A few days ago, Light released a L16 camera, the first multi aperture computing camera, and claimed that it was a camera with SLR image quality in its pocket. Now it has officially opened for pre-sale, with a pre-sale price of 1300 dollars (8250 yuan). After the retail department officially opened for sale, its price is 1700 dollars (10789 yuan).

To build a camera, its specifications and configuration look pretty good. It has 16 13 million pixel cameras with F/2.4 aperture, including 5 35mm focal length, 5 70mm focal length, 6 150mm focal length, 5 inch LCD touch screen, built-in WIFI module, and can output DNG RAW file, built-in 128G storage capacity, non removable battery, USB Type-C interface, LED fill light.

L16 Structure inside the fuselage - 1

L16 Structure inside the fuselage - 2

L16 has 16 cameras, but their CMOS is not big. These 16 13 megapixel lenses all use a 1/3 sensor, and the light sensitive area of a single pixel is 1.1um * 1.1um. These parameters may be very similar to your phone camera. When you use it, it will generate 10 photos at the same time, and then merge 5 of them into one photo, Each lens is shot with full pixels. When you zoom in during shooting, it will use multiple cameras with different focal lengths for digital zoom to simulate the effect of optical zoom. For example, when you do not zoom, it can take 52 million pixels of photos, while when you zoom 4.2 times, it will take 13 million pixels of pictures, It is similar to the lossless zoom of Lumia 1020.

The use of lenses with different focal lengths means that the depth of field effect of its pictures is better, but it uses contrast focusing, which is slower. It can super sample and synthesize multiple images to finally generate a 52 million pixel image, and the size of each sensor is 1/3 (diagonal 6mm), which can be understood as 5/3 (diagonal 30mm) in theory through five photographic composite images, while the CMOS diagonal of APS-C SLR camera is 27.3mm, which means that its CMOS is larger after algorithm synthesis in theory, However, due to the denser pixels, the photosensitive area of a single pixel is not as good as the APS-C SLR.

Although this camera is very creative in shape and method, its price is really too high. It will take half a year to get the goods for the pre sale of $1300, and it will cost $1700 for the official sale in 2016. This price can already buy a good SLR and a good lens, but it is a good start, We may see more such multi camera cameras in the future.

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