Future of Photography || ALG-O-Rhythm

Future of Photography

Writer: Nagesh Dabhade
Email: nagesh4747@yahoo.com

In today’s world, everyone is able to capture good pictures through their smartphones. And this is all because of the advancements in technology world, where different applications and its artificial intelligence plays a vital role behind it. Technology is changing rapidly and it’s helping everyone work more efficiently. Here are my few predictions that may change the view of photography world for photographers and smartphone users.

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI)-

Artificial Intelligence plays a very important role in every gadget; be it DSLRs, Mirrorless cameras or smartphones.

Let’s understand first what Artificial intelligence is. Artificial intelligence is an advanced technology used in softwares / applications, which helps reduce the manual intervention of human efforts, such as face/image recognition through camera lens, auto correction in an image, voice recognition and after effects for videos and images. There are many more example you could see in our day-to-day life.

Most of the cameras are developed with AI technology, for example - Auto Focus on object, Auto Image Stabilization, White Balancing, etc. In future we could see more enhancement in AI technology, where anyone will be able to capture more perfect shot on a camera or a smartphone. 

2. Will DSLR camera reign end?

We can see the technological changes over the period of 1975-2021.

In 1975, Kodak engineer Steve Sasson invented first self- contained digital camera, the camera weight was around 3.6kg with 0.01 megapixels, it took 23 seconds to capture one image and it was recorded on a cassette tape. Later, in 1986 Kodak came with more advance development in sensor technology which consist of 1 megapixel sensor that is (1000* 1000) pixels.

In 1988, Nikon Corporation launched their first filmless commercial DSLR with still video camera. Nikon QV-1000C was a black and white analog camera with 0.38 megapixels and image were stored in video floppy disk.

As a professional photographer, I have been working in this industry since 2014. I have used multiple DSLR cameras and there is no doubt that DSLR provides a great desired output for professional photographers. Recently, camera manufacturers have introduced mirrorless camera technology, where cameras come without mirror, hence, image gets captured directly on the sensor and you are able to see the live image on LCD screen of the camera. Mirrorless cameras are very compact, light-in-weight and faster compared to the DSLR cameras. Nowadays, mirrorless cameras are getting more popular because of its efficiency for both advance features of Image capturing and video recording. Though, mirrorless camera has some disadvantages such as, they need more power to capture images hence photographer needs to carry more battery backup compare to DSLR camera. As mirrorless camera came into existence, manufacturers decide to stop advancement in DSLR cameras to promote mirrorless technology. As per my study, in upcoming days we could see more demand for mirrorless cameras than DSLR cameras. It would be interesting to see future of DSLR and mirrorless technology.

3. Will smartphone replace compact camera?

Smartphones have become essential part of everyone’s life. It provides multiple features in one device. On the other hand, compact cameras have limited features compared to smartphones. There are multiple smartphone devices with higher megapixel sensors as compared to compact camera. Because of multiple usage of smartphones, users are preferring smartphones over compact camera. Smartphone comes with easy connectivity option which help users to send captured pictures and videos to cloud, multiple social platforms and other devices. Smartphones come with multiple editing softwares which help users to edit images/videos instantly whereas compact cameras don’t provide any such inbuilt features. Although smartphone has an upper hand over compact camera in terms of features and accessibility, however, smartphones have limitation over sensors which may affect the image quality.  Compact camera has bigger sensor; hence, it provides higher image quality.

These advancements in technologies help users, professionals, focus on their art instead of technical aspects such as image focusing, ISO, aperture, etc.

At the end there are some new technology features coming such as, augmented reality, virtual reality, hologram etc. It will be interesting to see the upcoming changes in photography field.

4. Next-Gen connectivity

One of the important parts of DSLR or mirrorless camera is Connectivity. Nowadays, most DSLR and mirrorless camera come with wireless connection. 

Few years back we didn’t had any such facility on DSLR/mirrorless cameras and hence if you wish to see images on any other devices you were required to tether. 

Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, NFC (Near- Field communication) are good examples of wireless connectivity. Wireless connectivity helps you to transfer data from your camera device to computer and other wireless networks. Wi-Fi memory cards are one of the devices that help you to send images across wireless networks, though it has limitations of image file transferring. The day is not so far away and we may see cameras without memory cards.

Currently wireless charging facility is introduced by smartphone manufactures to their smartphone users. Wireless charging uses electromagnetic induction to wirelessly transmit power between a wireless charger and a device that can be wirelessly charged. The wireless charger sends out a signal from its coil, which is picked up by the receiver coil in the smartphone. It’s just matter of time and we could see more advanced technology in wireless connectivity. Wireless connectivity will remove all the obstacles of your device and you shall no longer be restricted to memory cards and batteries.