London startup Photogram has announced the start of shipping to pre-order buyers of the Alice Camera – a Micro Four Thirds camera system with AI-driven computational photography that mounts to a smartphone running a companion app, for the best of both worlds.
We first got wind of the Alice Camera back in 2020, ahead of a public beta and subsequent Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to raise production funds. Though the original shipping window to backers and early adopters was estimated for October 2021, the global COVID-19 pandemic and regulatory red tape saw significant delays set in.
In June 2022, Photogram briefly opened a pop-up store in London to put pre-production units into the hands of potential users. The startup has spent the time since raising funds, tweaking the AI-driven computational photography technology, working on the companion mobile app, and getting everything lined up for a production launch – which is where we are now.
Thanks to the Sony Four Thirds CMOS sensor (with dual ISO and HDR support) at its heart, users can already expect better photos than from the relatively small sensors in smartphone arrays. But Photogram goes even further by tapping into neural networks and machine learning for cutting-edge computational photography chops made possible by cooked-in Qualcomm Snapdragon and Google Edge TPU chips.
The camera can be used on its own, but is designed to work best when clamped to a host smartphone and connected over Wi-Fi. That handset runs the companion app, with the phone's display serving as an electronic viewfinder and control interface. The phone/app combo can also be used to knock images and video footage into shape ahead of sharing to socials..
A camera-specific Linux OS allows for over-the-air updates for the Alice Camera as and when new features and functions are developed. But the package won't include a kit lens, so users will need to seek out one of the many MFT lenses available and stump up extra cash.
"We're incredibly excited to finally bring the Alice Camera to the world," said Photogram CEO, Vishal Kumar. "We set out to build the Alice Camera because we wanted to offer our customers a new type of mirrorless camera built specifically for a new era of content. We’ve developed a fundamentally new engineering paradigm for mirrorless cameras, with significantly novel implementations on hardware, software and with AI algorithms.
"Alice Camera represents an innovative step forward in how mirrorless cameras are designed and how our users will process, capture and share their experiences. We can't wait to see the amazing content created with the Alice Camera."
The first batch of production units will start shipping to early adopters in the UK from July 15. Deliveries to pre-order customers in the US, Japan, the EU and Australia will follow from August 15, and then buyers in Canada, France and elsewhere will start to get their devices from September.
That takes care of production batches one to three, and Photogram is now taking orders for the fourth production run – which is also estimated to start shipping from September. Pricing for new customers is currently set to US$845, that's a 30% discount on the normal retail price.
It's not the first time we've seen smartphones and digital camera bodies snuggling up close of course. Sony's QX series were revealed more than 10 years ago, and Olympus had a similar notion a couple of years later. Only yesterday we featured a rig on Kickstarter called the SwitchLens. But the large sensor and AI-based computational photography of the Alice Camera could just give it the edge. The video below has more.
Product page: Alice Camera
