When the revolution comes...
The cameras that we use today, the ones that we think of as digital. They’re not quite as digital as they wish they were.
Oh, they’re cameras, yes, definitely, they paint pictures with light and everything, but they’re not digital. Our ‘digital cameras’ so far have been film cameras that have been adapted for digital sensors. One expert claims that the real world of digital photography awaits.
In the next five years, we’ll see f/0.5 lenses, digital zoom that’s better than its optical equivalents, extremely high sensitivity sensors, and ludicrously high dynamic range.
Ladies and gentlemen… we present the revolution of the digital camera…

The days of films have been numbered - and flat digital sensors might be next against the wall...
You see, very often it’s easier to adapt something that you have and already know and understand to integrate new technology than it is to re-invent the whole genre for your new development. And in many ways, that’s just what has happened with camera technology. When film cameras were first being used, it was important that things were flat. It made them easier to transport. And there’s been a huge hang over from that obsession with the flat as cameras have become more widely used, and entered into the digital realm. Digital sensors in cameras are flat.
And when you stop to think about it for a minute, that’s a bit, well, silly. Our eyes, which at the moment are definitely more powerful than a camera lens, are curved. So why aren’t we making curved sensors? Oh yeah, because we’ve always made them flat. (Mmhmm, we’re having a bit of a ‘No, we’re not going to sail off the edge of the earth moment here,’ aren’t we?)
Can we make curved sensors? Well, Gary Sutton reckons that we can.
Let’s take a look at what he has in mind…
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Comments
How can digital zoom *ever* be better than optical? By definition, you'll get no better than artefacts of your interpolation algorithm.
This article is unfortunately lame. These are not revolutions. No reason is given why a sensor should be curved.
A more realistic revolution would be a mind-shift toward terminology of "imaging" instead of "photography", deploying digital-only tricks such as HDR, focus-stacking, super-scaling, etc.
And it's still your sense of photographic vision that matters most, to lift reportage up to art.
Tim: Did you even look at the videos?
Sounds fascinating. Questions are ...Speed of lens/sensor was not discussed......no discussion of effect created between wide angle and telephoto lenses if one type of "new" lens is to be used....just curious.
Good luck!
about digital zoom, 4 words: lens optical resolving power; while less glass in a lens may help, producing optically perfect glass will still be very expensive (unless you really mimic nature and come out with polymer shape changing optics)
also, the human (or generally vertebrate) eyes are a mess: blind spot so eye has to continuously jiggle in order to work around it, high resolution in 1% of the sensor (fovea), wiring is on top of the sensor, photo receptors face away from the light... look at squid eyes instead, with them nature got it right :) (some already have, and made BSI sensors which started finding their way into compact cameras - I am so drooling for the Fuji HS10...)
I really love digital cameras and digiital photography. I am so glad that, it twas invented and now you get to see what you photographed, and if you don't like it you
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