Light's many-camera approach to lightening your photography load (pictures)

With the footprint of a phablet, it actually doesn't look much different than a typical phone -- unless you count the array of 16 lenses on the front. As designed, it also lacks a decent grip.

Behind each "lens" on the front is actually a tiny camera which has a tiny lens pointed at it.

 The light hits the mirror, which redirects it to a 1/3.2-inch sensor via a lens barrel with the equivalent angle of view of a 35mm, 70mm and 150mm lens.

Each camera module connects to a circuit board and feeds the individual images into a processing engine that merges them into a single 52-megapixel photo.

The camera can tell when there's dirt or obstructions in front of the lenses and will tell you to clean the lenses.

I'm not sure why Light chose to label every single element on the front; it makes it look really busy. Neverthless, you can see that each lens has a f2.4 aperture and the camera uses a laser rangefinder for autofocus.

There will be an optional grip. While attempting to reinvent camera design, Light falls into the same trap that many manufacturers before it have -- sacrificing function for form.

You operate the camera using the 5-inch touchscreen LCD -- that thumb grip is actually a little touchpad -- or by your mobile device tethered via Wi-Fi.

The L16 has a mic and headphone jack as well as a USB Type-C connector for charging and file transfer -- I think it's the first Type-C connector I've seen on a camera, though it likely won't be the first since it's not shipping for a while.