A Kickstarter project for a device that turns an iPhone into an light meter has exceeded its funding target within days of being launched. The Luxi incident light meter adapter for iPhone needed $10,000 to start mass production and has already raised a cool $47,495 in pledges from 2,196 backers with 40 days left before the funding deadline.
The Luxi is a small piece of plastic that clips on the corner of your iPhone 5, iPhone 4 or 4S, covering either the rear or front-facing camera on the smartphone with a white dome, emulating the lumispheres found on professional light meters. Coupled with an official iOS app — which presumably makes sense of the information going into the cameraphone sensor — you can then reportedly take accurate incident light readings by holding up your phone and reading from the display.
The company behind the product is Extrasensory Devices Inc (ESD), a two-year-old design firm that in the past successfully launched a headphone-microphone splitter for the iPhone on Kickstarter. ESD also produce a small range of other smartphone accessories.
ESD co-founder James Flynn claims the Luxi “performs just as well as a number of expensive light meters” and the device will only set you back $24.95 (not counting the $649 for a new iPhone 5, but they assume you already have one). There is no indication that a Luxi-equipped iPhone will be able to measure flash intensity, so this gadget will be most useful to photographers using primarily continuous lighting.
To find out more about the Luxi and to back the project, visit the Kickstarter page.