What’s the story?

Rift Labs was started by Morten Hjerde. Morten takes a lot of photographs, but he is an engineer and product guy at his core. Morten has a background developing hardware and software for many years, and the last few years focusing on User Experience. About a year ago he started working on an idea for better photographic lights. Most current photographic lights are basically glorified light bulbs. Granted, some of them are really nice, but is this all there is to it?
Using embedded electronics and microprocessor programming, he set out to explore ways to create a different kind of light. A light that would go where the current lights could not go. Exploring the possibility and feasibility of actual digital light. Light that could be pushed and tweaked like you push and tweak the pixels on your computer screen.

The development has been going on for a year and we now have a first prototype codenamed “Floyd”. It is a platform device, meaning it can connect to other devices, and its software can be upgraded to add features and functionality in the future. It is built to be tweakable and extendable.

Floyd is developed in the open. Photographers can suggest and discuss features. Other developers can contribute and/or hack it.