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.

Jump to

  1. Main content
  2. Search
  3. Account