Photography is at an interesting crossroads. Mirrorless cameras are faster and more capable than ever, and their lenses smaller and more sophisticated—and all of it climbing in price. Tik Tok trendy cameras are sold out everywhere, and the bull used market continues apace, with some folks reverting to film and others still reaching for turn-of-the-century digital cameras to introduce a look and feel that distinguishes their images.
The elephant in the room is the camera we carry in our pocket: the smartphone. Everyone knows the old saw, “the best camera is the one you have on you,” but for all the upgrades and innovations that phone manufacturers introduce with each new phone, satisfaction with the results remains stagnant, if not declining.
Enter the Alice Camera, an app-controlled mirrorless add-on for smartphones with a Micro Four Thirds lens mount and Snapdragon-powered computational photography that produces immediately shareable, professional-grade imagery.
Developed for smartphone creators of all experience levels, the Alice Camera elevates the “camera you have on you” with its 11MP Micro Four Thirds CMOS sensor (300% larger than an iPhone sensor) and its compatibility with the full lineup of Micro Four Thirds lenses. For stills, the camera shoots in both JPEG and DNG file formats, while in video the camera is capable of 4K30p and 2K60p—all recordable to the camera’s 64GB of internal storage.
The Alice Camera connects to both Android and iPhones over Wi-Fi, where users can control settings, preview shots, and transfer images via the Alice Camera app. Using the Qualcomm Snapdragon chip and Google TPU AI chip, the camera offers five different color styles that automatically run color-grading enhancements improving saturation, contrast, and dynamic range. Autofocus is also AI-driven, further simplifying the process and allowing users to focus on the act of creation.
The camera also excels as a webcam, producing professional-level video for platforms like Google Meet, Zoom, and Teams.
The smartphone attaches to the back of the aluminum frame with clips that accommodate widths between 62mm and 80mm. The frame alone weighs just 12 oz without a lens, and at less than 2” thick adds little bulk to the smartphone while multiplying its functionality.
The Alice Camera underwent a five-year journey from start-up incubator to Indiegogo darling to production, contemporaneous with the emergence of AI. Its integration of new, existing, and the traditional technologies marks it as a harbinger of photography’s future, where innovation meets history to both simplify and elevate the shooting experience for everyone.
