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Light bows out of the smartphone camera industry

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It’s been an interesting journey for Light, the company that brought us that crazy 16-lens camera five years ago. It garnered a lot of hype when it was first announced, and once word got out that the company had secured $30mil in funding and the Light L16 camera was going to see a big storage increase, a lot of people got excited. It wasn’t until 2017 that they actually started shipping, but the reception was somewhat cold.

In 2018, it seemed Light was teaming up with a company (which turned out to be Nokia) to make smartphones, and in 2019 they announced partnerships with both Xiaomi and Sony. Now, Light has announced they are “no longer operating in the smartphone industry”. Exactly what this means for Light’s future is unclear.

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Adobe Photoshop Camera brings Photoshop’s AI feature straight to your phone

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Adobe Photoshop Camera was launched as a preview way back in November last year. And now, it’s finally out. It packs a bunch of AI features using Adobe Sensei, the same technology that you’ll see in Photoshop CC. And unlike most Adobe products, this one is completely free to download and use.

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Samsung spending over $800 million to ramp up image sensor production

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Samsung is reportedly ramping up its image sensor production capabilities in a big way, although it’s doing it at the expense of RAM production – again. The process began in 2018 when Samsung converted its DRAM-producing Line 11 plant to make image sensors instead. At that time, they also announced their intention to convert Line 13 to do the same.

The conversion of Line 13 was expected towards the end of 2018, but it seems to have not happened yet. Business Korea reports that the plan is now going ahead, though, at a cost of 1 trillion Korean won (₩) or around US$815 million. Which, apparently, is actually cheaper than building a whole new factory.

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Six cheap DIY rigs to raise your smartphone shots to a ninja level

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Smartphone cameras are now advanced enough to give us many possibilities for shooting photos and videos. But with some tricks and DIY magic, you can make your work much, much better without spending lots of money. In this video, COOPH brings you a selection of their six best DIY rigs for smartphone photography and video. They’re affordable, easy to make, and they’ll help you add a new dimension to your smartphone shots.

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Huawei has patented a “liquid lens” camera module, possibly for the P50 series

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Liquid lens technology isn’t a new idea, but it hasn’t really taken off. We’ve seen a few gimmicky implementations over the years, but we’ve yet to really see anything implemented in a consumer device on a large scale. It looks, that Huawei might be looking to change that, though, as a new patent has recently been approved detailing a liquid lens smartphone camera module.

Gizmochina seems to think that it might debut on Huawei’s next series of P50 smartphones, but Samsung’s been working on similar technology since at least 2005 with a company that’s been exploring them for even longer, and it’s still not here. Huawei does tend to push things when it comes to the cameras in their smartphones.

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Sony’s new AI image sensors could become the future of cameras everywhere

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Sony recently announced a pair of new smartphone-sized IMX camera sensors. They’re the first two models of what Sony calls their “intelligent vision” sensors. Sony says that they’re the world’s first image sensors to be equipped with AI processing functionality built right into the sensor itself for the fastest possible processing speeds.

This first generation of sensors, which includes the IMX500 and IMX501 (both 12.3-megapixels), is destined more towards Sony’s commercial and industrial product clients, but their smartphone sensors will almost certainly evolve to incorporate this technology over the next few years.

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This picture of Saturn was taken with a Samsung Galaxy S10

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The sky above us hides so much beauty we can’t see with the naked eye. But even a consumer telescope reveals a whole new perspective. Josh Rabener recently got one, and he managed to capture Saturn and its recognizable rings. What’s particularly interesting is that he did it with his smartphone.

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Yes, you can make huge prints from smartphone photos

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There’s no doubt that smartphone cameras are getting better and better. But still, we often hear that large prints of smartphone photos can’t look nearly as good as those taken with a DLSR or mirrorless. In his latest video, Nigel Danson decided to test this and made 30 x 24” prints of his smartphone photos. And despite some people’s claims – they actually look pretty impressive.

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How to create light painting photos with your smartphone

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Light painting photography opens a bunch of creative opportunities and it can keep you creative and entertained for hours. Just what we need right now, right? If you’ve always wanted to try it out, you can start with minimum gear and easily shoot light painting images on your phone. In this video, Jason D. Page will show you how and he’ll give you a few tips and ideas to help you get started.

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iFixit tore down the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra to see its “crazy” cameras

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The Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra is an impressive smartphone, with an impressive $1,399 price tag to match. It has an interesting camera assembly on the rear, with three cameras at 12, 48 and 108-megapixels, as well as a Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensor for depth-sensing.

iFixit have managed to get their hands on one and as they often do, they decided to tear it open to see how it all comes together inside. As one would expect from a Samsung device, it’s not the easiest to get into. iFixit mentions using some pretty hefty tools to crack it open, making some comparisons to Samsung’s Note 10 Plus 5G in terms of internal similarity.

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