Prediction: What will be the future of photography?

How many years until Canon/Nikon make a viable and credible DSLR that is mirrorless but perhaps keeping to the same form factor and ergonomics and traditional full frame DSLR these days?

Moore's Law has a limit and domain, exponential progress is of course mathematically unsustainable... there are certain limitations to the underlying laws of physics and thus this implies technological progress is not scale invariant nor time invariant. I'm not holding out for Quantum computing or Star Trek tech, so unless we are living in the matrix, 8nm is as close as we can ever get to max silicon architecture before quantum effects come into play.. Besides, reality isn't like the real number system, at some point plank length, time, come into play...

Many markets have matured or are maturing. Look at the aviation industry. From 1903 to 1945 think of how airplane tech went in leaps and bounds... We went from first Wright brothers flight to jet propulsion in that short period of time... Nowadays other than a glass cockpit and some fly by wire enhancements, airplanes haven't really changed or fundamentally improved for the past 60 years... first Boeing 747-100 came out in 1960's before man landed on the moon... guess what Boeing 747 (400 and 8 variants) are still going strong and the 747-8 still in production. Airbus aside (I am in US, not EU or that side of the pond) 737 is most popular airliner jet ever made in history... it has served us for over 50 years and still going strong... with the newest 737-MAX about to debut in 2017, the 737 line will last another 40+ years.... just think, one airplane that lasts for about one hundred years..... Where are the hypersonic airliners popular science was hyping about a decade ago? Instead we went backwards, Concorde got canned and so did the space shuttle program. And we haven't been back to the moon since, and as for Mars, we sent a probe or two...

On the computer side, it is fair to say that desktop PC (full tower) has matured... Desktop will never die, but it is being largely supplanted by smaller form factor, cheaper commodity hardware that "does the job".... even laptops and net-books are being cannalizbied by tablets and mobile computing.... basically we have crossed a "computing threshold" where once past that threshold it makes little sense to keep arguing about who has the best graphics card, fastest processor, etc etc... technology matures, simplies, and then it is commodized and dumbed down to the lowest common denominoator. Instead of builiding our own rig for PC gaming, we buy an xbox or ps3 and get consoled by console instead...

The undeniable trend is obvious... we are going increasingly "social", "mobile", "portable", "cloud", etc at the expense of privacy, customization, ownership, control, robustness, etc all for the sake of "convenience" ... across the board even games are getting more and more casual....we are trading Angry Birds for Crytek Engine and Samsung SIII camera for a Full frame DSLR....

Just look at the art of letter writing or penpaling... Who still spends the time to write out a well thought letter anymore these days when teenagers are growing up with txt and fb, twitter and even Gmail tries to get rid of conventional email in favor of a "txt" version of the "COMPOSE"...

Language is also not scale invariant... yes there is an art of being "simple"... but a lot of nuance is lost when you have to cram everything to under 160 character bites.... some of the flavor and nuances and tones of lingustic communication can only be conveyed through a much more lengthly and involved structured and format... but the prevalent methods of communication that we are accustomed to using these days (txt, short email on mobile) are not conducive to support this...

Lets face it, you aren't going to be typing some awesome love letter on your mobile phone... for that you require a keyboard and respectual monitor/screen size and time without distractions.... that's difficult to come by in this day and age of always on the go and doing everything on your phone... mobile and casual and social and cloud and all that great stuff...

This is not a technology problem, it is a societal shift.... and as to WHY, well I have some theories, but what's important is I realized I'm not one of the common masses and I don't like to way this trend is going....

But back to photography... seeing the bigger picture... is the future going to be video replacing still images? Certainty there is a shift and a trend... but I'm not too worried about it... Its just a hunch but I don't think video will ever replace the need and demand for still images/ still photography... regardless of how fast technology changes or what possibly breakthroughs are on the horizon...

What about the fate of DSLR as we know it to be? Form factor will never go away... just like you aren't going to be doing photoeditting on your cell phone or doing complicated excel formulations on your ipad mini or tablet, there are some applications that inherently require the keyboard and larger screen size... Size matters and professionals (and aspiring amateurs  will always have a need to have that traditional DSLR ergonomic form factor....

I see a bifurcation  On the smaller end, mobile form factor devices (cell phones, google glasses, etc) will soon replace all traditional P&S altogether... no question about it... A P&S will become redundant, just like who still carries around a pager or beeper these days? Or a dedicated PDA or Pocket PC device? Or a pocket calculator? Its all on the mobile .

On the high end the need for professional cameras will never go away... sure some day cell phone cameras might cross that "threshold" of "good enough" where for 99% of the people a cell phone camera will "suffice" 99% of the time.... leaving a niche market for the professional cameras.... but in any given size the larger form factor always wins at the long end of the tail...

What I mean is, people may not want to play state of the art PC games anymore and rather just settle for their consoles.... but a full tower desktop will ALWAYS have better performance than a smaller form factor computing device, regardless of technology... this is basic laws of physics... same way regardless of technology, a larger camera will always be better than what can be crammed on a mobile device... always....

Once we cross that uncanney valley of mobile phone being "good enough" threshold for general photography... I predict less and less people will want to purchase a "pro" DSLR camera (or whatever equivalent) even when prices continue to drop all across the board...

This is not because of money or technology... it is refection of changing tastes.... for how much does it cost to sit down and compose a well thought out letter or message? Zero... its free... but people don't' want to do it anymore... writing a message with pen and paper is as low tech as it gets, we've been doing it for thousands of years, but nowadays people rather do things over txt and casual hi wazup m8 h r u

So even when/if DSLR ever approach "commodity prices" (which I don't think will ever happen) you aren't going to see the market flooded with these or everyone and their dog carrying one around all the time.... back in film days the pro photographers were always complaining that digital lowered the barriers of entry and devalued their work by making it too easy for anyone to come along and shot great photos and then charge lower and price them out.... Ironically I see the trend going in reverse as far as DSLR userbase adoption....

The old phrase that it is better to have any camera (or the camera that you will actually use) than no camera at all (leaving bulky camera at home) is not always true...

The masses have been conditioned to accept mediocrisy. A decent P&S cost next to nothing these days and are within reach of everyone... yet vast majority of people use only their cell phone cam will still give a much more compromised experience and reduced result.... ironically technology have improved but expeirences are degrading... by overrelyings on mobile being the end all be all of it all, we forfeit the excellence that can be had by doing something dedicated... like the pleasures of writing a real letter.... we have all this facebook, twitter, cloud, social, internet crap and yet actual quality of communication has not improved and in fact has gone in reverse..... camera technology keeps improving and yet the actual quality (not quantity) of photos taken these days (by the majority of common people) are worse than they were ten years ago! Oh the irony of it all...

There will always be a need for "pro" cameras and DSLR type cameras just like there will always be a need for full tower desktop computers... but increasingly that is becoming more and more of a niche.... dedicated devices for dedicated people who don't want to settle for average or common or second best... which, in the end, may not actually turn out to be that bad of a thing.... because its not for everyone and its not for all purposes...

I'm pretty sure the DSLR is here the stay, at least from the form factor /size perspective... for one thing, menu systems will never replace real buttons.... human nature doesn't change... we are tactile creatures and evolution won't catch up with technology.... real buttons always triumph digital menus when it matters the most... at the elite end for special tailored purposes size and weight matters, whoever says otherwise is lying or being dishonest with themselves...

Having said all of that, my question is..... realistically, how many more years until we see "mirrorless" "DSLR" being prevalent and replacing the mirrored brethren in the likes of the current 1D and 5D, etc?

That depends in part on how fast mirrorless technology improves and also how fast mirrored versions continue to improve.... personally I'm not that optimistic about mirrorless tech/trend improving in leaps and bounds... I think it will plateau at some point and probably cross a "threshold" where most pro photographers will settle for it.... but the actual gap at the high end will always exists.....

What are your opinions?