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Your thoughts - Cameras in the future

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Kris1108

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I wonder what we'll be seeing from Canon and all the other manufs. in 5 years time. 20 years time? 50 years time? How much better can the camera get? How much more ISO could we use? Would there be a benefit for the average photographer to capture 100mp images? What about 50fps bursts.. would we ever need that? How much better will lenses get? What about prices....

What are your thoughts on cameras of the future... and, where might they go

--
  • K r i s : Q L D - A u s t r a l i a
  • P a n a s o n i c : F Z - 1 8
 
The still camera will be replaced with video only cameras. The quality of the video will be sufficient to allow high quality frames to be extracted. But more importantly, there will be an expansion of artistic impression beyond the fixed frame to include short moving images. Other thing that will happen is a move to 3d images instead of flat 2d images.

Image size will grow much larger, but storage space, processing speed and communication bandwidth will also grow to offset these changes.

Film will become like old wine, unexposed pieces will be collected and traded at high prices, but never opened....
Kris1108 said:
I wonder what we'll be seeing from Canon and all the other manufs. in
5 years time. 20 years time? 50 years time? How much better can the
camera get? How much more ISO could we use? Would there be a benefit
for the average photographer to capture 100mp images? What about
50fps bursts.. would we ever need that? How much better will lenses
get? What about prices....

What are your thoughts on cameras of the future... and, where might
they go

--
  • K r i s : Q L D - A u s t r a l i a
  • P a n a s o n i c : F Z - 1 8
--
Click to expand...
 
MrPrime said:
The still camera will be replaced with video only cameras.
Click to expand...
I would agree with this, except for the word "only".

I think they will also produce good stills, how good depending on the model, and what one is willing or needs to spend. 5-10 years.

I would also not say "replaced", as still imaging only tech will remain in small parts of the hobbyist market, and the art market.

My reasoning:

It is pretty obvious that video IQ is advancing fast.

Journalism is a traditional imaging "early adopter" of new tech. Among large reportage media corporations right now, video is making in roads fast. Still quality is already up to newspaper printing levels. Same device can also supply images for its TV and web operations.

Electronic display media (frames, screens, phones, web, etc.) already can do motion. This will improve in quality.

The younger consumer demographic is motion oriented. Moving picture albums will seem natural to them. Think You-Tube-like on your wrist, phone, PDA, picture frame, etc.

Storage minaturization and speed/capacity advances will also support this.

--
Trying to live inside the circle of minimum confusion.
http://www.jaymoynihan.com
 
Cameras will only exist for a few specialists.

As we increasingly live in a society where we have to prove our innocence, everyone will, by law, have an implanted body heat powered device which will record every moment of our lives, transmit to government wifi and satellites and store it all in an implanted memory the size of a sugar cube. The only thing Orwell got wrong was the date. He was out by about 40 years.

Lenses and microphones implanted in our foreheads will be very compact. They will focus by changing the shape of the elements rather than moving them.
 
The original post is a great question and I get asked this a lot by my students and clients. It is near impossible to say with any real conviction what is going to happen but looking forward 5 to 10 years I feel I can see a few possibilities.

I feel sensors will end up somewhere in the middle ground in size, larger than current compacts but smaller than APS, but not 4:3 size probably a bit smaller, the pixel count will go up and noise reduced somewhat via more efficient design. This will bring a few benefits no AA filters, and lenses optimised for the format If the format can be standardised). In the dark recesses of my mind I feel there is an ultimate format somewhere to come, where lens resolution, pixel density, noise performance etc are all in harmony with one another.

The Bayer Pattern sensor will be replaced with far better designs which will open new possibilities for much higher image quality.

Video and Still will morph closer together which will change camera usage and options quite a bit. Extracting individual video frames will not be a trade-off in quality and will prove a boom area for sports shooter, this will render many high dollar DSLRs with jumbo zooms pretty redundant for many uses, flipping mirrors and mechanics in general will simply make it impossible to approach the burst speed of these more compact cameras.

Cameras will likely be able to attain ultra high res and zero noise by combining in camera several identical pixel shifted frames, this is already done by some of us in software post shot, but once cameras are able to shoot movie like full res images at very high frame rates, the next step is just the internal processing to bring it together ( one new camera is already heading down this pathway it seems).

ISOs will increase without the noise trade off and this will render the flash as a little used tool just for fill purposes.

Correction for lens problems will be all handled within the camera (Some do now), so CA, falloff lack of edge sharpness, barrel distortion etc will all fade into the history books. This will be much easier to implement on compacts with their matched lenses than DSLRs, so it is likely that's where the real development will be.

That last bastion of DSLRs low DOF will be made redundant by internal processing where once again several frames at different focus points can be combined for the same effect but totally adjustable after the shot. Beyond that there are designs where the lens as we know it is totally replaced with a system that allows focusing after the shot altogether.

Compacts will become far more serious devices which high end compacts out-performing current DSLRs. I suspect we will see the seeds of this in the next few months.

It is worth remembering that the digital camera is largely a computer with a lens attached, much of the performance advantage of the DSLR currently is not due to the design as such but merely that s is where the manufacturers are putting the dollars for processing, interface options, sensor dev etc, if they decided the more compact camera could be sold for the same amount of money I imagine we would see some pretty rapid development using the technology they already have in place.

Some developments also have huge flow on effects, for example the processing inside cameras is largely limited not by the hardware but by the need to power it, if battery power takes a quantum leap, then processors can be quickly advanced because the power will be there to run them, which ultimately leads to better images out of the camera.

Likewise rapidly reducing memory costs changes the way we can shoot, so if for example we are able to have 50 gb of internal memory then our options are greatly enhanced for shooting multiple frames etc.....but 50 gb of internal memory is actually a doddle even now if a camera maker chose to do so.

it all looks like great fun and like most here I love a new toy to play with so I can't wait.

--
Zero-one imaging
 
Patrick T. Kelly said:
Predicting the future is pointless. There will be new technology that
we haven't imagined. > --
Click to expand...
Quite right! I remember an eminent scientist predicting, 40+ years ago, that it would be impossible for everyone to have a 'wireless phone' because of the limitation on analogue bandwidth. Even though we had computers he couldn't associate digital transmissions with telephones.
 
Brad Nichol said:
Cameras will likely be able to attain ultra high res and zero noise
by combining in camera several identical pixel shifted frames, this
is already done by some of us in software post shot, but once cameras
are able to shoot movie like full res images at very high frame
rates, the next step is just the internal processing to bring it
together ( one new camera is already heading down this pathway it
seems).
Click to expand...
Drizzling/stacking etc. are nice (and fairly commonly used in astrophotography), but I think in terrestial photography these techniques are somewhat limited by the amount of movement in the scene. Having the option to use this kind of processing for subjects where it's going to work well such as landscapes would be nice, though, and I know that anti-ghosting features are already present in some HDR generation applications, so movement can be worked around to some degree.
Brad Nichol said:
That last bastion of DSLRs low DOF will be made redundant by internal
processing where once again several frames at different focus points
can be combined for the same effect but totally adjustable after the
shot.
Click to expand...
Hmm, how would this allow a shallower focus than the individual frames have? Constructing an image with deeper DOF is certainly possible though; I've tried that myself with Enfuse and the result was quite decent.
 
Hi Mike

On the issue of shallow focus there are a few ways. One of course is synthetic, much as we can do in photoshop with blur type tools etc, then there are hybrids that work to defocus the image once again similar tools exist in photoshop and as separate plug ins. But beyond that if the camera takes several images where the focus is shifted from very close up to distant these can selectively combined, instead of attempting to increase the DOF by adding the sharpest parts, we decease it by adding increasingly defocused components from other versions of the image to the sharply focused image. Even a compact gets very out of focus if you focus close enough.

Naturally this will be very complex and hard to implement but the one thing I have learnt from the past few years in digital imaging is to never say something can't be done, cause sure as eggs someone will come up with the solution next week.

Professionally I often prefer to apply the shallow DOF effects post shot rather than shoot that way, I then have fine control over the result, but of course it is fiddly so not ideal for casual shooting but I sometimes shoot with this in mind up front. So a camera that could do the hard yards for me would be most welcome.

Currently In the end I find it much easier to defocus a sharp image for effect than try to refocus a blurry image with insufficient DOF, the later will always produce really nasty artefacts in my experience. The problem when shooting for shallow DOF is that images on the camera tend to look sharper than they really are so its all too easy to fluff the focus and then find myself in trouble in post edit. So like many I take several images and choose later, its much cheaper and less hassle than a re-shoot.

In the end though we are just shooting in the dark on this subject, who knows what's on the drawing boards right now?

All the best.
Brad

Zero-one imaging
 
Brad Nichol said:
Hi Mike

On the issue of shallow focus there are a few ways. One of course is
synthetic, much as we can do in photoshop with blur type tools etc,
then there are hybrids that work to defocus the image once again
similar tools exist in photoshop and as separate plug ins. But
beyond that if the camera takes several images where the focus is
shifted from very close up to distant these can selectively combined,
instead of attempting to increase the DOF by adding the sharpest
parts, we decease it by adding increasingly defocused components from
other versions of the image to the sharply focused image. Even a
compact gets very out of focus if you focus close enough.
Click to expand...
Now that I think about it, I think you're right; while any focus stacking tools which I personally know about do not support this, nothing should really prevent favoring the out-of-focus data for some parts of the image, instead of only optimizing for in-focus/maximal DOF.
Brad Nichol said:
Naturally this will be very complex and hard to implement but the one
thing I have learnt from the past few years in digital imaging is to
never say something can't be done, cause sure as eggs someone will
come up with the solution next week.
Click to expand...
I've noticed that as well :) (and even if something isn't feasible to do perfectly, it's often possible to implement something that does close enough job to be convincing for casual observer)
Brad Nichol said:
In the end though we are just shooting in the dark on this subject,
who knows what's on the drawing boards right now?
Click to expand...
Yes, I'd assume that the large companies do a lot of private R&D, of which only a small part sees the light of day in products (or is used only later when improved performance is available). Following public image processing research papers would probably give some hints on the future, but personally I have far too little spare time already...
 
I forgot to add, maybe we'll see instead of 3-colour Bayer, something like a 6-colour pattern. It would allow for even more accurate colours ?
MrPrime said:
Image size will grow much larger, but storage space, processing speed
and communication bandwidth will also grow to offset these changes.

Film will become like old wine, unexposed pieces will be collected
and traded at high prices, but never opened....
Kris1108 said:
I wonder what we'll be seeing from Canon and all the other manufs. in
5 years time. 20 years time? 50 years time? How much better can the
camera get? How much more ISO could we use? Would there be a benefit
for the average photographer to capture 100mp images? What about
50fps bursts.. would we ever need that? How much better will lenses
get? What about prices....

What are your thoughts on cameras of the future... and, where might
they go

--
  • K r i s : Q L D - A u s t r a l i a
  • P a n a s o n i c : F Z - 1 8
--
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
For starters, the digital camera age is very young. It was just a decade ago that that cameras became affordable enough for the general populace to own. Now, anyone can buy a dSLR camera.

50 Years. I think that in 50 years time, we'll be uploading and downloading actual human experiences on the internet. Who needs a picture on the wall, when you can actually be there in your mind, like a dream except much much better.
 
Kris1108 said:
What are your thoughts on cameras of the future... and, where might
they go
Click to expand...
Putting the expected things (such as a further increase in MPs) aside, I think one improvement in the next few years will be in the way the sensor records light: They will be able to expose different sensor regions (ultimately each pixel) differently so that annoyances such as blown highlights will be a thing of the past.

A while ago someone on the Pentax SLR forum posted a link to an article mentioning a Samsung patent which describes how each pixel would record the number of times it fills up completely. Based on that, the image processor would then render an image.

What this would of course mean for the photog: there is no longer any tricky lighting situations and exposure becomes trivial.

Cheers,
Tassilo
 
The very first digital cameras were video cameras converted to making digital stills, like the first consumer-available analog/digital cameras such as the 1986 Canon RC-701. Of course, they were $20,000; but that was the price of new technology back then. More like $35,000 when adjusted for inflation.

The first actual digital-capture digital-output cameras were $30,000 ($50,000 adjusted) by Kodak. They were 1.3Mp, ISO 100, had giant batteries, and were probably more hassle than film. But it was new technology and eventually those cameras became what we have today.

FPS isn't something that we strive for beyond a few seconds at the most. We're not making video, we're taking pictures. It's not like you can correctly time an eagle's wings flapping into motion. You have a built-in 100-200ms reaction time from what you see to clicking the shutter release. The same is true for a horse race or anything with movement. FPS even assists with bracketing.

But that doesn't mean cameras are heading toward full-motion video. They're just taking a bunch of pictures for a short time. But it's not really moving toward an ultimate goal of becoming a video camera either.

The same is true for the video camera industry. And while its true that both can do a bit of the other, it's not that I would ever want the acoustical properties of a video camera hogging up space on my still camera.

Could it happen? Yes, I suppose we could see some pretty awesome hybrid technology between the two camps. But I doubt that we'll ever see that a hybrid is capable of whatever the future brings with each prospective camp.

Now, obviously, a hybrid model could easily approach and even exceed the capabilities of either camp as it is in regards to present day 2008 technology, but by the time it does it the still camera and video camera technology will not have stood still.

I strongly doubt we will go full circle on this.
 
How about this idea, instead of yours.

In 5 years time, you upload your picture to the Microsoft Image Database, and then download the highest possible return value environment photograph possible. What I mean is that you could move around within the photograph on a PC because you have uploaded the photo and it has been recognized as Latitude XX, Longitude YY, the Taj Mahal or maybe Yosemite's Halfdome. And then all the images that have been uploaded about those sites by millions of people sort of invite your photo to the rest of them, and you can virtually walk around there at any time of the day or night and in any weather as there has been millions and millions of uploads of those sites. Even lesser known sites would have some different vantage points available, and those that didn't people could create for themselves and WALK through their pictures, to see what's behind that tree, to find Microsoft Image Database clues behind trees and maybe under canopies, etc. as a way for us to play scavenger hunt in a whole new way.

Anyway, this is from last year...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3uY-1IbSqM
 
I don't like it...bring back film: digital be-gone!

I just have this weird feeling that we've opened a Pandora's box with digital technology. Every single moment captured from every single angle...transporting your mind to a digital beach?

I don't like it.

--
dholl
 
dholl said:
I don't like it...bring back film: digital be-gone!
Click to expand...
If world lines narrow to a period of simplification, that might be the "future". It is one of many possible futures.

Not celluloid or other plastic based film, but light-sensitive chemistry on a flat smooth surface and a pinhole camera (for example) does not require any modern industrial/technical infrastructure.

:)

But I would prefer a different future than that.

--

Trying to live inside the circle of minimum confusion. Also trying to not respond to impolite posts.
http://www.jaymoynihan.com
 
Patrick that was an intresting link regarding computer quotes. Wow.

by the way Oaxaca is beautiful!
--
Arnie
 
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