Ten Photography Predictions for 2011

I’m stealing.. err I mean borrowing an idea from Scott Bourne of http://photofocus.com.  Check out his blog and work.  He’s a great photographer and teacher.  At the start of every year I’m going to be making predictions related to the photography industry.

1.  Nikon or Canon will release or announce a micro 4/3  or mirrorless APS-C sensor camera.  Because of the popularity of snapshot photography and the consumer market now demanding interchangeable lenses we will see the trend continue to grow.  Nikon and Canon will need to get into this market or suffer five years from now when the hobbyists who are now using Panasonic or Sony will be graduating to more pro cameras.

2.  We’ll see a rise in online print offerings.  The ease of ordering prints online will continue to grow as well as the types of things we can print on.  Did you know you can already order art prints on metal substrate?

3.  Expos and convention attendance will recede while their online counterparts will flourish.  Who has the time and money to spend flying out to a different city to check out vendors when you have one stop shop websites offering the same?  The face to face contact won’t be there but think, when was the last time you really had a face to face contact with a salesperson?  And think about the last time you checked out a company’s website?  Enough said :)

4.  Rangefinder or rangefinder-type cameras will make a comeback.  This year the Fuji Finepix X100 camera will be released.  Considering the X100 is to be listed under $1400 and the Leica M9 is around $7300 it’s safe to say it’s the poor-man’s digital Leica.  Add the cool feature of viewfinder display information and you’ve got a great street photography camera.

5.  Nikon will finally release a D700s (or D800) to compete with the Canon 5D Mark II.  Right now Nikon is losing market share as the only full frame camera with HD capabilities is the D3s.  This prediction doubles as a plea to Nikon as I’ve been waiting for something like this for over a year now.  I’ve actually held out on switching to full frame because of the anticipation.

6.  Photography will continue to transform into more of an electronic form.  What does this mean?  Well consider the past few years where electronics manufacturers have started to gain market share into the photography industry: Panasonic, Sony, Samsung, etc.  It will be more about the circuitry, sensor, firmware and less about the optics and mechanics.

7.  Ok, this one is cheating but I have to predict it anyway.  Someone somewhere will use the iPad in a totally revolutionary way that Apple engineers will go, “why didn’t we think of that?”.  Case and point:  iPad photoshoot

8.  Another iPad one:  More people will start to use the iPad as a live view feature.  The iPad can already be tethered to your camera so that you can see what the camera and photographer sees.  This will be a lot easier to do and more people will start to do it.  Think of fashion and editorial shoots where the art director can hold an iPad in another room and see the progress and make suggestions to the photographer on the fly.

9.  There will be more focus on photography training and education that ever before.

10.  In camera editing and publishing will be a more common feature in cameras released in 2011.  What’s the best feature of the iPhone right now?  The ability to share information such as photographs instantly to the web.  Just think of a camera now as a one stop shop from capture to edit to share.

As always feel free to discuss my predictions.  Tell me I’m out to lunch or that I’m the next Nostradamus.  It doesn’t matter what it is I just want to hear what you think!

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 10th, 2011 at 1:00 pm. It is filed under Round Pixel News and tagged with industry news, photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.