This year we see the rise of new ‘smaller yet big­ger’ cam­era; the Olympus E-P1/P2, Panasonic GF-1, Canon G11 and the immac­u­lately res­ur­rected com­pion Canon PowerShot S90. It shares one com­mon major improve­ment: bet­ter low-light capability.

Manufacturers have taken bold steps rec­og­niz­ing that rac­ing on the megapixel race won’t win their cus­tomers trust; by address­ing the heart of the mat­ter, they are cre­at­ing a brighter future for the imag­ing indus­try (which means both lit­er­ally and technically).

We will see newer man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nol­ogy that will give us even higher per­form­ing sen­sors, CCDs/CMOSes with higher ISO speed (bet­ter low-light capa­bil­ity), lower power con­sump­tion and friend­lier to our envi­ron­ment. It will give us an entirely dif­fer­ent plat­form to take pic­tures, sim­ply there will be no rel­e­vance to com­pare it with film any­more. Down the line of the food chain, higher-capacity & faster mem­ory cards (think 64gb instead of 16) will slowly pop­u­late the mar­ket, with newer file allo­ca­tion tech­nol­ogy phas­ing out the never-reliable FAT32.

We shall also see newer shut­ter tech­nol­ogy that will cope with the faster sensor—imagine shoot­ing open wide (f/2.8 with ISO 6400 in broad daylight—the shut­ter that we have today won’t go faster than 8000^th of a sec­ond (1÷8000), this will mean a rad­i­cally new approach to the shut­ter mech­a­nism will undergo some major changes.

Beyond the tech­nol­ogy, pho­tog­ra­phy is both an art & lifestyle, there­fore fash­ion will come into the pic­ture, old trends will reap­pear (retro fin­ish­ing, film look, LO-FI like images) and what was the future look will become clas­sics. Computer images will never be the same again (read about Avatar here).

Popular Photography asked a group of pho­tog­ra­phers in 1944 about what the future might hold for and one com­ment stood out from the crowd:

The war will bring pho­tog­ra­phy out of its ado­les­cence. In matu­rity, it will be an excit­ing, prof­itable and expand­ing profession.

Today’s the last day of 2009, tomor­row will be the first of 2010, happy new year, Joy and Peace for all beings!

(like the deer, this will also make a good iPhone wall­pa­per, go and grab it!)

Read:

The Future of Photography as pre­dicted in 1944 via aphotostudent.com, kottke.org