The first photograph was taken in 1814, by Joseph Niepce, using a camera obscura. Exactly a century later, in 1914, the very first 35mm still camera was developed. Fifty years later, in 1973, Polaroid introduces one-step instant photography. Just ten years after that, the first digital camera was demonstrated.
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Now we’ve hit the 21st Century, the photographic landscape has changed drastically. Digital Single Lens Reflex (dSLR) cameras are readily available for consumers at low prices. Point-and-click digital cameras can be picked up for the price of a restaurant meal. Photographs can be uploaded and shared instantly with friends and family spread across the globe, almost instantaneously.
The rate of innovation, invention, and development, has only increased. Eye-Fi is a product released by a Californian company with the same name. Eye-Fi produces SD and SDHC cards that have Wi-Fi capabilities. This turns any SD-compatible camera into a wireless device, and when paired up with a smart phone, can directly upload pictures straight from out in the field.
So we’re at a peak of innovation, but what’s next?
WiFi as standard in point-and-shoot and digital SLR cameras is likely to happen very soon. The success of the Eye-Fi above shows that the demand is there, and if launched by one of the giant camera brands with a large marketing budget, could prove extremely successful.
The next logical step after WiFi capability is a 3G mobile network connection. This will allow a camera to retain an internet connection even when outside of a wireless network. A control panel would be available online and accessible from any computer. This would mean that a digital camera could instantly upload photographs to blogs, social networking sites or picture sharing sites.
A few of the higher-end and highly expensive DSLRs allow GPS attachments to geo-tag photographs. Location tagging is a feature that would fit very well within the information age, and combined with connection to a mobile network would allow a live feed of photograph and location to be uploaded to a social networking site. This would also allow photographs of significant events to be viewed from a map, and would result in the next generation of services like Google Street View, but with time-based control as well. This has crime solving implications too. It would allow law forces to see if any photographs or video footage had been taken and uploaded in a certain area at a certain timeframe.
Polaroid and retro photography in general, is becoming increasingly popular again. While not a technological innovation per se, it is highly likely that either Polaroid or another company will start manufacturing instant film for their cameras again in the near future.
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Aside from these exciting innovations we are obviously going to be seeing devices getting smaller, and more powerful, year-on-year, decade-on-decade.
