Back in operation ... Light L16

Godfrey

Godfrey

somewhat colored
Local time
8:15 PM
Joined
Dec 15, 2011
Messages
13,557
Location
Silly Valley, California, USA
View My Gallery
I've resurrected the processing app for my Light L16 by creating a macOS Mojave system on my old, 2012 Mac mini for its exclusive use. To test the app's functionality, I took a nice walk with the L16 and processed the captures I made to DNGs. I found a few gems amongst my test shots. This is the first ...


Angels of the Neighborhood - Santa Clara 2021
Light L16
ISO 123 @ f/2 @ 1/170 @ 128mm​

I'm glad to have use of the L16 back again. It's now long discontinued, support for its essential image processing app, Lumen, has stopped with the release of macOS Big Sur .. and the app stopped working with the later revisions of macOS Catalina. But those things don't stop it from being a unique, high quality shooter—the smallest, lightest 50Mpixel camera with a fast 28-150mm lens to date. 🙂

enjoy,
G
 
Godfrey said:
I've resurrected the processing app for my Light L16 by creating a macOS Mojave system on my old, 2012 Mac mini for its exclusive use. To test the app's functionality, I took a nice walk with the L16 and processed the captures I made to DNGs. I found a few gems amongst my test shots. This is the first ...


Angels of the Neighborhood - Santa Clara 2021
Light L16
ISO 123 @ f/2 @ 1/170 @ 128mm​

I'm glad to have use of the L16 back again. It's now long discontinued, support for its essential image processing app, Lumen, has stopped with the release of macOS Big Sur .. and the app stopped working with the later revisions of macOS Catalina. But those things don't stop it from being a unique, high quality shooter—the smallest, lightest 50Mpixel camera with a fast 28-150mm lens to date. 🙂

enjoy,
G
Click to expand...

Didnt light sell or license technology to another company?
 
hap said:
Didnt light sell or license technology to another company?
Click to expand...

Light.co has moved on to developing their computational photography algorithms and solutions for license to other companies. They've been very successful in the software development and licensing arena, selling licenses to Leica, Apple, Samsung, LG, etc etc. From what I see, their algorithms are going into autonomous vehicle imaging systems too. Big business.

They considered doing an update on the cameras (hardware and software) but the development cost vs profitability was just too bad a ratio. They maintained both firmware and the Lumen app for two years post-cessation of production, but there are simply too few units in the world and the costs of continued development are just too high compared to their other work.

I knew all this would happen going in, so I planned for it. I have an older Mac mini that I intentionally kept for this purpose... It's perfectly happy to run macOS Mojave and Lumen runs beautifully on it. I have it set up as a headless machine that I access vis Apple Remote Desktop, so I connect the camera, move the files to a folder in my archive system, do whatever specific rendering I want to in Lumen, then output them all to DNG raw files. I then pull the files into Lightroom Classic for finishing on my main computer.

The old mini isn't worth much to sell any more, and to have it as a necessary accessory for the Light L16 is not much of a burden. 🙂

The Verge article is not entirely fair, nor do they demonstrate that they really understand how to get the most out of the Light L16. And I have the Android version of the Flickr.com app installed ... I can process exposures to a high quality JPEG (not 100% quality as with Lumen) in the camera and output directly to Flickr, and thence transfer to macOS or anything else. The camera is quite remarkably good quality, but constrained by its age and such at this point.

G
 
And here are some of the others ones I liked from that walk and test shoot, all in an "abstract, still life" theme.


Almost Planar #1 - Santa Clara 2021


Almost Planar #2 - Santa Clara 2021


Almost Planar #3 - Santa Clara 2021


Almost Planar #4 - Santa Clara 2021


Almost Planar #5 - Santa Clara 2021


Almost Planar #6 - Santa Clara 2021


Almost Planar #7 - Santa Clara 2021


Almost Planar #8 - Santa Clara 2021


Almost Planar #9 - Santa Clara 2021

All with the Light L16, various settings.​

enjoy! G
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom