Wednesday, January 03, 2018

I've got one of those Light cameras.



A lot of my shots over the Holidays (all of the holiday lights) have been with my new camera the L16. I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about it. It is really awkwardly shaped, but the images are more dimensional because it takes pictures from slightly different angles and stitches them together in on camera software.

I took it out to the Santa Row car show on Christmas Eve where a couple of people actually recognized what it was. I don't really want a lot of attention so I was glad it wasn't more. But I did let one of the guys handle it and the first thing I asked was how it felt in his hands. He said it didn't feel as bad as he thought. Which made me laugh. Because when you first see the thing in real life you feel a little confused about it's shape.

Notably when you reach your hand inside your bag to pull it out, 80% of the time (for me) it's upside down. There is obviously a rubberized side, but I've noticed that men hold this thing very differently than a woman (me) would hold it. And since the device is basically weighted the same I didn't even notice there was an indented side to the grip because my hand is smaller than a mans and I just don't hold it the same way.

I will probably have more to say about it after next week because that is when it's really going to get a work out. It will be super interesting to see just how much of the public knows about this product in a place where there will be a zillion cameras.

6 comments:

  1. "More dimensional"?

    Does that mean the funky looking box camera does some sort of software HDR stitch-up to the raw captured images, or does it simply composite the images so the semi-blurry ones fill out the one that's deemed the sharpest by some sort of distance measurement?

    It's a bit pricey for a box camera the size of a phone, but if you compare it to a Nikon DF series, at least you get all of the lenses you'll ever need with it. This has improved quite a bit from the earlier version I saw that had a huge bulbous grip on the right side for a battery.

    Also, when I look at the L16, I see a camera hand strap mount that would make it easier to orient the camera in the right way. The camera hand strap is always going to be at the lower right, and so it's made for right-handed people who can use the hand strap like a sling to stabilize the camera.

    So you might want to see if you can find a good camera hand strap that would let you sling the camera a lot easier after you get in the habit ...

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  2. "This compact camera captures the details of your scene at multiple focal lengths, then uses sophisticated algorithms to combine 10+ images into a single, high-resolution photo. "

    It has 16 lens's mounted at slightly different angles to create a more HDR image. And it has light field so you can change your focal length after the picture is taken.

    It ~is~ spendy, but it only became a real product last year. I didn't even expect to get mine "sometime early this year". I was super happy I got it before Christmas and more importantly CES. I have a Nikon D600 with an IR conversion. I usually had to carry two lens's around with it. I just got tired of hauling all that gear. It's like 15 pounds of gear. And those huge cameras create a lot more attention than what I want. For some reason people can be really brittle about having their products shot with the DLSR because they think you are someone important. Those tiny little point and clicks do a really pretty good job these days and don't cause as much friction. But I still love my DSLR stuff.

    Thanks for the advice on the straps. They sort of billed this product as not much bigger than a cell phone. Which is technically true. They showed photos of guys carrying it around in their back pockets, so it is a little bigger than I expected. It's about 4 cell phones deep. And I don't think a woman could carry it in a back pocket. It's just too big for our britches. After a little while you get used to it's brick shape mostly.

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  3. "... And it has light field so you can change your focal length after the picture is taken ..."

    You know you can find Lytro Illum cameras on sale at such places as B&H Photo for about $400 now?

    I love the idea of this camera for one thing: I can just whip out the camera on its last focus setting, take a picture, and fix the focus after taking the shot. Even though it's a discontinued product now, I'm very tempted to buy one of these because of that "just shoot and fix" feature.

    Lytro really missed their marketing potential -- I know some private investigators who would love to be able to take photos where they don't have to worry about whether the photo's really in focus. They could have paid for this camera with one investigation.

    I actually don't love my old SLR stuff because it's bulky and a literal pain in the neck and shoulders, and so it tends to sit where it's been for the past few years. I'm sitting here right now on pain killers because I thought it'd be cool to go wandering with a heavy pack and a winter coat while on a trip out of town, which means you can guess how motivated I am to deal with it.

    So yeah, I hope Light's camera works out and it gets better. Lytro's out of the consumer camera market, even on the high end, and they're now building stuff for the movie industry apparently.

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  4. No I didn't. I saw one of those IRL a few years ago at Maker Faire or something. Also very unnaturally shaped. But much more stealth for getting shots on the down low. That is a pretty clever application for that tech. It's so obvious now you point it out that it makes me laugh. Of course that would be handy for people in that field.

    Yeah...ditto on the neck thing. I'm one of those girls that used be ~super~ chesty and it was causing a ton of problems with my back.. Now I'm chesty by half, and I just don't feel like lugging that much gear after I've gotten so much relief. My neck still does get super agro frequently, but it's manageable now.

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  5. (Half on both sides - not cancer half)

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  6. All of my suits have to be tailored ...

    The tailors start with a size 54 suit so the shoulders are big enough, and then they trim the rest of it down so it's a size 38 to 40.

    I wind up looking like some sort of underworld crime boss as a result.

    Buying shirts is also fun -- I have to go to a "big and tall" shop to get shirts with a 19 inch neck so I can have the rest of them tailored down to be about as big as a normal necked large.

    Any T-shirt likely to fit at all usually fits like a tent. Getting a T-shirt tailored feels more than just a little bit silly though.

    On the positive side, I can conceal a small arsenal in my coat, and Florida carry permits have reciprocity in plenty of other states. :-)

    So it wasn't a huge surprise to find out that my travel backpack only works when I can wear a jacket that's suitable for South Florida. It's 24 out, which is why I'm wearing the coat that I normally reserve for winter visits to Chicago.

    Right now I need to spend some more time in the tub soaking in very hot water so this shoulder will loosen up. It's nothing new -- I've been ripping the crap out of the costal cartilage in this shoulder for almost twenty-five years now.

    Apparently I can still travel, it's just that I don't travel well now. :-)

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