[shuttertalk]

What's the next big thing for digital cameras? Camera makers are refining their sensors, lenses, image quality, etc. but what new exciting stuff is around the corner? Already we have cameras with Bluetooth.

My tip is inbuilt Wifi for digital cameras. What would you like to see on your future camera?

[adam]

I've seen suggestions on other forums, which I shall here, treat as my own.
Basically, what they ask for is user-upgradable parts.
I think what is meant by that, is sort of like a computer, that you can change components yourself, like maybe change the sensor if you need a new/higher quality one. Like a build-it-yourself camera.

I'd like my future camera (fantasy camera?) to have batteries that have super long battery life (ideally never die), and a camera mode which makes all the pictures you take come out nice haha

shuttertalk, your tip on inbuilt Wifi sounds very good, there is some cameras which have inbuilt Wifi, and if not, then a wifi dock.
DPreview: Fujifilm Wi-Fi prototype
This is from last year, but was only a prototype.


and this Nikon:
Nikon D2H Wifi Digital Camera

I'd like to have that

[shuttertalk]

shuttertalk, your tip on inbuilt Wifi sounds very good, there is some cameras which have inbuilt Wifi, and if not, then a wifi dock.

Aaargh, only 12 months too late to apply for a patent Thanks for pointing it out though...

Basically, what they ask for is user-upgradable parts.
I think what is meant by that, is sort of like a computer, that you can change components yourself, like maybe change the sensor if you need a new/higher quality one. Like a build-it-yourself camera.

That is an awesome concept, adam! Imagine that - then you would just build the camera to suit you, and also upgrade bits when new technology comes out.

I'd also like to see open source firmware loaded into cameras as well - I think alot of cameras are intentionally crippled by manufacturers, so that they don't compete with other higher-end models.

I'd like my future camera (fantasy camera?) to have batteries that have super long battery life (ideally never die)

I think they've experimenting with methanol batteries at the moment... but maybe they need to look into nuclear fission

a camera mode which makes all the pictures you take come out nice haha

hehe, it's called AUTO

Thanks for your comments, adam... very insightful!

[adam]

*thinks about designing a hoax camera*
The methanol fuel cell + OLED display would be a huge battery saver
I don't think I like the idea of a nuclear device around my neck though hahaha

Unfortunately auto mode doesn't make everyone in the picture smile, doesn't make the people appear more beautiful or put them in a nicer pose

Maybe I should start saving for the day these cameras do come out

[matthew saville]

The Nikon D2x is supposed to be pretty hot, but I doubt it'll be perfect...

My dream camera incorporates nothing new but is simply a collage of everything I like:

- Automatic startup CCD cleaning on startup like the Olympus E-1

- Full color sensor (come ON, people, it's like back in the day when B&W was paramount and they said that color photography would never catch on... Can we PLEASE repeat history as painlessly as possible and get full 3 layer RGB sensors as soon as possible? Thank you foevon for pioneering this, now to throw away those CMOS and LBCAST excuses for an image sensor. White balance? Interpolation? Give me a break... (yeah, now I'm in the ranting mood, look at me go!)

- For crying out loud, this "fine" and "basic" baloney is killing me. First of all, who in their right mind, owning a DSLR, is going to ever even remotely think about using those high compression options? I know there are tons of average Joe's out there with their nice D70's and 300D's, but PLEASE, we did not buy our DSLR's to post pictures on the internet, we bought our DSLR's so we could print big enlargements and possibly make a little change on ebay to pay for a nice telephoto lens or something. WE DON'T WANT JAGGIES! Give us "fine" compression only. In fact, don't even call it "fine". I want these JPG size options: 4x6 print, 8x12 print, and 16x24 print. With resolition options of 200 ppi or 300 ppi. I know you're getting pretty big there with a 300 ppi 16x24, but that's what interpolation is for. A 6 megapixel camera can print a 16x24 easily if you use a tripod and a $500 + lens, so let's just forget all this "1504 pixel 'small' resolution" nonsense and go with inch or cm print sizes... if my computer crashes while batch processing a size interpolation / scale down one more time, I'm going to have a cow. And then I am going to take my camera out in the backyard and have the cow sit on it. That is, if cows sit down...

- The person that said "hmm, let's make it so that 'bulb' exposure will require the poor chump to hold his finger on the shutter for the ENTIRE exposure" ought to be taken out and tickled unmercifully. Learn a lesson from 4x5 large format photography leaf shutters: click once to open the shutter, click again to close the shutter. This comes in REALLY handy when you want a 45 minute night exposure. Actually, I should be able to simply go into a custom menu and set a "preset" bulb exposure up to a few hours. Some might say this is a bit picky, but it's digital, so that's just a matter of software memory, right?

- As far as interface goes, I like the way my nikon, and some others, have double dials on the front and back for shutter speed and apeture. (having one dial for shutter speed and pressing a button to change that same dial to apeture is rediculous, come on...) I could go really in depth about where I want each button, but I think I'll spare you and just cut to what annoys me the most: I want all exposure information, the histogram and the highlight blinker available like on the D70 where you just press side to side on the joystick to view different info menus on top of your photo. (down with the wheel, long live the joystick!) Except the genius that thought up and down should scroll images while left and right should scroll info has it backwards, I want the interface to be set up so that left and right scrolls the images while up and down scrolls info. And zooming should be all-in-one, meaning that one scroll dial can both zoom out to 4 or 9 images on the screen, and all the way in to whatever x you want. Then I want my joystick to scroll around that image while my other dial will, get this, scroll through each image at that zoom ratio, so as to be able to VERY QUICKLY compare sharpness or DOF between two photos. I can't count how many times I'm on a tripod taking the same exact picture, comparing two, and having to zoom in on the first one and find the sharpest reference point and then zoom out and go to the next picture and zoom in and fine the same reference point again. Scrolling between images @ zoomed in would be awesome. I know it might lag the chip if you're working with different size images, but that's as easy as a "lock zoomed scroll to similar size images" option in the custom settings menu. And any other owners of the D70 will agree with me, pressing one button to enter or exit the zooming application is rediculous and cumbersome. Do away with pressing buttons to zoom, leave it all to the scroll bars / joysticks...

- Get rid of those landscape / portait / action / flower settings, they just embarras me. Anyone who's going to invest in a DSLR, at the high prices they are now, doesn't deserve to own it if they don't know simple rules of how to stop action or blur a background. I just want full auto (long live the puny popup flash!) for pics of friends, and good 'ol PSAM. That's it.

- ISO from 60-1600 like the Kodak body, woohoo!

- 3-5 FPS, I can't EVER see myself needing more than that. I'm not taking pictures of bullets, am I?

- Dynamic buffers = genius. microdrives = cheap AND genius. :-)

- Let's all get together, sit down, order a pizza, and DECIDE IF WE WANT FULL FRAME SENSORS OR NOT, AAUGHH! I have nothing wrong with 1.5x, 1.5x is good. As long as camera companies start taking it seriously and make high quality optics for wide angles, instead of gallywagging around making $200 "travel" lenses that have 20x zoom range and fall apart in 8 months. Okay I'm exaggerating, and yeah I'll probably be buying some sort of wide-to-telephoto travel lens someday, but right now nobody knows what's in and what's out, so we need to figure out what is going to be the standard. Do you really think that for the rest of our lives we're going to be labeling our lenses with an "antiquated" focal length number and then asking about a sensor's conversion factor? Give me a break! I shoot with a Hasselblad 501c sometimes, and I can use a 40mm lens, an 80mm lens, and a 150mm lens. I know what picture angle these will get me, and I hope to goodness that if I ever get into the digital backs, they will be full frame 6x6. As far as 35mm goes, let's either convert all the way to 35mm digital sensors, or start calling it something else. I would throw a wrench in the works and say that I still shoot film too, but I don't think I'll get into that. Film IS on it's way out, like it or not, so we might as well figure out if our technology can create sensors that will print high resolution images with a smaller sensor area, or if we need to go to full frame. (sorry, this one got kinda long winded. It's late and I should be getting some sleep for the sunrise tomorrow. There's a storm raging all night right now and tomorrow morning at the marsh should be spectacular...)

- Mirror lock up is good... (for taking pictures, not for cleaning the sensor. My sensor cleans itself, remember?

- I want to be able to move pics between folders, from the camera...

- I want an option so that I can FORCE the camera to stretch the image's levels to the blown or black side; let me explain. Quite often, you end up with an exposure that's right smack dab in the middle of your histogram, with about a stop on either side of absolutely nothing. Which way do I compensate? Why not be able to compensate in BOTH directions? There should be an image processing custom setting to evaluate the potentilal histogram of the image, before it's taken, and expose so that it's slid all the way to the right or maybe 5 points into blown highlights. Or use algorithms to stretch the image's dynamic range so that it's got data at both ends of the histogram.


- Left handed...


Well, is that it? Hmm, that sounds like my dream camera all right! What do you guys think? It can't be more than two grand for a puppy like that... At least I'm hoping that DSLR's like these will be on the market for that much, in ten years. We'll see!

-matt-

[matthew saville]

Okay I take back that "nothing new" statement, heheheh.

[shuttertalk]

Wow... great thoughts there matthew... we tie up in a chair the head of R&D in one of those camera companies, and let you rant and rave at him for 2 hours... maybe then they'll get the point.

[pai]

ccd image stabilization like the coming d7d?

live 3-channel histogram on dslr?

optional mirror lockup + live lcd mode + tilt lcd for shooting over heads and round corners?

useable optical viewfinders on smaller digicams?

hmm are we making a wishlist or talking about what we're really expecting to see on new cameras?

cos if it's the latter, i think we can expect quite a different bunch of features altogether. look at some of the new features on the cameras recently announced:

casio qv-r61: business shot, for taking pictures of documents. Alarm function sounds an alarm and displays a specified image at a preset time.

sony dsc-m1: hybrid recording mode, which takes a few seconds of video before and after the picture is taken

won't be surprised if the next big thing hyped by manufacturers will be the camera sending photos to your friend as an mms or via a 3g network. sniff. or maybe they'll make neoprints with a special add-on.

[peter]

YAY ... a 6.3 mega pixel quality neo Print ... ~_~..
i wonder how big the camera would have to be to fit in all of mathews features ~_~

[matthew saville]

Oh yeah, and CCD image stabilization! I knew I was forgetting something!

Right now Peter I think we're looking at maybe the size of, well, a brick. Or more like a cinder block... <chuckles>

-matt-

[peter]

disguase it as a back pack ?

[matthew saville]

Actually I'm thinking of investing in levitating tripods instead... This morning at the Marsh I was almost eaten alive by ants crawling up my tripod legs and onto my camera and my arms. They also came up my own legs, but I suspect that one of my tripod legs was in their nest or something, cause they came up it in droves. Yipes!

So yeah. Anti-gravity camera stabilization!

-matt-

[peter]

im all in for levitating tripods ...

[Lak]

along side the levitating tripod, i'm all in for a dslr that takes a 3 dimensional photo (would it be called hologram?) ...

[Lak]

also a beer fridge, an air defense missile site, and a nuclear silo

[shuttertalk]

Well you can get stereo photographs (where you take two side by side images) and then combine them, and view them using those special 3d glasses...

I saw a tutorial somewhere... and some cameras pentax? have this feature built in.

[peter]

haha ..my dad wors for a company that do 3D maps ...
i think they have a program to do a 3D map by taking 2 photos from diff angles..
i should get a copy of the software some day ~_~

[matthew saville]

How would that work, you just put your head on a tripod and hold your camera up to each eye and take a picture? Heheheh...

[adam]

that's why they call it "ball head" *giggles and runs away*

When out in fremantle with peter, we saw this camera with mirrors so it takes two pictures next to each other, then you use the super viewer thing and it makes it 3D

[potplant]

how about built in bounce head for Onboard flashes?

[peter]

you can actually see that camera on lomography.com

they have it in thier store ..

[matthew saville]

Hahah good 'ol Lomo... Love that place.

But seriously, does anybody like my image resolution idea? Cameras should say "4x6" instead of "small", shouldn't they?

[StudioJ]

I don't think that DSLRs should have sizes at all, they could however give us some way of determining the aspect ratios to make it easier for printing, cropping off part of the display. I don't think they have that kind of focusing screen or mattes for us :/

[potplant]

yersh aspect ratios definitely, but dunno about print sizes. print size can be adjusted thru printing software

[shuttertalk]

I like Peter's suggestion from one of the previous threads -- open source firmware...

Developers/hackers could customise the menus and all that to include most of the features you're asking for matt...


Oooh, another thought - how about a wireless remote control and LCD monitor built in -- so that you can control and view images from your camera remotely? Sort of like what's on those creo cameras...

Either that, or someone should hack a camera / pocket pc so that you can use your PDA to drive your camera over bluetooth or wifi...

Man I sound so geeky...