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More Leica interest in cell phone photography


bags27

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https://www.dpreview.com/news/8600899862/leica-participates-in-light-121-million-series-d-funding-round

Leica on the other hand seems to be hoping to get its hands on on some of the computational imaging technologies that Light is developing.

“With the rapid development of the computational photography, partnering with the innovators at Light [allows] Leica to extend its tradition of excellence into the computational photography era.”

 

And, I recently had a chance to test the Hauwei P20 pro which has Leica lenses and was blown away by its telephoto sharpness (wish I could have sent myself some of the photos). 

Edited by bags27
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Some months ago I bought an L16 camera. I'm very impressed with the detail & color of the files it produces & I am drawn by the revolutionary technology it uses to produce them so it was with great surprise & excitement that a general flyer email from the company stated the following :

 

"Leica Camera AG has participated in financing part of a USD121m investment in Light computational camera imaging technology. The other investor is Softbank Vision. You may already be aware of the production L16 camera which uses a combination of multiple lenses & powerful software based technology to produce large, detailed images images from a very small form factor".

 

Light will be releasing a new mobile phone incorporating similar technology later this year. Whether or not this is in conjunction with Leica, there is no mention.

 

"With the rapid development of computational photography, partnering with Light ensures Leica will extend its tradition of excellence into the computational era", said Dr. Andreas Kauffmann, Leica Chairman of the Supervisory Board.

 

Sounds like an exciting future at Leica Camera!

 

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Here is an article on this, compliments of PetaPixel:
 

 

Leica Invests in Light as Part of Massive $121M Funding Round

https://petapixel.com/2018/07/18/leica-invests-in-light-as-part-of-massive-121m-funding-round/

 

 

By putting skin in this game, Leica is reserving themselves a seat on the leading edge of photographic technology.  This will be bitter medicine for all the internet "experts" who mock Leica's continued dedication to the supposedly obsolete meßsucher kamera design and philosophy. 

 

Good days ahead.  :)

Edited by Herr Barnack
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It is called hedging your bets. Leica is right to do this in a rapidly changing market for digital image making with the erosion of the market for traditional style cameras. It is already a sink or swim situation out there and there is no sign that this will be reversed in the future. Leica can, of course, continue to make traditional cameras and lenses, but these are likely to become increasingly expensive as the market contracts. This path was opened on the day that the first successful digital camera (whatever that was)  was introduced and we are a long way from the end of it at this stage.

 

William

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I know nothing about this, but my guess is that it's mainly about increasing skills in computational photography, which has, among its "virtues," the ability to shrink certain physical requirements, replacing them with algorithms. When we say that something like the recent phantom camera, the C-M, is not currently possible physically, in the future as computational photography improves, physical requirements will indeed shrink. 

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I thought the whole thrust of the Light project was to produce high quality photography from melding and processing multi inputs from cheap low quality lenses and sensors. It strikes me that this is the exact antithesis of Leica's aims, to produce superb images by using the very best optics, cameras and sensors. I would love to be proved wrong but I just don't see the synergy. The winners may well be Huawei, where Leica might well be able to use the Light technologies and software to produce superior phone cameras. 

 

Wilson

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I thought the whole thrust of the Light project was to produce high quality photography from melding and processing multi inputs from cheap low quality lenses and sensors. It strikes me that this is the exact antithesis of Leica's aims, to produce superb images by using the very best optics, cameras and sensors. I would love to be proved wrong but I just don't see the synergy. The winners may well be Huawei, where Leica might well be able to use the Light technologies and software to produce superior phone cameras. 

 

Wilson

I think you're right about the mechanical part of it. But it's precisely the computational part of that--lipstick on pigs--that works just as well when putting lipstick on supermodels (to continue the metaphor). 

OTOH, Sony just announced an absolutely killer cellphone sensor. 

https://gizmodo.com/sony-s-monstrous-new-smartphone-camera-sensor-could-mak-1827798606

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  • 8 months later...

I have a Huawei phone, but I don't use it very often.  Moreover, I put tape over the lenses because I don't want my phone spying on me like some kind of portable 1984 telescreen.  If I want to take a picture of something, I use a real camera.

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1 hour ago, finarphin said:

I have a Huawei phone, but I don't use it very often.  Moreover, I put tape over the lenses because I don't want my phone spying on me like some kind of portable 1984 telescreen.  If I want to take a picture of something, I use a real camera.

'Real cameras' use film. The Huawei phone is just as 'real' as any other digital camera. Most cameras on this planet are now combined with what can loosely be described as phones. My Huawei camera (yes, it is a camera) can shoot at f0.95 (via software) for that Noctilux look. 

William

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16 minutes ago, willeica said:

'Real cameras' use film. The Huawei phone is just as 'real' as any other digital camera. Most cameras on this planet are now combined with what can loosely be described as phones. My Huawei camera (yes, it is a camera) can shoot at f0.95 (via software) for that Noctilux look.

Disregarding the phone's technical characteristics there remains the issue of what we give away regarding privacy.

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5 minutes ago, pico said:

Disregarding the phone's technical characteristics there remains the issue of what we give away regarding privacy.

This applies to more than phones, but phones are the main IT device we all use these days. The biggest culprits are the industry majors, which we could all name. Just as an example, Google is able to tell me all about my visits to Wetzlar, Heidelberg, London and Nottingham as well as my travel within Ireland over the past 5 months. This includes what hotels I stayed at, where I dined, museums and galleries visited and where I shopped. Data is the new gold and I am sure that I am being profiled. I also have no assurance about whether this data is being shared with third parties.

On a brighter note, the computational features now on phones may eventually get reverse engineered onto cameras, some of which cost almost as much as a small car for what are, by today's standards, very 'dumb' devices.

William

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