This Camera Uses AI to Spruce Up Your Shots

There's nothing more dispiriting than when you line up what you think is the perfect photo, snap the shot and end up with an image where all the vibrant colors you saw in the real world have been washed out in the digital realm, thanks to backlighting, bad white balance or any one of a number of mishaps that can mar a photo you tried capturing casually. And the company wants to provide you with a camera capable of producing shots that match what you thought you were capturing in your mind's eye. The trick, as it turns out, is not to load the camera with features -- the newly unveiled Relonch 291 has nothing but a shutter button -- but rather to supplement the camera with an algorithm-based approach to processing images that's part of a $99-a-month membership you get along with your Relonch camera. It's an unconventional -- and pricey -- approach to photography, but the people behind Relonch are betting that it's one that will appeal to people who want to be able to capture vivid photos of everyday life without having to mess around with a camera's sittings. Before showing me the Relonch 291 camera, co-founder Yuriy Motin flipped through a coffee table book of presidential photos, noting how much more compelling the candid shots of assorted presidents in their day-to-day lives were compared to official shots and staged photo opportunities.