The $2,000 Light Labs L16 camera is back (kinda)

The photography tech world is littered with products that never quite made it - think of all those much-hyped digital photography efforts, or some of those kickstarter-friendly film cameras that turned out to be big disappointments (here's looking at you, Yashica Y35!).

But one of the camera that did seem genuinely interesting when it was announced back in 2015 was Light Labs' L16 camera, which was pretty unique then (and even now), as it used 16 individual lenses and sensors, 10 of which were fired simultaneously, to produce a single high-quality image, up to 52 megapixels in resolution.

The L16 eventually went on sale in late 2016 with a price tag of US$1,900, but for many early adopters that's where the fun ended - as delays meant it took more than two years for the majority of buyers to get one in their hands.

And when they did, it got worse - the camera was blasted for being frustrating to use and littered with usability issues - there was no removable storage card, and the decision to design it with just two buttons meant everything was controlled by the rear touch screen which was slow and outdated by the time of launch.

In fact it was so bad that photographer Kevin Raber called the L16 the worst camera ever made - ouch. 

But now, nearly a decade after it was announced, and after the company's support team ended support for the camera in 2019, you can actually still get one - and for just $362 on Amazon.

However, it's not all plain sailing - a number of buyers have been caught out by the lack of any current firmware for the camera, and while the seller has provided a website for offering support, the L16 can be difficult to update.

Further, buyers have talked of receiving L16's with dead batteries, so it's definitely a case of buyer beware.

That said, if you are game to buy one, there's a GitHub repository for discovering everything that is known and archived about the L16.

This is important too, because if you do manage to update the firmware on your device and get the L16 up-and-running, you must use the Light Labs Lumen desktop application to use the maximum 50+ MP image output from it.

This software is long defunct however, but luckily it can be found on the Github repository (yay!) but it won't work on modern computers (booo!) so you'll likely need to find an older computer to make it work.

That's not all, as there continues to be issues with getting images off the camera and onto a computer as well. It all adds up to be a lot of work for a device that isn't all that good in the first place.

So, should you buy a Light L16?

Well, from what we can see online, there are some users who quite like the images that the camera produces, although it appears to struggle in low light, and images have a slightly strange clinical sharpening to them that's not to everyone's taste.

And, if you're willing to go through the absolute faff that is getting the thing to work in 2024, it might be cool to get an understanding of where photography might have gone, if only the L16 wasn't doomed from the start.