Future Camera Technological Advances

Cameras of the future may no longer require a shutter button. Instead, photographers could wink or use a voice command to tell the camera to record an image. It could work similarly to a hands-free cell phone, where you can issue commands without the need to push a button. The camera might be built into a person's glasses ("smart" glasses like Google Glass are already starting to appear on the market) or another everyday item. With the camera built into a pair of glasses, aiming it would be easy, too.

An ultra-compact camera is generally defined as one that measures one inch or less in thickness. Such small cameras are great because they easily fit in a pants pocket or a purse.

The camera of the future could redefine "ultra-compact," though. Manufacturers could create cameras that are 0.5 inches in thickness. They could maybe even have smaller dimensions than today's cameras.

This prediction makes some sense, as digital cameras from a decade ago were much larger than today's smaller models, and the high-tech components inside digital cameras continue to shrink. As more cameras incorporate touch screens, their size could be determined by the size of their display screens, eliminating all other controls and buttons, much like a smartphone.

Photography is a visual medium, but the camera of the future may add the sense of smell to photographs.

Photographs that can stimulate senses other than vision are an interesting idea. For example, a photographer could command the camera to record the smell of the scene, embedding it with the visual image it captured. The ability to add smells to images would need to be optional, though. Adding smells to a photograph of food or a field of flowers would be great, but adding smells to photographs of the monkey house at the zoo might not be desirable.

Rechargeable batteries in today's digital cameras are as powerful as they've ever been, allowing at least a few hundred photographs per charge. But, what if you could charge the camera automatically as you're using it, without the need to be plugged into an electrical outlet?

The camera of the future could incorporate some sort of solar energy cell, allowing the battery to either operate only from solar power or allowing it to charge the battery using the solar cell.

Some questions need to be answered first, such as how much the solar cell would add to the size of the camera. Still, it would be nice to have unlimited battery power and never worry about missing a shot again.

Olympus' ultra-zoom SP-100 camera sets itself apart from the competition with a futuristic Dot Sight mechanism that helps you track far-off subjects while the camera's powerful 50X optical zoom is fully engaged. Most photographers who use cameras with long zoom lenses have experienced the problem of having a subject move out of the frame while shooting over a long distance with the zoom in use. The Dot Sight is built into the pop-up flash unit and gives the SP-100 a unique feature. You certainly won't find it on any other consumer-level camera, but that could change in the near future.

Lytro cameras employ light field technology, but this idea may become a bigger part of general photography soon. Light field photography involves recording the photo and then determining which portion of it you want to have in focus later.