Light was an American

digital photography Digital photography uses cameras containing arrays of electronic photodetectors interfaced to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to produce images focused by a lens, as opposed to an exposure on photographic film. The digitized image is sto ...

company that developed a multi-lens and multi-sensor

camera A camera is an Optics, optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), ...

designed for embedding in

smartphones A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, which ...

and mobile devices. The company's first product, the L16, is a standalone version with 16 camera modules. It planned to eventually provide mobile devices with higher-quality photo capabilities and true

optical zoom A zoom lens is a mechanical assembly of lens elements for which the focal length (and thus angle of view) can be varied, as opposed to a fixed-focal-length (FFL) lens (see prime lens). A true zoom lens, also called a parfocal lens, is one th ...

. In 2020, the company pivoted from cameras for smartphones to imaging technology for automotive. In May 2022, the tractor maker

John Deere Deere & Company, doing business as John Deere (), is an American corporation that manufactures agricultural machinery, heavy equipment, forestry machinery, diesel engines, drivetrains (axles, transmissions, gearboxes) used in heavy equipment, ...

acquired parts of Light and hired some of the former staff.

History

Light was founded in 2013 by Dave Grannan (

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

) and Rajiv Laroia ( CTO) in

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was estab ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. With an increasing demand for better cameras in smartphones, Grannan and Laroia utilized innovations regarding smaller camera modules and high-quality inexpensive lenses in their first designs for the L16. By April 2015, the company was working on a 52-megapixel prototype that could zoom without

pixelation In computer graphics, pixelation (or pixellation in British English) is caused by displaying a bitmap or a section of a bitmap at such a large size that individual pixels, small single-colored square display elements that comprise the bitmap, a ...

, alter

depth of field The depth of field (DOF) is the distance between the nearest and the furthest objects that are in acceptably sharp focus in an image captured with a camera. Factors affecting depth of field For cameras that can only focus on one object dist ...

, and capture images in low light with limited

image noise Image noise is random variation of brightness or color information in images, and is usually an aspect of electronic noise. It can be produced by the image sensor and circuitry of a Image scanner, scanner or digital camera. Image noise can also ...

. Less than a year later, the company officially announced the Light L16 camera.

Funding

In June 2014, the company received $9.7 million in Series A funding from an investor group including

Bessemer Venture Partners Bessemer Venture Partners (Bessemer) is an American venture capital firm. The firm has over $19 billion under management and invests globally, with offices in San Francisco, Redwood City, New York City, Boston, Israel, India, and London. Bessemer ...

, CRV,

GlobalFoundries GlobalFoundries Inc. (GF or GloFo) is a multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company incorporated in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in Malta, New York. Created by the divestiture of the manufacturing arm of AMD, th ...

CEO Sanjay Jha, and

Qualcomm Qualcomm () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. It owns patents critical to the 5G, 4 ...

executive chairman,

Paul E. Jacobs Paul E. Jacobs (born October 30, 1962) is an American businessman and the former executive chairman of Qualcomm. Family and education Jacobs was born to a Jewish family, the son of Joan (née Klein) and Irwin M. Jacobs. His father was co-f ...

. Jacobs also joined Light's board of directors per the agreements of his investment deal. In July 2015, the company received an additional $25 million in a second round of funding led by investment firm

Formation 8 Formation 8 was an American venture capital firm founded in 2011 by Joe Lonsdale, Jim Kim and Brian Koo. The company was headquartered in San Francisco, California. The firm was one of the most successful venture capital firms in the industry b ...

. Other investors included Bessemer Venture Partners, CRV,

StepStone Group StepStone Group LP (StepStone) is a global private markets firm providing customized investment, portfolio monitoring and advice to investors. StepStone covers primary fund investments, secondary fund investments and co-investments across priva ...

, Sanjay Jha of

and CrunchFund, and Foxconn's FIH Mobile. On July 30, 2015, Light entered into an agreement with Foxconn to allow the mobile phone manufacturer to use its technology. A year later, Light announced $30 million in Series C funding, led by GV (formerly known as Google Ventures). As of July 2016, the total funding received was $64.7 million. On July 18, 2018, Light announced $120 million Series D funding round, led by

SoftBank Vision Fund The SoftBank Vision Fund is a venture capital fund founded in 2017 that is part of the SoftBank Group. With over $100 billion in capital, it is the world's largest technology-focused investment fund. In 2019, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 was founded. T ...

Leica Camera AG Leica Camera AG () is a German company that manufactures cameras, optical lenses, photographic lenses, binoculars, rifle scopes and microscopes. The company was founded by Ernst Leitz in 1869 (Ernst Leitz Wetzlar), in Wetzlar, Germany. In ...

also participated in the financing.

Technology

Product Development

Initial Light prototypes involved the use of numerous cameras to achieve higher quality images from mobile devices. One prototype (later to be called the L16) contains 16 camera modules, all of which capture the image simultaneously. Each of the modules corresponds to an equivalent focal length (5 at 35mm, 5 at 70mm, and 6 at 150mm). The cameras were designed to produce up to 52-megapixel images. The technology of the prototype included over 10 apertures and used

folded optics Folded optics is an optical system in which the beam is bent in a way to make the optical path much longer than the size of the system. This allows the resulting focal length of the objective to be greater than the physical length of the optical de ...

to bounce light off of mirrors and send it down multiple lens barrels onto optical sensors. Through

computational imaging Computational imaging is the process of indirectly forming images from measurements using algorithms that rely on a significant amount of computing. In contrast to traditional imaging, computational imaging systems involve a tight integration of th ...

, the multiple images combine into a high-resolution photograph. The company developed software to interpret lighting conditions and object distance to provide overall improvements to the image. The multi-focal-length design, along with mirrors capable of aiming the 70mm and 150mm lenses, allows clear optical zoom for photos and videos. Android software for operating the camera was also developed by Light. Additionally, a dedicated software application for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and Mac called Lumen, was created to control depth-of-field post-capture. The company also created its own algorithms in order to quickly combine all the images captured from the units.

L16

Light announced a standalone camera, the L16, as a product in October 2015. The fixed

aperture In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. An opt ...

was widened from F/2.4 to F/2.0 in December 2016. The company shipped the first production units of the L16 in July 2017. In March 2018, the L16 was made available in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

. Light’s support team said that “We are ending support for the L16 at the end of 2019”.

References

External links

*{{Official, light.co Photography companies of the United States Photographic lenses Technology companies established in 2013 American companies disestablished in 2022 Companies based in Redwood City, California Photographic lens designs