prediction

The DJI Wishlist: 6 Features We’d Like to See in Upcoming Drones

It’s been over two years since DJI released the DJI Mavic 3, an upgrade to their incredibly popular Mavic 2 Pro/Zoom series. In this new form factor, they redesigned the battery to offer a whopping 45-minute flight time, added Occusync 3.0 for better flight distance and stability, added 5.1K video resolution, added an onboard SSD (to the Cine version), and experimented with adding a Zoom lens to capture images and video at different focal lengths.

PaaS: Photography as a Service

The age of the camera is slowly coming to an end—especially the bulky DSLR and all its associated declinations.

Polaroid Founder Edwin Land Foresaw the Smartphone Camera in 1970

Polaroid founder Edwin Land was a visionary tech titan of his time, and as is common with pioneering entrepreneurs, Land had unusual foresight into where technology was headed. Here's a neat video from 1970 in which Land accurately predicts the coming age of smartphone cameras in everyone's pocket.

Why NFTs (Probably) Won’t Make You Money in the Long Run

Over the last few weeks, it seems like the world wide web has been swamped with both explainers and critiques of Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs. It’s a pyramid scheme! It’s the next thing in Fine Art! It’s an ecological disaster! I am making so much money!

Is Your 24MP Camera Obsolete? How to Future-Proof Your Photographs

The problem with technology is that it can look dated the older it gets. How good does a VHS tape look on your 4K TV? The same thing can happen with cameras. While 24-megapixel cameras are making great pictures, what they are going to be compared to is about to change… radically. You need to understand how the next generation of digital cameras will affect you, especially if you are a pro or serious amateur.

Film is Alive!… But it May Have a Terminal Illness

The defiant cry of the nostalgic hipster that’s become a hashtag: #filmisnotdead. But why? It’s 2019, people -- the digital camera reigns supreme; why won’t this analog trend die? Rationalism abandons the old way in recognition of the new’s superior efficiency. The combine harvester supplanted the scythe, clocks replaced the sundial, and electric lights extinguished the candle.

Where Mirrorless is Headed in 2019

2018 was an important year for mirrorless. As we kick off the new year, it's a good time for some reflection on the market. I've written quite a bit about where we are now that all the big players are seriously in the mirrorless game. This time I thought I'd write about what I think each company will/should be doing in the coming year+.

Photography: AI Everywhere

There are two major trends in photography today. The first is the ever-increasing numbers of photos being made. I can't even be bothered to look up how many billions of photos are being uploaded to Instickrbook every minute or every day or every year. It's a lot. This is usually talked about in terms of how many photos there are, and how we are drowning in them.

The DSLR Will Likely Die: Are Mirrorless the Future of Big Standalone Cameras?

People often ask me, given the improvement and ubiquity of cell phones, whether DSLRs survive. This actually entails two slightly different questions: will standalone large-ish cameras survive, and will the particular reflex design (the R in DSLR) survive? I am cautiously optimistic about the former and very pessimistic about the latter. In this piece, I will discuss DSLR vs. mirrorless.

Sony Exec Predicts Canon and Nikon Full-Frame Mirrorless Within a Year

There's plenty of speculation among photographers as to when Canon and Nikon plan to announce full-frame mirrorless cameras, but Sony itself has thoughts on when a formidable challenge to its mirrorless cameras will arise from the two juggernaut industry rivals. A Sony executive is now saying that he believes we'll see the unveiling of such cameras within a year.

Sony Will Be the Major Player in the Photo Industry, Says Sigma’s CEO

Sigma CEO Kazuto Yamaki has done quite a good job at boosting his brand's reputation in the world of photography over the past few years, as the company's Art series of lenses has drawn rave reviews for their optical quality, solid build, and relative affordability.

In a new interview, Yamaki shared a bold prediction about the future of the camera industry: he believes that Sony will emerge as the major player.

DSLR Use in Pro Video to Plummet in Coming Years, Report Predicts

Since the introduction of 1080p video recording in the Canon 5D Mark II in 2008, there has been a strong adoption of DSLRs for pro and amateur video production purposes, and video features have become standard in DSLRs in recent years.

But the growth in DSLR usage for pro video applications may be rather short-lived: a recent report predicts that it will actually plummet over the next few years.

Skyfire Predicts and Maps Out Where the Best Golden Hour Light Will Be a Day in Advance

When you’re looking to get out and grab some landscape or sunset photography, getting the perfect light is usually a game of chance, but a new web app called Skyfire is looking to change that. By using a proprietary algorithm, Skyfire creates a heat map of light quality, ranked on a scale of 1 to 5, across the United States so you can find the perfect spot and plan your trip ahead of time.

Looking into the Future: Whose Camera Will I Buy in 2018?

I’m not really sure why, but if you want to watch the Fanboys go completely insane, the simplest thing to do it is throw out “your brand is probably going to be out of business in a few years.” But the simple reality is that’s what happens to most companies eventually, especially technology companies. Photography companies, since, oh, about 1850, have basically been technology companies.

The Future of the iPhone Camera: How the New iPhone May Forever Change the Way We Think About Pro Photography

As Apple's WWDC kicks off this week, my thoughts keep coming back to the heated debate with my friends about the future of photography.

Let me step back for a second. Marissa Mayer famously said a few weeks ago that there’s no such thing as professional photographer anymore. The Internet rage followed, and she apologized, saying that what she meant is that we all take photos now. And it’s true. Nothing has revolutionized photography and made it truly global as Apple’s iPhone.

Photos Showing DSLRs Running Various Operating Systems and Apps

Mobile operating systems have begun making their way into digital cameras, but so far their foray has been limited to compact and mirrorless cameras. However, DSLRs are starting to have built-in Wi-Fi, but it seems to be only a matter of time before a full-fledged mobile OS appears in one.

Apparently some photographers (and Photoshoppers) over in China can't wait for that day to arrive. There's a series of viral images floating around showing Canon and Nikon DSLRs running various operating systems and programs.

How Wearable “Sousveillance” Cameras Will Transform Our Society

Have you heard of the term sousveillance? It's the inverse of surveillance: instead of a camera pointed at individuals, individuals wear their own cameras on themselves to document their activities. Wearable-camera pioneer Steve Mann has written a fascinating piece for Time, titled "Eye Am a Camera: Surveillance and Sousveillance in the Glassage", in which he offers his vision of what the future will look like once wearable cameras such as Google Glass (seen above) become ubiquitous.

Scientists Building Security Cameras That Can “See” Crimes Before They Happen

Remember those weird floating "precog" psychics in the movie Minority Report? They could foresee crimes before they even happened, allowing law enforcement to prevent them from ever becoming a reality. While that kind of sci-fi foreknowledge will almost certainly never exist, scientists are working on an eerily similar system that uses cameras and artificial intelligence -- a system that they hope will be able to "see" crimes before they even occur.