[popo]

While I don't disagree it is a challenging time for camera manufacturers, a big question here is what else could they do? I do read Thom Hogan's output regularly, not because I agree with him, but he does seem good at digging out details that might otherwise be overlooked. He would sum up what's missing possibly in two words: workflow, modular. The first is that camera companies are still thinking of their own little bit of the world and there isn't enough integration with actually doing something with the data once you got it. The second part is that given the relatively minor differences between a lot of equipment, could there be better selective reuse there?

 

I would argue that things like stereo-3D, Lytro, Foveon are still minor variations to a theme. You're still catching photos to make an image at the end. Removing focus concerns might make one part a little easier. My vision, and we're looking 10 years+ here, is that existing metrics could become meaningless by a brute force method to basically capture the whole environment around you, and use computational methods to reproduce an image from any vantage point. I forget the name of it at the moment but it was a Microsoft packaged technology you can play with (others have some similar) which can take multiple images and work out where each one was taken in a 3D scene. Imagine a future world where you might take a high resolution 360 degree video camera to a location. Move around a little bit and as you do so you can reconstruct the whole scene in 3D. Then within reason, you could walk around that scene and take a virtual shot from wherever you want. Imagine if this technology could be reduced into a smartphone level form factor...