[General Questions and Answers] win32forth:
Hello! The review below is one I posted on Amazon after purchasing my L16. I am re-posting it here in case any of you haven't seen it. It contains details of my workflow for processing L16 raw images. I am still hoping that someone from John Deere will contact me about the use of the L16's firmware and software.

4.0 out of 5 stars Patience is a Virtue but Picture Quality Can Be Wonderful

Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2022

Verified Purchase

Ok, so this camera, the Light L16 was discontinued in 2019, and here we are in 2022 and whoever had a remaining supply of them new has decided to clear them out. Original price $2000, current price… I paid $169, and since my purchase it has dropped to $159, and possibly lower (now in mid 2023 they are up to $250). Originally described as a DSLR in your pocket, the L16 has 16 cameras and lenses… Yes, 16. It takes photos with between 5 and 10 cameras at a time, and the closer to 35mm and 75mm you set the zoom, the better the image quality. The largest resolution photos are taken at 28mm (80MP), and the lowest resolution shots are at 69mm and 150mm (13MP). So, if you want the absolute best image quality you will shoot at 35MM and 75MM and you will have about 52MP resolution and the shot will be taken with 10 cameras. This is a good camera for someone who has patience, and who isn’t in a hurry to take a shot. It isn’t well suited for sports photography, or for shooting anything that is moving fast, like a baby or a toddler. It is a great conversation starter. When you pull it out of its case, everyone will be asking what it is. As I said, patience is important, and that is even more tru for processing the images into a usable result. To get anything better than 13MP, you absolutely HAVE to process the photos with the Luma software., which can be quite slow. Fortunately it puts out DNG files, so you can use Adobe Lightroom to finish put the editing. About the software, it runs on Windows10, so since most of yo have that, then you are good. For you Mac owners, like me however, things get a bit more sticky. Lumen does run on a Mac, but it only runs on macOS Catalina (10.15.7), not the lastest macOS Ventura, so you will either have to keep a Windows machine around to post process the L16 images, or you will have to keep an older Mac around, or run older macOS software in a virtual machine to get it to run on Ventura. Not a simple task, and I am still working out the details of my workflow. Oh, and before I forget, I need to mention that you need lots of storage for your images too, several hundred MB for each photo, so be sure to buy that external 4TB drive so you don’t run out too quickly.

Overview: Ok, so by now you know that camera isn’t for everybody. If you are up for a challenge, and I do mean a challenge, then the low price of the camera at this point might be enough to make you opt-in. If you do, don’t say I didn’t warn you, and if you find the challenge is too great, then let me know I will take it off your hands if you will let it go pretty cheap. Good luck!!

Update 1: As I mentioned above, Macintosh computer users may have some problems trying to get the Light Lumen software to work on their computers. If you have a Mac with the new M1/M2 cpu like I do then my experience is that we are out of luck. The Lumen software does not run on Ventura. I was hopeful that I could run an older version of the macOS, virtualized on my current Mac, but that turns out not to work “YET”! I tried UTM, VirtualBox, VMWare Fusion, VirtualBuddy, and Parallels, and I was not able to get any of the x86 version s of the macOS to run on any of them on my M1 Mac. There are Arm versions of macOS that will run, but those versions of macOS don’t run the Lumen software. So, it seems like we are stuck running Lumen on an old Macintosh with an Intel processor or on a Windows10/11 machine. I have not yet tried virtualizing Windows10/11 x86 on my M1 Mac, but it seems unlikely that will work either. My final takeaway for this update is that there just doesn’t seem like there is any way to run Lumen on a modern Mac, even in a virtual machine. This is sad because it means the workflow to use a Light L16 camera is very cumbersome and involves moving hundreds of MB of photo data between at least two computer. Sad indeed!

Update 1.1: I ended up buying a small BeeLink SEi8 Windows11 machine (from Amazon) for use with my initial Light L16 for importing and initial image processing. Then after I have the images in the computer I use a program called FreeFileSync to copy the images over to a shared folder on my Mac mini. This works well and allows me to do any final image editing on Adobe Lightroom.

Update 2: *** Hope Where Little Hope Exists ***

When Light.co went out of business, the company was bought by John Deere corporation. Deere got all the software and firmware from Light.co to use in their international like of optically controlled automated farm equipment. They wanted Light.co’s technology, and that was a smart move that has probably advanced Deere immeasurably in the design and manufacturing of their big automated harvesters. I know, an interesting story. Well, the reason I tell you this is because I have been unable to contact anyone in the Deere software development group in the hope of convincing them to license or release the L16 firmware source code so that it can be further developed for the community. As a software engineer, soon retiring, I would love to have a personal software development project on the L16 to bring it up to date on the latest Android 11, and to enhance the current PC/Mac software to run on the latest computers. I don’t want to make any money doing this, as I am already setup for retirement, and it would need to be a community project so others could participate in the development. It would not harm the John Deere corporation in any way, and would provide a show of support to the community that would enhance their already stellar reputation. So, I am asking/pleading with John Deere corporation to contact me to start this process of bringing new life to a product that died way too early. Thank you for listening. Tom Zimmer PhotoBubba “on the web” (dot) com