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A Ride Up, A Ride Down (Light L16)

Knorp

Well-known member
What a beautiful maintained bike, G. Or is it brand new ?
Still, we need some 'proof': like seeing you actual ride that bike ... :grin:
Got to say, that image looks wonderful.
Not bad for a 'brick' camera ... :)

All the best.
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
What a beautiful maintained bike, G. Or is it brand new ?
Still, we need some 'proof': like seeing you actual ride that bike ... :grin:
Got to say, that image looks wonderful.
Not bad for a 'brick' camera ... :)

All the best.
Thank you!

Racer was purchased new (a Moto Guzzi V7III Racer) on October 6, 2017. I've put 1350 miles on it so far. It's a baby ... I've been away or sick for two months of the intervening time or it would have probably double to triple that mileage on it.

I ride my bicycle every day I can. I ride Racer a little less than that, but generally put many more miles per ride on it. It's a little difficult to take a photograph of myself riding or driving any of my vehicles ... :toocool:

The Light L16 'brick' is actually a darn nice camera. The current firmware is just past beta and still pretty immature. The current (and absolutely necessary) image processing software, Lumen, is a bit less mature than that: it's still a beta release. Light just released another update to Lumen ... and it has improved nicely in this rev. Still very very young.

But the camera and software (along with Lightroom) is capable of producing some beautiful results even now! I'm enjoying it quite a lot!

G
 

kuau

Workshop Member
Godfrey,
I just ordered a refurbished L16 and took advantage of the 20% off discount Light is offering.
Would love to hear more about your experience with the L16 and what things I need to know at this point to get good results with it.
Thanks

Steven
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
I just ordered a refurbished L16 and took advantage of the 20% off discount Light is offering.
Would love to hear more about your experience with the L16 and what things I need to know at this point to get good results with it.
Great! Another Light user! :) Here are a few things to think about:

Be sure to update both the Lumen app and the L16 firmware to the latest revisions. The latest release on both have shown huge improvements: Lumen is still quite buggy (beta release still, and they're adding in and integrating some basic behaviors and features). The camera firmware has come along a long way: This latest release has improved AF time and shutter responsiveness by a LOT, and added the ability to lock the focus on a point and shoot several exposures without having to refocus each time.

Something to always keep in mind: An L16 image is always the result of a stitched/merged assemblage of up to ten small-sensor cameras exposures. There's a map on the website in the technical information that shows what you can expect at different focal length settings in terms of sharpness and resolution, derivative of that integration process. So there are some settings that are fundamentally sharp and others that are less sharp ... Once you get a feel for that, you begin to understand when you should prefer one focal length setting over another.

Derivative of the multiple small-sensor cameras, the L16 works best at relatively low ISO settings ... 100-400 is the sweet spot. Higher ISOs can do successful captures, but dynamic range and noise do affect the look (and technical quality) of the captures. There comes a point when you want to switch from automatic mode to manual mode as a result ... In manual mode the settings you have control over are focus point (achieved by touch screen tap), ISO, and shutter speed. I usually set the ISO first and then adjust brightness with the shutter speed, but there are times when hand-holding that the reverse is essential. (The L16 works very well with a small Arca-Swiss adapter on a my light weight Sirui tripod for low-light situations, using the self timer to actuate the shutter.)

The software shutter release on the screen is often more responsive and more consistent than the mechanical one on the top of the camera. I don't know why, but it is.

It's important to remember that the L16 always captures images with the camera lenses wide open (I don't believe they even have diaphragms on the lenses). The reason for this is that all exposures are made with the lenses wide open to get maximum light into the sensors, and all f/number settings are made computationally, in software. This is a fundamental difference between the Light and the Lytro computational photography concepts: The Lytro does it's thing by utilizing a single lens and sensor, using a multiplexed arrangement of plenary microlenses on the sensor to capture the vectors of the incoming light so that you can refocus where the critical focus plane is (and actually have more than one focus plane in different regions of the capture). The Light utilizes multiple cameras and sensors to stitch and integrate a single image: they have modeled the three camera types carefully to understand each of the lenses in-focus/out-of-focus curves. But the focus plane you chose at capture time is always going to be the correct focus plane, the modeling allows Lumen to simulate the lenses' behavior at different theoretical f/number settings (just like integrating the array of cameras with different focal length lenses allows Lumen to simulate a particular chosen focal length in the range from 28 to 150 mm).

One reviewer made a big deal of the difficulty he had holding the camera. I don't see that myself, but it does take a little bit of of practice to learn how to hold it correctly and steadily, without letting a finger or part of your hand occlude a camera. Overall, I find it reasonably ergonomic in the hand. He also went on and on about being able to connect the USB cable and how to put it down: this was extremely silly to me. The L16 has gorilla glass on both sides, which is pretty darn tough. But how hard is it to just drop a small cloth (or the case) onto your table and lay the camera down on that? I mean, really. :rolleyes:

The maximum pixel resolution of the camera varies depending upon the focal length setting and specifics of the particular capture in terms of exposure and available light. I've seen some images that came out as low as 24Mpixel and as high as 80Mpixel. I find that exposures at ISO between 100 and 400, and between 35mm and 90mm focal length setting, seem to be my most successful. But then I've also seen some successful exposures at 1600 ISO and both 28 and 150 mm... It's all in how much light and how steadily the camera is held.

I've mostly done basic rendering and focus zone adjustments in Lumen and then output full resolution DNGs to complete the rendering in Lightroom so far. This workflow short-circuits the in-camera and in-Lumen tone mapping, I think, so I do need to experiment more with outputting finish JPEGs from Lumen.

Using the L16 is easy, getting snapshots is easy. But getting excellent exposures—and rendering them successfully!—takes some effort. Take your time and don't let your expectations overwhelm the reality of the state of the camera's firmware and software, or of its ultimate capabilities. I haven't really used all of Lumen's features yet; I've made about 200 exposures and processed about 40 of them. Some of Lumen's features are subtle and need some time for you to see the default behaviors vs what happens when you use them.

I have to say, I'm getting very fond of the Light L16. It's a very handy sized camera for its capabilities and fits nicely in the very small pack I wear when riding my bicycle or motorcycle, or the small messenger bag I prefer to carry when just going about my daily business. It achieves one of its primary goals: to have a small, compact camera with a useful zoom range that is easy to shoot with, and that can also achieve very high quality, high MPixel images with lots of processing flexibility. It's a fun challenge to learn and to get top notch photos with ...

So enjoy the heck out of it! :D

I created a "Fun with Light L16..." thread, it's in the Alternative Cameras forum. I'd sure like to see some other folks' photos there.

G
 

kuau

Workshop Member
Godfrey,

Wow thanks for the in-depth response.
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe the best results are obtained at 28mm, 35mm, and 70mm just something I read somewhere.

Really looking forward to testing out the camera, especially this spring I will take it with me while riding my bike and maybe a few days while I’m out skiing.

Which arca plate are you using?

I will for sure start following the thread you started in the alternative camera. I guess the L16 is truly alternative :ROTFL: I just noticed the thread got moved to other cameras

Steven
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
You're welcome.

...
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe the best results are obtained at 28mm, 35mm, and 70mm just something I read somewhere.
Of course "best" is a subjective factor in that statement... :)
Theoretically, 35 and 70 mm are the sweet focal lengths to work with. I've attached the "MPixel vs focal length" approximation graph from that page.

minimum_resolution_for_L16-image.jpg

See https://support.light.co/l16-photography/explained-variable-resolution for Light's description of the dance between cameras and pixel resolution.

But the pixel resolution alone is not the entire story, IMO. The results vary in several ways at different focal length settings, nuances that are difficult to describe but are accessible to the educated eye. I think to get a*solid feel for the Light and how it works, you have to use it and experiment with it.

The more I use it, the happier with it I get. :D

Oh yes, nearly forgot: I have a couple of small plates that work on it. The one that came with my Sirui tripod fits well, so does the little Kirk Photo plate that I bought and modified for the Ricoh GXR when I had that camera. Any generic plate will work, frankly; I just like to get ones that are slim and don't stick out from the L16 body so much.

G
 

drofnad

Member
Thank you!
I ride my bicycle every day I can. ...
It's a little difficult to take a photograph of myself** riding or driving any of my vehicles ... :toocool:
True, but one can nab shots of one's cycling shadow, esp. in low-angle winter sun.
:)

** Many moons ago, I carried an Olympus Stylus zoom (28-120? --long before I cared to know what such things meant) with me sometimes on club rides, and I sent some shots of cycling buddies to them, one Christmas. Sometime subsequent ..., one of these gifted riders asked me to borrow the camera, and I figured that it was just the *selfie* problem he wanted to redress for me, giving back to me in kind. Well, this was long pre-digital, and I only saw photos after completing the roll and so on. At this remove, I've no recollection of what if anything he shot of me, but I keenly recall one accidental shot made right off of the handlebars, upwards. It, um, could serve well for in-depth nasal analysis, let's say! And I smelled opportunity :: along w/some other photos, I submitted this up-the-face photo with some clever caption about my buddy's doing Vo2Max analysis or some such. Ha! Being me, though, my submittal was likely a day or more post-deadline and in some hurried processing . . . my pics went in but captions were, er, editorially effected and this particular one came, with the set being identified as my contribution, as "Self Portrait" !! <argh> Hoist on my own petard. .:. Sometimes Life can be too fair.

-d.
 

D&A

Well-known member
Wow, another D.C. club ridder that loves to shoot during rides when possible. Love it!

Dave (D&A)
 
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