Photography in 2016: A set of predictions for this year.
What I got right, wrong in 2015, and what to look for in 2016.
More than a year ago I wrote 6 Predictions About The Future Of Mobile Photography. From 6 items, I correctly predicted three:
1. Mirrorless cameras will get even smaller.
Back then I was suggesting that, based on recently released Canon G7X and similar cameras we will see a movement to smaller cameras with big sensor. And indeed, Fujifilm introduced X-T10 — a tiny powerful camera with huge APS-C sensor, and this year at CES Panasonic released ZS100, a compact camera with 1 inch sensor (which is 4 times larger than the sensor used in previous generation).
2. New software and hardware light field cameras
That’s a controversial one. While Lytro clearly failed on the consumer market (and reoriented itself first to commercial and industrial applications and later into VR), new company Light has emerged and promises to ship it’s Light L16 multi-lens camera in second half of 2016. Overall, light field is still a very intriguing technology, with lack of adoption in the consumer market.
3. Purpose-built cameras
We definitely started seeing cheaper GoPro alternatives, like Xiaomi Yi introduced in early 2015, which sells under $100. More surprisingly, the market saw introduction of 360° Ricoh Theta camera, and later at CES Nikon, surprisingly, announced KeyMission 360 — a “GoPro” that shoots 360 degree video in a compact package. This trend will definitely continue.
I was wrong about the other three items:
- More affordable full frame cameras in the compact body design. That simply didn’t happen, and I now don’t think that’s a general trend that will continue. Most likely consumers in a market for a small camera will look for different formats — mirrorless cameras with APS-C or 4/3 sensor formats.
- A truckload of Android-powered cameras. That didn’t happen and by now I lost confidence that Android will spread on compact cameras quickly.
- Consumer tools will leapfrog in advances professional tools. I’m still confident that this will happen, but while 2015 brought a lot of progress in photo-processing tools on mobile platforms, it’s still not there yet.
So what’s going to happen in for 2016 in photo and video market? Here’s my set of predictions for 2016:
1. Explosion in 360° cameras and drive towards more consumer-friendly pricing
We are in the beginning of a trend, and I expect most major players to introduce their own 360 cameras — GoPro, Sony, and a whole bunch of Kickstarter campaigns and startups to get active in this space. Prices will fall and the winners will be those who provide end-to-end experience between hardware and software.
2. No major traction in full-frame cameras, but huge improvements in mirrorless technology
Mirrorless technology saw huge improvements in 2015 and most people I knew who were shooting full-frame DSLR’s are now fully in mirrorless camp. I expect major improvements in mirrorless sensor technology: higher pixel count, better ISO, faster autofocus, and so on. Mirrorless won’t quite catch up to what Nikon D5 is offering, but it will be more than enough for most consumers.
3. Great strides in lens technology, so that we’ll see lenses we never thought are possible
Something that no one thought was possible, Sigma made lots of headlines with their impressive lend line up, including revolutionary Sigma 24–35 f/2 zoom lens. Another impossible lens was Canon 11–24mm f/4 L. As costs of optics computation falls (along with expiring patents on classic lens designs), more innovative zooms will emerge — few are talking about 50–85 f/2, or longer zooms, like we saw on Olympus: 14–28mm f/2.8, 24–80mm f/2.8 extended beyond the traditional range by a few millimetres, adding usable range to its cameras.
4. Multi-lens camera in major smartphone (Samsung, Google, or Apple)
In 2015 Apple acquired company called LinX that was specializing on multi-lens setup for smartphones. This is similar to Light camera, and I expect Google might put a technology similar to Project Tango out in this world as well. Samsung is also rumoured to explore this space. Multi-lens setup can help improve the image quality, especially in the dark, and help add optical zoom to smartphones.
5. Emergence of a new major photo-sharing network (I hope it’s 500px)
A lot of people are getting tired from Instagram, arguably the number 1 photo-social network today. In my own feed, what I see can be described as “ad, promotion, ad, ad, ad, promotion, spam, ad, promotion”. Instagram’s growth came both as a blessing and a curse. Anyone who breaks the 10K follower ceiling can now promote products and services, probably for the first time making money on their art. This, however, means that almost anyone interesting (read: popular) in your feed will be advertising something. I see two options — one, networks that are more honest and upfront as to how one can make money have a chance to emerge, and two, apps that offer honest unfiltered expression—so Snapchat or Peach (chances are that nobody will remember what Peach is by year-end) have a chance to emerge.
What I left out from this list of predictions:
- Drones. Drones will become smarter, and most consumer will play with one, but with active flight restrictions baked in the software it would be more safe and less fun.
- Virtual Reality. A lot of interest in VR will fuel consumer enthusiasm about the technology, but it won’t make in into mainstream in this year. However, I’d expect to see at least one major movie released for VR.
- Chinese clones. An onslaught of Chinese companies will mean lots of variety of lower quality but novelty photo and video products that will be born and be dead within the same year.
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