You’d think the proliferation of smartphone photography would have sparked a revolution in digital cameras. Not so much. Sure, cameras are more connected now than ever, and mirrorless technology has helped make them smaller and lighter. But the basics — shoot as much as you want to a memory card and access the photos when and wherever — have remained. So new ideas are welcome, however bizarre they might be.
Enter Relonch, a startup that wants to upend the way we use digital cameras. Relonch’s take on photography is a subscription model where you pay $99 a month for cloud services and the camera.
A subscription service for the camera and cloud service
The camera, which Relonch showed off to a few outlets last week, is wrapped in leather. The only parts that are exposed are the viewfinder, the shutter button, the power button, and the lens. You can’t change the settings, and you can’t even review the photos you take save for a quick flash inside the viewfinder.
It gets weirder. From there, the camera beams the photos over LTE to Relonch’s cloud service, where artificial intelligence picks the best shots and edits them for you. You get those final photos back the next day. Photographers who own cameras might scoff at the idea, but the idea could appeal to people who want a camera that’s capable of more than the one on their smartphone.