Although I like video, it is a frustrating medium. It takes too much time to capture, much more time to edit, and then you need the time to watch it. Even worse is the trend of using video on the Internet to provide you with the same information that could be at times conveyed in 140 characters. Meanwhile, photos are far easier to capture, store, process, and viewing is instantaneous. Study after study shows that our mind the best machine to process images that one can ever achieve.
Over the years, I’ve implemented a lot of software to process images, and an entire framework for digital image processing. Testing such kind of software requires a lot of time staring at photos and synthetized images, some betters than others. I got a lot respect for what I call a “good picture”. It is far harder to get than what it looks like.
The long introduction justifies my interest on what has been happening lately in the photo market. A lot of post processing of images is happening, because photographers are just not happy with what they get. I decided to take a look at the most popular plug-ins for Windows Live Photo Gallery (link). I was genuinely surprised to see that the 3 plug-ins that Microsoft produced to process images (AutoCollage, Image Composite Editor and Photosynth) are more popular even than the plug-in to upload pictures to Facebook (although I dare to say that is because people cannot really wait to share with “friends” their latest picture, uploading those directly from mobile phones or some more web-savvy cameras).
Post processing is a fantastic tool. But it cannot save you if you didn’t capture the data. Only in movies is that one starts with a fuzzy panoramic picture of crowd and then zooms until it is possible to read the time from someone’s clock. That is typically impossible, unless you start with images like the Paris 26 gigapixels example (link).
It is becoming clear that the camera market will soon fragment once more. Today, people still buy large and expensive digital cameras because those offer higher resolution and better adjustments than those found in mobile phones. For “normal photography”, soon the cameras from mobile phones will have all those features. If some digital camera manufacturer is reading, let me specify clearly the features that I would need in order to buy a new standalone camera. I need it to be able to capture 3D images, and also the data needed to create HDR (High dynamic range) pictures. All that in a single shot, and without the need to focus, like the newly announced Lytro cameras (link). For that camera, I would pay something in the range of U$1K. Until such features are there, I’ll just use the mobile phone camera.
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