The cameras of the future
I’ve done a lot of thinking recently, about what’s next for photography.
Think about it - while the manufacturers launch new cameras every couple of months, there hasn’t been a single fundamental change in the art of photography since the mid-1960s, when through-the-lens lightmetering on SLR cameras meant that you didn’t have to have a separate light meter anymore.
So, I wonder, what’s next?
A lot of other things have happened since then, of course - flashguns have become more advanced, lenses have become sharper, and there’s that little thing called Digital. But ultimately - it’s all progression from old technology: Better flashguns are merely flashguns that have more functions and are more intelligent than old flash guns. Sharper lenses are simply, er, sharper.
Digital might be the biggest change, in that you can store hundreds - even thousands - of photos in your camera, rather than the 24 or 36 you were limited to before that, but the digital medium itself is really just a progression from capturing light on silver halide, just like we did in the days of film.
The next 50 years
If there have been no big changes in the past 50 years, then what does the next 50 hold for us photographers?
The evolution - rather than revolution - is benefiting everybody who is passionate about photography: More and better cameras are available, more cheaply than ever, and the Internet is helping photographers of all ages and skill levels to improve (through feedback sites like PhotoSIG and Deviant Art) and sell (through companies like PhotoStock Plus) their photography.
The big question in my mind - what is the next big change in photography? Gadget magazine T3 claims that the future is panoramic photography (disclaimer: I work for T3), which I can kind of see - while panoramic photography in itself isn’t anything new, next-generation technologies can make panorama taking a lot easier - and now that we have ways of showing off panoramic images in a sensible way (through, say, CleVR), perhaps that’s where the next big development will come from.
No new technology in sight
On the other hand, panoramas are just another development (and a rather small, niche subject in the world of photography) in the grander photographic world. You could argue that ‘new’ genres of photography are progress (say, the rekindled interest for macro photography and smoke photography), but ultimately, it’s just other ways of using photographic techniques that have been around for scores of years.
The only genuinely new addition to photography itself is strictly part of post-production, but high dynamic range imaging (HDR photography - read more on Wikipedia) deserves a special mention, because it uses digital darkroom techniques in combination with a novel way of using current photographic techiques to create an entirely new genre.
What do you think?
I guess I don’t have any answers - what do you think might be the future of photography? What is about to be invented, or make it mainstream, that will revolutionise photography, technically?
Or perhaps we don’t actually need any new technology: Is it time that we started getting more creative with the tech we already have available to us?
n
The photo of the Nikon camera is from T3.co.uk (here). The HDR image is by webmonkie (here). Please visit them both to see the images in their full sizes!
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Categories: Photo Theory
Tags: Nikon | T3
This entry is © Haje Jan Kamps / Photocritic.org, and was posted on Sunday, August 12th, 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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#1 - August 12th, 2007 at 17:01
Aren’t there experimental cameras now that let you focus in post-processing? I wonder whether there’ll be systems which capture huge amounts of focus and exposure data, and effectively let you capture a photograph in post-processing - almost a 3d recreation of the scene. Link that to very clever video/image stabllisation techniques and you could recreate most kinds of photograph in the computer.
Admittedly I don’t know the physics involved, but it was always interesting to me that a CCD needed roughly the same exposure time as film - is there any reason that shouldn’t change? Could incredibly sensitive digital sensors make low-light photography really easy?
#2 - August 12th, 2007 at 17:26
I say evolution. Digital photography is just photography with a sensor instead of film. In terms of the end result - a picture - it’s the same idea.
I’ve heard yammerings that people will just take videos and use a still shot if they want one; I can’t see how that would possibly produce the artistic results we generally get now. We’d have to come up with some magical way of taking videos at F/16 or F/1.4 at 60fps, constantly, all the time…
Or holography. That could be the future, assuming we somehow make it happen quickly, but it certainly isn’t *new*, and the nature of a third dimension probably adds huge complexity.
HDR I can see. HDR tries to capture digitally what we see with our own eyeballs. I don’t like most ‘tonemapped’ pictures, with their bright foregrounds and dark skies and halos, but I bet that’s because our brain does HDR in real time, whereas an HDR image is a *static* image.
However, really well done HDR can give you something that you can’t get with a camera and isn’t too distracting (not having to use a fill flash, etc.)
#3 - August 12th, 2007 at 18:00
another excellent post. i learn so much from your blog. thank you.
#4 - August 12th, 2007 at 18:23
[…] Read More… […]
#5 - August 12th, 2007 at 18:39
With HDR being such a hot thing, I would imagine the first “HDR ready” cameras to appear in the not too far future. But like you said, there will be only evolution.
At some point there will also be professional cameras with fewer buttons, maybe just the one shutter button.
I don’t even see how photography could be revolutionized - after all it is the capture of a visual moment.
#6 - August 12th, 2007 at 22:07
I think that in the future we will see engineers trying to build a never seen digital camera: not full frame but completely designed to use the power and the light of electronics engineering. Stop copying analogic SLRs technology and start creating a new shaped and a new concept of full-digital camera.
#7 - August 12th, 2007 at 23:34
I agree with ‘cris’ (above). Digital technology will evolve and become revolutionary in ways that film never could (and nothing against film, please, neanderthals. I use it and love it). Imagine a sensor that has meaningful light sensing capability far beyond the current ISO 3200. Imagine a sensor that has variable sensing capability, to allow essentially HDR type photography with a single exposure, expanding on what ‘modifoo’ said. Post-processing capabilities that allow post-exposure focus, as ‘Andrew’ says, has been hinted at in various news stories. Taken further, there is no reason that realistic 3D effects could not also be extrapolated from an image, especially if each sensor recorded deflection data as well as the light hitting it - post processing could put things in ‘distance from the camera’ order in a 3D sense.
Consider also the coming convergence with GPS. Add a GPS sensor to a digital camera, along with a radio (atomic) clock-setting feature, and you’ve got a device that records in the EXIF data the ‘real’ time and place a photograph was taken (barring post-photography fudging or obscuring of data intentionally). Now the camera becomes a social tool, a historical tool for future generations. Even a tool for law enforcement, social justice, historical accuracy. Every citizen a reporter, every citizen a witness to history. Not when photos sit in scrapbooks and are someday tossed out or burned in a house fire or floated down the river in a flood. But when they are posted on sites like Flickr, where they can be examined as data bits, points on a line, giving them new meaning beyond their primary purpose (being photographs).
Even now - look at Flickr. You can search for tags, including geo tags. You can export that as an RSS feed and then track it. Given an example, say ‘Barack Obama’, you can then track the candidate across the USA as he campaigns. For what purpose? I dunno - but technology like this will not go unexploited; people will figure out great (and potentially evil) uses for it.
Photography, in my opinion, is about to undergo a radical and fundamental change, and one which will affect huge segments of the world’s population, not just photography fans, artists, and those who appreciate photographic art.
The next 20 years in photography are going to be amazing. I’m glad I’m here for it.
#8 - August 13th, 2007 at 01:48
[…] The cameras of the future - Some thoughts on how photography might evolve […]
#9 - August 13th, 2007 at 02:59
The plenoptic camera is quite a step in a new direction in that it captures a larger “slice” (or more slices) of a scene in timespace. This is being brought into production by ReFocus Imaging. Although the primary marketing angles are “blur-free” and “focus after the fact”, the idea that focus no longer matters is a revolution in photography. What is the role of optics if this technology allows for both extremely low light, and precise control of DoF after the fact? What does this mean for lensbaby type effects?
This simply means that the raw materials that photographers have to work with in the “darkroom” is now multiplied several-fold. Much of what this will allow with data from the actual scene is effects and final results that are currently achieved using Photoshop. Additional advances in lightfield research will allow snapshots to be manipulatedin new ways, and once HDR is integrated into the camera, the camera becomes the ultimate collection tool, and the real art begins in the “darkroom” (which is usually lit by the light of a computer screen).
#10 - August 13th, 2007 at 05:53
One thing that is allready changing photography is the ISO capability. There was NO WAY to get images like you can have to day in dim light.
With canon 1D mark III you can take good quality photos at ISO 3200 which really is not even remotely possible with film. With F /1.2 lens or something like that you can even freeze moving cars in the night or take reasonable quality handheld photos in bad lightning conditions.
If that developes any further (which I am quite sure) it will really make some diffirence to photography.
About the question. It is possible to see something new. Still it is impossible to predict something like that just because it is something totallt NEW.
#11 - August 13th, 2007 at 06:31
Well, even in the time of film, there was the good ‘ole T-Max 3200 which you could push to 6400 and then just process for twice as long, but with the T-max, just as with digital photography, the picture quality suffers so badly that it’s hardly worth doing unless you like the grain for effect.
You’re right about one thing though - if they manage to make more sensitive light sensors, so you can shoot at the equivalence of 3200-6400 ISO, but with the smoothness of 200-400 ISO, then we might be onto a revolutionary shift.
- Haje
#12 - August 13th, 2007 at 09:06
I too would like to see better sensors that more accurately produce scenes like sunsets where there are very bright and dark areas, rather than having to resort to ND Grads or HDR apps. Basically cameras that shoot pics the way the eye sees it would be nice. I can’t stand washed out skies!
#13 - August 13th, 2007 at 14:16
As touched on, I think the next big evolution will be in terms of increased dynamic range. Increased sensitivity at low noise levels would be nice, but eye-comparable dynamic range would be incredible.
Ben
#14 - August 13th, 2007 at 18:29
CAPTURED MOMENTS
I think we will never have a brand new idea when we’re talking about cameras. Every camera, no matter how evolved, new, or even “revolutionary” will all come from the idea that the very first design had in mind: a captured moment. However we capture it, it is still a device used to capture what we see with our eyes, and not what we can paint with our hands. I’m sure there will be dramatic improvements over the next years, and there will be no doubt be another revolution that will do to digital what digital has done to film. But in the end of it all, we’re still reaching for the same goal, and in so doing, staying attached to that very first reproduced still image.
#15 - August 13th, 2007 at 18:35
I think the important thing about HDR for this conversation is to remember that the reason HDR post-processing exists in the first place is to make up for the fact that camera sensors (and before that, film) have much smaller dynamic ranges than our eyes. They say a human eye can see about 12-20 stops, while cameras top out around 8 or 9. There’s obvious room for improvement there for digital sensors.
#16 - August 13th, 2007 at 19:51
“The evolution - rather than revolution - is benefiting everybody who is passionate about photography: More and better cameras are available, more cheaply than ever…”
You know what was the first thing that popped into my head reading this sentence? The OLPC (One Laptop per Child) project.
Can you imagine the strength of that paired with a One Camera per Child? An entire generation of children, learning to observe, create images, and publish them on the Internet before they’re able to do long division.
#17 - August 13th, 2007 at 20:06
Hmmm…. I see that you’re missing a couple of important points:
- DOF: compact cameras had a HUGE fov, this is a big new degree of freedom that we missed with film alone
- Real time processing [Face Recognition]: with an SLR it’s almost impossible to manually focus and autofocus will not have the right focusing points. Live CCD allows focusing approaches and so that’s currently impossible with SLRs
p.s.: I also agree that high-def high-iso coupling is a very interesting point
#18 - August 13th, 2007 at 21:41
What about a “camera” taking (wireless) snapshots of the neural signal of the eyes of the photographer?
Great dynamics and nice point of view. :)
#19 - August 15th, 2007 at 08:59
To Haje Jan Kamps:
“but with the T-max, just as with digital photography, the picture quality suffers so badly that it’s hardly worth doing unless you like the grain for effect.”
I think that my Canon 5D at ISO 1600 is much better than any ISO 1600 film that I have ever seen. It seems that Canons new 1D mark III has even better ISO noise ratio with smaller sensor.
There is few ISO 1600 shot in 1D mark III:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1332/712664522_bd5441c083_b.jpg
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1240/712001245_068a03b001_b.jpg
I think we have not seen the last of this ISO race, which has just begun.
Even more extended dynamic range would be also contribure something new.
#20 - August 15th, 2007 at 18:52
Good read….It’s crazy to me that when I have kids they won’t even know what film is. I still love to work with film but also I am amazed at the rate technology is changing. Digital is instant and I agree with Wigwam Jones that it is going to be an exciting time for photography in the coming years.
#21 - August 15th, 2007 at 22:48
I can see a few things as far as evolution is concerned.
- Dynamic range high enough to allow complete freedom of shutter speed and aperture, while also eliminating ISO.
- SLRs with “true live view” in a viewfinder or on a viewscreen with the same resolution as an optical TTL viewfinder. This means something like a 4″ LCD with a 6 megapixel resolution.
- The above paves the way for 60 fps SLRs.
- Useful real time wireless data transfer.
- Broad spectrum recording devices, IR to UV (or even beyond).
- Terabyte storage devices.
- Foveon recording devices defeating Bayer interpolated devices.
For the revolutionary things I’d like to add my view:
- Electrically deformable lens elements.
#22 - August 16th, 2007 at 08:01
I would not stop shooting film at any price, but nowdays digital does have some real benefits no matter how you look at it. Still so does film.
#23 - August 16th, 2007 at 08:16
“What about a “camera” taking (wireless) snapshots of the neural signal of the eyes of the photographer?
Great dynamics and nice point of view” - Sanderman
It is not that easy. Still pictures from human eye would not be so great. Human eye has clear sight only where it looks. Dynamics is great only because of adaptation… not in one single frame.
Scanner cameras could do that thing much better.
#24 - August 19th, 2007 at 19:55
What about a ‘camera contact lens’. I miss great piks all the time cause it takes a whole 5 seconds to pull out my camera. Sometime when you see something, you know you won’t have enough time. But with a camera on your eye, you could think ‘photo’ and hey presto, it’s taken and stored on your computer at home. Inventors, get to it!
#25 - August 22nd, 2007 at 15:56
I think that the most interesting thing that most of the comments point to is letting the camera become the photographer. That is a revolution. I personaly, don’t like the idea, but I do see the appeal. The biggest thing that I see as the revolution of digital vs film is the up keep cost are next to nil. So to extend that further to say that your barrier for entry also becomes nil because the camera will do all the work for you is a very radical step. Interesting.
Good topic. very interesting discussion.
#26 - October 4th, 2007 at 01:51
My son (3 years old) has been taking photos with a canon snapshot digital for a year or so. He enjoys it. Or he thinks he should taking photos when he sees the camera. Takes photos of toys, things around the house. I wonder if this will increase his interest in photography in the future. . .
I like my cameras pretty much the way they are. I would like to see a camera (maybe a snapshot camera) that would allow for emailing right from the camera. Right now the revolution seems to be in sharing images.
#27 - October 13th, 2007 at 04:58
I think it is not the how but the where and when , after all , photography is light over sensitive material since nineteen century, what about a photo of a friend walking in boulevard Saint Germain from a satelite and then corrected with photoshop software in your computer in México, or take photos of a play iinside a theater in Broadway or West End , I think the ultimate goal in photography is to take photos of everywhere and everything in the world with your computer as a camera in your room, it will take years, technology and laws but we will see that.Sorry for my english.
#28 - November 12th, 2007 at 04:57
I know I’m a bit late to this party but has the possibility of switching to bitmap files to vector files ever been considered? Assuming its even possible I would think that would be a pretty revolutionary step.
#29 - May 3rd, 2008 at 08:48
[…] The cameras of the future I’ve done a lot of thinking recently, about what’s next for photography. Think about it - while the manufacturers launch new cameras every couple of months, there hasn’t been a single fundamental change in the art of photography since the mid-1960s, when through-the-lens lightmetering on SLR cameras meant that you didn’t have to have a […] […]