How Light Technologies hopes to change Mobile Photography

The concept is simple enough and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this one out. Light field technology has been around for a while now. Lytro was the first pioneer and now we have another start up that uses a similar concept.

Light is a company based out of silicon valley who are spearheading a new mobile camera technology that uses several instead of one camera sensor to capture a photo. In Lytro's case, it was the use of a whole array of tiny lenses but using one sensor. Light on the other hand uses many sensors and each sensor has a lens. That's it!

So far it has snapped up funding from Foxconn, the manufacturers of the iPhone.

What you get is similar to what you will find on Lytro, the image will be super sharp, 3D with depth mapping, and with active refocusing. What makes this technology different from others is that it was design from the group up to fit your mobile device.

The technology is complex, requiring the mobile device to process an image from several sensors at once. Could be a huge battery drain on your device but the results are worth it. What you get is DSLR quality pictures and that says a lot about saving on that bulk on travels.

Unfortunately the technology isn't yet ready for prime time. First is the cost, and this can drive up the cost of production for a handset by leaps.

Second, the processing technology isn't quite ready yet. Much of the work done so far is for proof of concept.

I reckon it will be at least three years before this rolls out consumers.