Good money after bad? Light gets another $121 million from investors who didn’t read our review

 

 

(Update, 7/24/18: See the comment I've featured below for a note on why this may make sense after all. I still think it's a fool's errand from a purely photographic standpoint, but legendary investor Masayoshi Son is smarter than I am - And the potential application he saw was also a surprise to Light's founders.)

Camera/technology company Light for years promised "DSLR quality" images from their L16 camera, using data from an array of cell phone-class sensors with different focal length lenses to build higher-resolution composite images. However, when the camera finally came to market (at an eye-watering price of $2,000), review units were suspiciously unavailable. Finally obtaining one from a friend (thanks again, Lee, I still owe you that bottle of Scotch), we discovered why.

I won't rehash our findings here, you can read our Light L16 review for all the gory details. The short version was that not only were the images not up to "DSLR" standards, but to our eyes, they didn't even rise to the level we're accustomed to seeing from good-quality pocket cameras like Sony's RX series or Canon's G1X line. (This was even evident in images posted on the their own website.)

Rather than proving the validity of their technology, in my mind at least, the L16 was more of a disproof or at least a strong indication that there were fundamental problems with their approach.

And that was after 4 years and $65 million of investor's money.

I get that technology is tough, and that it often takes a huge investment to move ideas from the lab to fully-realized production. But really: $65 million and now five years of time and the L16 is all they have to show the public? I have a hard time comprehending how presumably intelligent venture capital managers could see that as an encouraging result, let alone encouraging to the tune of $121 million more.

I dunno, maybe there's a good reason why I'm not a VC fund manager.

On the other hand, there's plenty of evidence that VCs as a class aren't so smart either. Just look at Theranos.

If Light can succeed in matching their claims in the next five years, I'll happily admit I was wrong, salute them for their vision and send the two founders bottles of the same Scotch I sent my friend Lee.

Unfortunately, I'm not holding my breath.