I've seen progress in cameras having more megapixels, going back 10 years. A camera with 12.1 megapixels (D700), was considered a lot back then. The improvements in memory cards has been astonishing in the past 10 years. I remember how exciting it was to own a 4gb Lexar SD card. I was blown over when Canon came out with its 50 megapixels camera in their 5Dsr. And when Nikon's D5 came out with a camera that uses dual XQD cards or dual CF cards. That was an advancement. You can get memory cards over 128gb today. Including SD cards. And Nikon's D5 has an ISO capability of 3280000. I said, who would go so high on ISO? Sony was still making DSLRs ten years ago. Now, they don't make them anymore. Only mirrorless and Translucent mirror cameras. Ten years surely makes a difference in photography gear. Stay tuned for the next ten years of progress.

I wonder what cameras will be like in, say, 10 years or perhaps less.

The Point and Shoot is dead, with smartphone cameras eclipsing them. Mirrorless makes complete sense, eliminating clunky mechanical stuff. A next step would be entirely electronic shutters, the mechanical shutter being failure prone and having other limitations. That is entirely likely, only quick dumping of the last sensor image (after transfer to buffer) being required. Think how far sensors and semiconductor technology has gone in 10 years. View finders could be eliminated too, with only a real time sensor generated 3” + display showing state of focus, along with various settings and parameters. The bright sunlight objection can be overcome by a detachable viewing hood. That should result in less eye strain and easier composition of the photo.

What all this adds up to is what might be called the “iCamera”. It will be just a flat device that mounts lenses on its front side, and has its view screen on the back side. It might be around 1/2” thick, enough to have a few buttons or wheels on the sides. Details can be argued about, but the electronic shutter, the elimination of the mirror and separate view finder, all adds up to a drastically simpler and lower cost camera. And a more capable and durable one. One might wonder whether Nikon, Canon or Sony would initiate such a product, of if some upstart company does. The big DSLR companies have a dilemma, whether to be first and capture a new camera paradigm, vs undermine their present markets in DSLR cameras.

The notion of an electronic shutter is not far-fetched to my way of thinking. What is a sensor - it is a collection of microscopic-sized transisters capable of holding a charge. The light from scene falling on the sensor causes it to take on some charge state and this charge state when processed through the camera firnware creates an image file. What do see in the EVF or LCD screen - does that info come from the sensor chrarge state. If so, then why not just save the charge state. Or does the camera have two sensors - one to supply the EVF & LCD visuals and one to make the image file. They would have to be in the same place like a sandwich, yes.