Woman leaning on future car

My father was always fond of telling me how when he was a kid he really believed that the future would be a place with flying cars and laser guns.

Man would live on the moon and regularly visit space. This is well before the personal computers lead us to digital photography. When I was in college I truly believed that cameras in the future would be of film quality and do other amazing things like wireless transfer, GPS tagging and extremely fast writing to storage that would make lag time obsolete.

So what has happened? Where is the wireless transfer that would save hundreds of photographers systems when the model trips over the tether cord?

Why when I am in the middle of shooting do I have to say ³hold on hold on we need to wait for the images to write to the card.²  In the race to sell photographers a new and better camera every 12 to 18 months, manufactures have focused intensely on one marketing point only; mega pixels. I will agree that when we were in the days of 6-mega pixels pro systems it was a consideration. But for a while now the pro end of camera has been well with in the ³film comparable² range. Yet, manufactures and consumers alike still want more pixels packed in to smaller space so that the next system to hit the market can have a larger number displayed on the box. This makes those who have a system feeling jealous and inadequate. The latest jump has brought a

60.5 mp digital back on to the scene, and pushed the 5D up to equal the 1DS Mark III with 21 mp.

It is canon¹s move to put their flagship camera at the same level in terms of pixels as their top selling 5D that is so interesting. Why would a company not keep pushing the top selling point of cameras forward by increasing the Mark III to 30 mp? The answer is noise, noise, and noise.

Noise increases as pixels size decreases. This means that since the sensor size on 35mm cameras has only increased by a small amount, the pixels are running out of room. If any more pixels are packed in to the small 35mm sensor, the noise levels will go off the charts bringing down image quality.

Believe it or not, we have reached a much more exciting point in photo technology because of this pixel ceiling. What we are seeing now is a true separation of sensor size for those that want a larger image and a more professional system. The 35mm is truly separating from the medium format system. This separation means that more research will be poured in to other areas that will make each camera more attractive to professional and armature photographers.

The most important of these needs coming in the near future is going to be a fast wireless transfer system. This means that as we shoot the images will be sent through either a Bluetooth, WAN, or other wireless connection to a near by computer or hard drive. This will bring back a very important part of photography, the photographer¹s freedom to separate the set from the art director and client. Right now the furthest a tether can be is 30 feet unless you have a complicated boosting system. This puts the client and Art director huddled around the computer with your digital tech and in the way of that connection that is made when a photographer can be a little more on there own with the model and set. I remember in the days of film, on most sets, the client and Art Director would sit apart from the set but not a part of the action until the Polaroid was brought over.  This separation also helps the photographer cover up small mistakes. The current tethered system is like having your boss look over your shoulder while you work all day.

Internal GPS Tagging, which is here in a basic way, is the second form of technology that is coming to a camera near you. Why would you want this? It is a great way to track down an image in your system since we are visual people and remember places over dates. This also has great potential for selling photos of a certain area. However, the biggest potential for this will be down the road a ways when people are searching for an image of yours on the web. They will be able to find your ³real local² images. This search technology already exists on flicker and will not be too far off on stock sites.

Finally the holly grail to some photographers is eliminating lag times for writing images to cards. We all have been in situations where we have wanted to fire off our camera like an Uzi only to reach the continuous shooting wall. Due to the Sensors and Pixels reaching their limit in size the engineers working on these systems can now focus on the write speed. The goal here is to get the speed as fast as your 35mm camera with continuous shooting until the card fills. The time is near when you will only have to stop shooting when your battery dies.

There are many other cool technologies out there that have taken a back seat to the race for mega pixels. Ok so Flying cars and lasers are not coming any time soon, but maybe now that the mega pixel battle looks to be ending we can get back to creating the “space camera” that we were promised when I first read about digital camera capture. 

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I am a photographer. I have been making photographs now for 12 years ever since my mother passed on her 35mm Camera my father bought her at Sears. It became a passion and as with every new shutterbug. I thought every image I made was a new way of seeing the world. Like everyone in the world I eventually put down my film cameras packing them in to bubble wrap and shooting with the 35mm digital that I bought on my way out of college.

I loved those images that I would create with easy and no chemicals. Walking the streets of New York at night with my small tripod and prosumer digital camera I would push the boundaries of my own personal vision.

Over the past 10 years I have been deeply engaged in the battle and debate over the merits of Digital vs. Film. In a side argument I have been trying to convince photographers to upgrade their digital cameras always to the newest and best. I fell in to the trap of always running for the next best and brightest. I would defend to the death the 16.7 Mark II 1DS saying that next to the phase backs it was the best on the market. Until the Mark III came out then I turned my back on the Mark II as if it were a hippie Holga or the 3mp point and shoot my Uncle keeps telling me is the best camera on the market. I was one of the lost souls to the Marketing of the digital camera companies.

Then I found that I could no longer keep up with the Jones’s. With a wife and bills I can no longer skip meals to get the next best thing on the market. Uncontested with my underperforming digital I dragged out my old 4X5 camera setting it up in my living room much to the dismay of my wife. Looking around for what to photograph I did what every photographer in the history of photography has done when first trying out there camera. I went to the closest window.

For those of you out there reading this who has not ever shot with a 4X5 camera I am sorry but you may not understand this part. Pulling the dark cloth over my head and looking at the reversed image on the ground glass was intoxicating. The movements of that camera, which were so precise and smooth. Even figuring out the exposure and realizing I could go well past the F22 or f32 that I was used to being trapped with on every other camera going all the way to F64 put the butterfly’s back in to my stomach. I remembered what it was to be a photographer.

I am not writing this to tell you that people should toss out their digital cameras and replace them with an enormous view camera. That advice would end to many relationships. My wife is still asking me to put the camera away. Instead I think it is important for us to take a break from the race to get the camera with the “most” and the “best”. To forget about mega pixels and digital noise. Even if you’re a purest to stop taunting your friends who have digital cameras with clever quips about how there images don’t really look as beautiful as yours. Stop the debating and go to the nearest window look through your viewfinder and remember what you love about what you do. We make pictures. We capture moments. I am a photographer.

Picture above by John Rensten/Getty Images

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Ok, I admit – this is barely, tangentially related to photography. BUT – they do say ‘photo’ a lot…and it is really fun to watch (although I can’t say I understood all that much).

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Tony Linck / Getty Images

Polaroid appears to be the next brand of film to go extinct, the company having just announced plans to completely shut down all of its film-making facilities. It seems they are hoping another company will license the technology to continue producing the film for the devoted (hint hint Lomography).

Kodak was the last big name extinction, an event that British artist Tacita Dean captured on, well, film, documenting the final runs of celluloid at the factory, for which she won the prestigious Hugo Boss art award in 2006.

Update:  Turns out there’s a whole site/movement dedicated to saving Polaroid

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Interesting discussion yesterday on KQED San Francisco’s Forum with Michael Krasny on “Photography and Its Future”.

Photo: FPG via Getty Images

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Really cool video of a presentation by Dr. Ariel Shamir at this year’s SIGGRAPH conference where he demonstrates a new image resizing software application

Seems like this will give heightened meaning to “photoshopping” an image, or at least make it that much easier to perform certain potentially shady operations. Are photos even allowed as evidence in courtrooms anymore? If so, probably not for long.

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Louie Psihoyos, who is a prominent contributor to Getty Images’ image partner Science Faction, is suing Apple for ripping off his photo below for their Apple TV ad campaign.  That Louie’s original photo below probably brings to mind the Apple TV campaign without me even showing any actual campaign photos or clips means that he probably has a good case, but for a better illustration go here.  That Apple had previously been in negotiations for use of the photo but backed out is even more incriminating.

Maybe this shouldn’t be too surprising though, considering Apple has been quite busy building a long sordid history of this type of thing, compiled nicely here by engadget.

Here’s a funny follow-up to this story comparing the packaging from the Atari 2600 Packaging circa 1982 to the Apple TV site.  Oops – curiously the pics are gone from flickr, but you can see them here.

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