Photographic future

Given how photography has moved on in the last 170 years, do APUG members have predictions about how photography may look in 100 year’s time? Will it be possible to record every moment of our world at high res from every angle?

cliveh said:

Will it be possible to record every moment of our world at high res from every angle?

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I hope not.


Steve.

Cavemen drawing on rocks with charcoal sticks in a hot, rainy, muggy world plagued by unchecked diseases and all caused by exhaustion of resources and global warming!

Sorry, I couldn't resist!!!!

PE

cliveh said:

Given how photography has moved on in the last 170 years, do APUG members have predictions about how photography may look in 100 year’s time? Will it be possible to record every moment of our world at high res from every angle?

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Not possible even in principle! A device that records every moment of our world needs to record itself, and record that it's recording itself, etc, etc..... a fallacy of infinite regress.

Maris said:

Not possible even in principle! A device that records every moment of our world needs to record itself, and record that it's recording itself, etc, etc..... a fallacy of infinite regress.

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Maris, if you had shown a mobile phone to Alexander Graham Bell he would not have believed it possible.

...record every moment of our world at high res from every angle?

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If the Government has its way that's exactly how it will be...oliceman:

its already being done ...

but traditional photography will eventually reach back to its roots

cliveh said:

Maris, if you had shown a mobile phone to Alexander Graham Bell he would not have believed it possible.

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Maris is correct. A metasystem is required to record the "total" system.

And I dare say that visionaries like Bell, Edison, Eastman, et. al most certainly would believe stupendous progress. In fact they would expect it. They imagined it.

What they wouldn't believe is stagnation.

I don't think photography has moved much in the last 170 years. In fact, I think it actually started to go backwards around 20 years ago.

I just hope there is still film and paper around in 100 years so I can use it... When I'm 126.

tomalophicon said:

I don't think photography has moved much in the last 170 years. In fact, I think it actually started to go backwards around 20 years ago.

I just hope there is still film and paper around in 100 years so I can use it... When I'm 126.

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I totally disagree.

The advance slowed down about 20 years ago, because it took more and more R&D to make smaller advances, but they did take place.

PE

cliveh said:

Maris, if you had shown a mobile phone to Alexander Graham Bell he would not have believed it possible.

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Perhaps the ultimate scenario is mobile phones with better picture taking capabilities, aimed at consumers; replacing digi cameras completely, bringing everyone down to the same mediocre level.

Maybe then, film cameras will once again become the tool of a minority of skilled photographers able to produce superb results. The technology will be once more, the photographer's brain, rather than a Taiwanese computer chip.
Victory for the humanoids over the robots.

The way I feel right I don't think I last another 20 years. My camera stuff will outlast me!

Jeff

My prediction of about 5 years ago is looking better by the day: tablet-like objects that you hold up like a frame. On one side is a sensor array with microlenses on individual photosites, and on the other is a screen for composition. Lensing effects are applied after the fact.

In the nearer term, I expect larger square sensors, which would obviate the need for moving the camera to change orientation while also allowing marketers to boast about very high megapixel counts- more than 24 is pretty much pointless for a full frame 35mm DSLR so they need to go somewhere else.

Foveon technology eventually wins but not for a while.

I'm with keithwms.

Something like HD-capturing light-field cameras.

However, I also believe that pure photography will always exist, and there will be a roots revival. I think there are even fascinating futuristic possibilities for analog photography.

It will probably still take a person to remove the device from the box it comes in. Most likely he/she will still have to activate the system. Who would have the time or the inclination to watch all the imagery and I think man will still like to put prints on the wall since we have been doing it for many thousands of years. Despite the pads and readers people still like books. I doubt that anyone reading this is worrying about the technology they will need in one hundred years.(well, maybe a few of you).

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

Just a minute, I'll get my crystal ball out

benjiboy said:

Just a minute, I'll get my crystal ball out

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Two adolescent jokes come to mind:

(1) Nah don't take that out, we don't need to see it;

(2) Wouldn't that make a great James Bond title? "The Man with the Crystal Ball"

I would probably guess that implanted cameras would be the next thing, recording maybe though optics implanted in eyes, or on contact lenses. And advanced computer recognition of visual objects.

Could let you run a search on where you last put something, and have the computing power to quickly search and jog back that last image of said object and thus last seen location. Image acquisition and recording would be as effortless and to look at a scene, hands free or maybe with a monocular or a pair of binoculars. etc etc.

But Analog will still be around, thats for sure. It may be difficult to find suppliers or consistent sources (for films and papers), or it may be regulated into small batch production by independents or garage chemists, but rest assured there always will be people who desire to use this beautiful medium.

cliveh said:

... how photography may look in 100 year’s time?

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How does painting look one hundred years ago? How does it look now? Same with drawing. We've had color photography for over 100 years, with both Autochromes and 3-color exposures.

What is the current advancement? Lens arrays to capture different focus fields simultaneously. There's been an advancement with strip cameras, which allows us to see a pulse of light as it moves.

The Lytro camera, as neat and nifty as it is, hasn't changed what we photograph. In fact, the "light field" was first described in 1936 by Arun Gershun. It's just taken 75 years to make a consumer point & shoot camera.

The strip camera was first utilized in 1844 by Friedrich von Martens for panoramic photography. 167 years later, the concept is used to photograph a pulse of light, using a streak camera.

Can we photograph everything simultaneously? By modeling and inference, yes. The Lytro camera can produce an image where everything is completely in focus. This is done with a custom processor. What will we do in the future? Multiple images to create a 3D image, which is analyzed and modeled. Of course you will be able to zoom in on the threads, because the fabric is actually modeled from the photographed image. It won't accurately render what is on the reverse of the image, but the software will be able to do something like a Photoshop smart fill on steroids.

But we'll still be photographing weddings and birthdays and stupid parties, and all the rest of life.

Now, for a bigger question: will we regard anything at all as "photographic evidence?" What will be the chain of veracity that what was optically present at the time the photograph was made, will be in the final image? Once upon a time, an event had to be restaged to provide the desired image. For instance, certain Soviet photographs. There is one with Lenin at a podium, and a later photograph shows nobody to Lenin's left. The later photograph shows the banners in the back in different positions, and details in the crowd are quite different. Of course later on Soviet photo-retouching techniques advanced, as will be noted with Stalin's photos.

Cryptographic security will be built into cameras to verify that the photographic record has not been tampered. The cameras might automatically upload data wirelessly, as data communications rates will be far higher than now.

Or perhaps your photographs will be provided to you by The State. Or perhaps the concept will be a legend of a bygone golden age. Or perhaps humanity will be engulfed by The Digital Singularity.

For me, back to my Rodenstock Imagon 300mm.

In terms of futuristic cameras, I am surprised that marketing men have not yet produced a camera, with instead of a shutter speed dial, it has settings like HCB, Kertesz, Sudek, Atget. Totally ridiculous, but which some members of the general public might actually believe is possible.

I'm sure I've seen plug-ins or iPhone photo filter apps that come pretty close to that kind of nomenclature :-(

No, there will be no photography in 100 years as our universal greed hatred and ignorance means we will carry on as we have since our beginning - This means our human population will suffer a collapse from the current 7 billion back to about 2 billion in the next decade or so - I don't see how photography will exist in such an environment

Two of the many clues for this outlook are the loss of calcium from marine organisms and the accelerating breakdown of organic soils across the sub antarctic area, which is releasing methane from the formerly frozen tundra, which is going to exacerbate the environmental problems which will affect our water supplies and cripple food production - The horn of Africa is just the beginning

I just can't see us changing our ways suddenly, but I felt that we had lost the battle against our worst behavior in about 1972

No, this is not typed as a joke and I deeply regret having children

Have a happy Christmas

Just look over the Sony NEX5n and NEX7 for a down payment on the future. Most current DSLRs resemble early automobiles whose designers just put an engine where the horse used to be--DSLRs just slapped a sensor where the film went. NO clue what, if any, place there will be for analog that far away.

I predict that World War III would have finished the world off several times over in the next century.
Nobody and nothing will be left to record the event. Sad.

Well, WW 2.72 just ended in Iraq and 2.73 is ongoing.