lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Yes, seems like it!

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

OK. Everyone wanting to toss their big bulky Digital Hasselblads for a supped-up SmartPhone with a longer lens, please pack up your Dinosaurs and mail them too me.

Actually I thought it was the electronic shutter that had the limitations. Those were tried long ago during the infancy of the digital age. This issue with digital camera shutters is that they are designed to fail. I have mechanical film cameras build from the late forties up to the nineties and only one shutter has ever died on me. And of course it had to be the most expensive one, a Pentax 6x7 cloth-rubber focal plane shutter. Camera body was given away and I sold the lenses and meter prism finder for a profit.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Me, I'd love to have the camera I used at work at one time that I am sure they disposed of, a 8x10" Burke & James wooden view camera!

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

EVFs will never be eliminated. They are far better than those horrible 3” LCD screens, and a viewing hood simply makes the camera too bulky.

What might be coming soon are flat lenses using nanoprisms to focus the light. Great strides are now being made there.

f8lee Loc: New Mexico

Boy, you folks have no imagination....

First, as EVFs become better higher resolutions and quicker response times - give the ability to tell when a polarizing filter is at maximum effect, etc.) they will also become separated from the image-capture portion of the system. After all, why think of a camera as a single-piece device? Having the viewfinder wirelessly communicating with the "main body" will allow you to hold the camera at arm's length or off at a distance on a support of some kind (tripod? drone?) to get the best perspective. This, in a sense, is what the Sony stuff was (though I don't think they sell much of them)

For improved imaging, the notion of curved image sensors has been hypothesized. The current flat sensors are a result of the chip manufacturing process (bologna slices of silicon wafers being put through the process) but more ideal for photography purposes would be sensors that follow a spherical curvature - this would eliminate or greatly reduce the need for corrections in the lenses that today must be built to give a flat depth of focus (not depth of field, that's a different thing). This of it like this - a lens has a focal point, right? And focal length is defined as the distance from that focal point to the center of the imaging chip behind it. That's the concept, but of course a 50MM distance from a point describes a sphere - so lens designers must tweak the design to allow for a flat area of projected focus onto the chip (or film - it's always been thus). The point is, if a technique were invented to mass produce imaging ships that follow a spherical curve shape lenses would be far simpler to design.

Technology advances at an exponential rate, something our brains have a hard time imagining...so these things may well become the norm in a decade.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

First off, I'm curious as to why you would use the possessive form of camera in your title.

Secondly, start up a Go Fund Me and build one of these.
--Bob

manpho789

”

What? Digital camera shutters are designed to fail??? The speed, controllability, accuracy and reliability of an electronic shutter will almost certainly become greater than a mechanical shutter. There are no moving parts to wear out, no rubber or cloth to deteriorate, no speed limitations, etc. Dont underestimate the rapid progress in microelectronics. Think of how far it’s progressed in just a few years. The present (technological) moment rarely represents how things will be in a few years. Whatever limitations electronic shutters have now will be quickly eliminated.

manpho789

——————
It’s plural isn’t it? It would have had an apostrophe if possessive. But why mention such a fine point of grammar? Why are you “curious”?

easystreets1

Point-and-shoot as a marketplace, cell phone based or otherwise, will likely moves to multi-lens systems like the L-16 as processing improves and data transfer to cloud storage becomes faster and more widespread (in terms of capable coverage). SLR's will stay, but for composition/artistic purposes. Processing software will become more automated and move off your computer into the camera.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

It does have an apostrophe. A fine point maybe, but it would have gotten me an F on an English paper in my high school.

Dbl00buk Loc: Orlando

In regard to more pros are using mirrorless....

This past year I've been to 2 weddings
watching hired photogs using mirrorless (Sony A7 series).

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Singular - camera
Plural - cameras
Possessive - camera's

Good grammar saves lives. There's a big difference between Let's eat grandma and Let's eat, grandma.
--Bob

SalvageDiver Loc: Huntington Beach CA

I read these threads with amusement. I hear all the speculations about what the future technology might be and chuckle. Well, the future is here and has been here for many years. All these things you describe already exist. AND they are moving, their way into the consumer photography market.

I've been involved with spectroscopy for over 3 decades. I've watched the spectrometers change from big, slow, mechanical w/mechanical shutters (chopper wheels), 100lb (and larger) behemoths to small, electronic, high speed, high accuracy, low cost devices with reliability and durability orders of magnitude improved over the mechanical systems. Full systems, including optics and electronics that are smaller than a 1" cube. I still have Ocean Optics spectrometers in my drawers. And a spectrometer has all the elements of a camera just captures a different type of image.

The mirrorless cameras of today are incorporating much of the technology innovations I've seen in the spectroscopy market more than 20 years ago.

The cameras in the smartphones portent the future, starting off with single lens, electronic shutters and computer processing the image. They are moving to dual lens for improved images, different focal lengths and bokeh. Image quality in improving by leaps and bounds. That's the initial start. And did I say 'no moving parts'?

The Lytros camera used a large sensor (40Mb+) with a lens array giving various focal points and FL, simultaneously. Huge innovation. They weren't successful in the consumer market but has developed large (750MB+) systems for the cinema and broadcasting market and appears to be much more successful there.

The Light L16 continues this trend, just using a bunch of separate lens/sensors (i.e. sensor/lens array) and using computational power to finish the image. This gives them a significant advantage in sensor area, dynamic range, noise along with stereoscopic views and multi-focal length lens all firing at the same time easily giving it the potential to rival high end single sensor systems of yesterdays technology, but in a much smaller package. And their 50MP+ images looks very good.

We retirees would like to believe that our old buggy whips will continue to reign king forever. But as younger generations come into the photography field, they hold no preconceived notions or fond memories of old to prejudice their buying decisions.

We may deny, we may kick and buck, we may argue, we may cry and reminisce of the old days, but the technology of photography, just as everywhere else, is changing and changing rapidly.

Don't have to wait for 10 years to see the future, just look around folks.

jhcarvajal

All good except eliminating the view finder.

RolandDieter

your iCamera thought mirrors the Sony NEX cameras just about exactly. They were first introduced maybe 10 years ago. Much better images than smartphones.