Here’s my technology proposal for short-term news in the marketplace. I hope to see news on the subject in the short term in the less established manufacturers,
like Panasonic or Samsung, or to a lesser extent Olympus and Sony, who tend to risk more,
And in the medium term see them implemented in more traditional manufacturers, and more focused on purely photographic advances, such as Canon or Nikon.
Evolution live view
Mobile screens must be implemented gradually in all manufacturers, and it is a matter of time before they are separated from the camera. After all, transmitting a 640×480 video doesn’t require much bandwidth, and at short distances there are many possible technologies to do this.
Put to choose a data transmission technology, I would bet on the Wifi, possibly with Ad-Hoc technology to avoid complications when connecting devices, so that the live-view screen would be a wifi client with a touch screen, which would be useful for example to select the appropriate focal point.
In studio photography, for example, it would be quite comfortable to work with your external screen, selecting from there the parameters of the shot, and downloading the images directly to the computer with the same wireless network (in this case, perhaps it would be better if the camera were a complete Wifi server to allow connections of several devices).
As complements to this technology I can think of many, such as replacing the external screen by clients for mobile, Flash clients, or even by clients for small compact (which after all already begin to have web browsers with wireless connectivity).
Nor would it be outlandish for the same client who controls the camera to control a motorized tripod kneecap, so as not to have to get up from the chair to finish taking photos.
Sensors
What happened to the Foveon X3 sensor? What about Fuji’s SuperCCD in SLRs?
I may say a technological nonsense, but I have long wondered what would happen if Fuji and Sigma reached an agreement to develop a joint sensor, with several groups of sensors that can specialize in capturing the entire dynamic range of the shot (Fuji style), but all of them being able to capture red, green and blue using three vertical layers (Foveon style).
A camera with two groups of 10 million pixels, placed in turn in 3 layers, in APS size, would possibly sweep any current sensor in quality, although they would be 60 million sensitive elements placed in the three dimensions, which seems complicated. What if Sony, which is already used to selling its sensors to third parties, were to buy both technologies and use its tons of paste to carry out this design?
Software
Before, I was talking about separating the external screen from the camera, or using a client on a mobile phone or PDA, but… how about mixing the two? After all, right now we have mobiles so small that they fit on the external screen of some cameras, and an SLR has a lot of space inside for a little more circuitry.
A standard operating system for digital cameras would be a breakthrough for users. The big manufacturers at first would be reluctant, because they are used to selling us new cameras in order to be able to access purely software features,
But an alliance between the small ones to open their code and share it among themselves and with the community would make them recover that investment in a short time, and would allow independent developers to implement improvements in their cameras that would give them a good advantage over the big ones.
All this would allow users to customize the functionality of their computer and adapt it to their needs. Maybe some professionals would like that, in the moments when the camera is not doing anything, for example, it only takes the RAW that it has just thrown away, generates reduced versions in JPG, and uploads by WIFI the original ones to a wireless hard disk,
And pre-writing versions so that they can make a pre-selection and prepare the layout. This would be as simple as preparing a small script about the camera’s operating system, and requires relatively little processing power to do so, and could be a good help to many.
Anyway… with this I leave my paranoia. What do you think? Are they crazy, or on the contrary they are already being carried out and I’m the only one who hasn’t heard? Would they be useful or useless?