Facebook’s Stories smart glasses may inspire digital camera manufacturers. Stories glasses have two front-facing cameras users can control with verbal commands. Nikon has already found a way to get rid of the mechanical shutter, and Canon has filed a patent for an electronic shutter button, so it seems we’re well on our way to a shutter buttonless digital camera. This prediction makes some sense: The high-tech components inside cameras continue to shrink. So touchscreens might come to determine camera size and eliminate all other controls and buttons, just like they do with smartphones. You can already find a Docooler Digital Camera Mini Pocket Camera and an Ailaah Digital Camera Mini Pocket Camera that are only .7 inches thick. And with the PaperShoot Paper Camera hitting the .5-inch thickness measurement, there’s no telling how thin digital cameras can get. 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 captured. Of course, this would have to be optional because not all aromas are pleasant. There’s some work being done on the “smell-graphy” front. The MIT Media Lab outlined what it calls a “Smell Camera,” with a pump connected to a smartphone. A user would control the pump to capture smells in a gelatin capsule and then “play” the memory later, complete with smells. The camera of the future could incorporate some sort of solar energy cell, allowing the battery to operate only from solar power or the battery charge it generates. A solar cell might add considerable size to the camera, which would be an acceptable tradeoff for unlimited battery power. Considering that there are already solar-powered video cameras and portable solar chargers, it seems like a solar-powered digital camera won’t be far behind. Since Lytro came out with its light field technology camera in 2012, there hasn’t been a rush of followers. However, Google acquired Lytro in 2018 and has since used the technology in its Project Starline, which it calls a “magic window” that allows you to simulate being face-to-face with someone who is not nearby. Also, Apple was granted a light field technology patent in 2021, presumably to add gesture functionality to its iPhone cameras, allowing them to capture wider ranges. With the big tech guns invested in light field technology, there’s no telling how it may be used in digital cameras in the future. But Canon’s very pricy ME20F-SH camera has a maximum ISO of 4 million, which effectively allows the camera to work in the dark. Likewise, new smartphones typically include a night-sight feature that uses machine learning and algorithms to create great low-light images. More consumer-friendly digital cameras are upping their maximum ISO. For example, the Canon 1DX Mark III (considered one of the best DSLR cameras) has an extended ISO range of 50 to 819,200.
