Better Light, Inc. was an American company that manufactured digital backs for

large format Large format photography refers to any imaging format of or larger. Large format is larger than "medium format", the or size of Hasselblad, Mamiya, Rollei, Kowa, and Pentax cameras (using 120 film, 120- and 220-roll film), and much la ...

film cameras. It was based in

San Carlos, California San Carlos (Spanish language, Spanish for "St. Charles") is a city in San Mateo County, California, United States. The population is 30,722 per the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. History Native Americans Prior to the Spain, Spanis ...

. The Better Light scan back was a device designed to make it possible to capture digital photographs using traditional 4x5

film view cameras, copy stands, and microscopes by replacing the 4x5 film holders that they used. The Better Light utilized a high-resolution line scanner that scanned the image plane in place of where a sheet of 4x5 film traditionally went. This action was similar to how a desktop scanner works. This scan took time, so could only be used for still objects. This approach was in contrast to sensors used in contemporary digital cameras that capture the entire image at once. The primary benefit of the Better Light system was that it did not need to use a

Bayer filter A Bayer filter mosaic is a color filter array (CFA) for arranging RGB color model, RGB color filters on a square grid of photosensors. Its particular arrangement of color filters is used in most single-chip digital image sensors used in digit ...

to record color information so avoided the need to interpolate color data. Current Pixelshift technology achieves the same result in Bayer filters, which is the most common type of sensor used in

dSLR A digital single-lens reflex camera (digital SLR or DSLR) is a digital camera that combines the optics and mechanisms of a single-lens reflex camera with a solid-state image sensor and digitally records the images from the sensor. The reflex des ...

s today. The company's president, Mike Colette, worked as an instrumentation engineer before starting the company in 1992. Better Light ceased production in 2012. Mike Colette died on May 11, 2017, in Placerville, California.

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Better Light, Inc.
1992 establishments in California American companies established in 1992 Companies based in San Carlos, California Digital camera backs Manufacturing companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Manufacturing companies established in 1992