The AI-powered Alice Camera is now available to pre-order from £550 (~$750)
Feb 9, 2021
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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Alice Camera, the AI-powered computational photography camera that hooks up to your smartphone has just launched for pre-order through Indiegogo. Alice’s goal is to make it easy for creators to create, by essentially bolting a Micro Four Thirds lens mount and sensor to your smartphone.
You can shoot photos or 4K video footage, taking advantage of the display and computational photography power of your smartphone. From there you can quickly and easily share to your social media following.
It is quite an odd concept, although it’s not a new one. Yongnuo hinted at releasing something similar a while ago (that never appears to have actually been released) and Sony also tried something like this and then gave up. But those were a while ago, and smartphone computational photography tech (and processing power) has gotten much better since then. So, it will be interesting to see how well this is received.
Such a system does offer some pretty good potential benefits over traditional DSLR or mirrorless cameras, though, even if you take the computational AI stuff out of the equation. Using your smartphone as essentially the camera’s display, means you get a lot more real estate to view what the camera sees. It also means that it’s really easy to update the UI or add new features as smartphones get more powerful and more capable.
| Body Construction | Aluminium |
| Video | 4K @ 30fps, 1080p @ 60fps |
| Mount | Micro Four Thirds |
| Sensor | Sony 11MP 4/3 Quad-Bayer HDR |
| Pixel size | 4.63µm |
| Colour | Deep learning colour science |
| Stabilisation | Electronic Image Stabilisation |
| Exposure | AI-Driven Auto Exposure |
| Focus | AI-Driven Auto Focus |
| Storage | microSD card |
| Charging | Type-C USB |
| Audio | 3.5mm microphone jack |
| WiFi | 5Ghz WiFi |
Alice’s software is also open-source, meaning that anybody can run with it and customise it to their own needs, build add-ons, add extra features and then release their own custom version of it for the Alice-owning community to use. So, you’re not limited to only using the official Alice app. It looks like the camera will also communicate with your smartphone over WiFi at some distance, too, potentially allowing you full remote control over the camera for things like live streaming or vlogging.
You can find out more on the Indiegogo campaign where the Super Early Bird price for Alice Camera begins at £550 (or around $750 US), with shipping expected to begin in October 2021. Once the campaign is over and pre-order ship, the regular retail will be £750 (~$1,030).
Will you be getting one?
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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9 responses to “The AI-powered Alice Camera is now available to pre-order from £550 (~$750)”
The pictures above are from a non-functional prototype. The display image is from the smartphone camera (and shows the smartphone camera app), not from Alice camera. So far, the project doesn’t seem to have a functioning prototype.
The main disadvantage of a system like this is the amount of time it takes from when you decide to take the photo or video to when the camera is paired to the phone and everything is ready to go. On a DSLR or even a mirrorless you’re talking about seconds. With a setup like this it’s a minute or more. Much more. My nephew had the Sony camera that connected to his iPhone and it usually took two minutes to connect and launch everything to the point where you could actually take the photo or record the video. In all that time I had already taken a few dozen photos with my DSLR or recorded two minutes of video. It was great for remote camera use, though, as you could set up the camera somewhere and see what it is seeing without having to get behind it or flip out a screen.
It’s a Kickstarter. I wouldn’t touch it with a stick. So many hardware Kickstarter fail to deliver. If you give them money you should consider it a donation, because there is no guarantee you’ll get anything.
Shachar Weis 27k funding goal?? Wtf that does not even cover the cost of injection molding.
Sketch city.
Plus this concept already failed with other camera companies.
Shachar Weis have you funded Kickstarter and not received anything?
Christiaan Low heck I ran a kickstarter that succeeded and everyone got thier pledge rewards ahead of schedule.
But looking at this one, I’m skeptical:(
Pre-order is not a word. Just say “order”
The Oxford English Dictionary disagrees. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6e4e34cc8c623a4caeb8ac8f3d49a60c7415ad5257125bc9d15442f32727c63b.jpg
Um … it’s been done already, by Olympus, and failed miserably. The Olympus AIR A-01 in 2015 was sold for a year or two and then was cancelled due to low sales. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwUXDDLfA_U&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=Olympus