Predictions for the next decade

[Oliver Daniel]

I’m at home, got beer, kids asleep. Fancy some fun, wild speculation? 

Death of the Gimbal 

They will always have their place in high end TV and cinema, however for nearly everything else, I think we’ll see them replaced with insanely improved IBIS and a boat load of sorts gimbal-ish “fluid movement” remote type pistol grips. Every man and his dog will have them. 

Return of Canon 

With video rising to such a compulsory level, Canon will crack the cripple and deliver what we’ve all wanted for such a long, long time. Eventually. Or it’s 60fps Canon Log in exciting 720p. 

 

The Fall of RED

The Chinese will knock them out like a weapon in the nuts and force out a RED army of affordable cameras named after mystical creatures. 
 

RAW video everywhere 

Nearly every decent camera will have it internally within years. Masses of terribly noisy Vimeo videos to follow. 
 

Smartphone Domination

They will become “cinema grade” and will be the No.1 choice for Vloggers at least. Computational DOF, crazy AF, all sorts of crazy software. Completely trackable VFX filters. Boobs and penis’s on everything. 

Computational Focus and DOF

Already exists but will mature into an essential feature for most cameras for a very different post experience. “Fix it in post” said after every shot. 

 

Video AF

Will get so insane that only the high end will use manual. Us forum geeks will still be buying $20 f***d up Helios though ?

Video Essential 

It will become absolutely compulsory for every business and person and hamster and pig for everyday communication. Like the internet is now. Video will become the internet. And your very soul. 

 

and finally.....

Cameras and gear will be so commonly incredible but so second nature in operation , getting something technically correct will be as hard as passing wind after a curry. Even your 90 year old Grandma will be able to lock focus at f0.95 and orbit round her cat’s face in 10bit 8k. The tools will be so commonly reliable that they will hardly matter.

We’ll see an epidemic of terrible content with perfect focus and stability. Although this will unearth some under privileged gems, the little fishes will barely be seen in a sea of waste - unless it rises above it. 
 

As creators, we are not just fighting for quality. You will be fighting to the death for people’s time and attention. The “competition“ will be everyone and everything. 

Fun times.  

 

 

 

[thebrothersthre3]

I don't know, steadicams are still superior to gimbals, let alone IBIS. Dolly's are superior to all of them. 

[Oliver Daniel]

23 minutes ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

I don't know, steadicams are still superior to gimbals, let alone IBIS. Dolly's are superior to all of them. 

I did say “wild predictions”..... 

[KnightsFan]

IBIS can only do so much. IBIS might replace gimbals for low end cinema where you typically have a controlled environment, but once you're talking about running and jumping (think Devin Super Tramp type videos, parkour videos), the amount of shaking is too much for what IBIS could even theoretically accomplish.

I could see specialty cameras that have built in gimbals that rotate a sensor/lens module with a compact form factor, but there's no way IBIS and OIS can compensate for the kind of rotation you get by sprinting with a handheld camera. You need to physically move the lens and sensor for that. It's not just the high end cinema that will keep gimbals, it's also the entire action sports crowd, which are typically lower budget even than enthusiast filmmakers.

[rawshooter]

Nikon, Olympus and Ricoh/Pentax will go out of business (or at least stop making cameras), Panasonic will quit its increasingly unprofitable stills camera business and only keep producing pro video cameras. Canon and Sony will keep what remains of the mainstream consumer/prosumer camera market while reducing the number of models to 3-4 bodies, and innovate at the same slow pace as in the last couple of years. Fuji and Leica will keep their profitable boutique niches. 

The Japanese camera and consumer electronics industry will, in the 2020s, go the way of the German camera and consumer electronics industry in the 1970s.

Blackmagic will, at some point in the 2020s, stop making the Pocket camera because its FPGA design - that requires bigger bodies and higher power consumption - will be no longer competitive with the ASIC designs of larger camera manufacturers. (We're already seeing the beginnings of this with the Sigma fp vs. the Pocket 4K.)

All major hardware innovations & new types of camera gear will come from Chinese companies: DJI, Z-Cam, Kinefinity, Metabones, Xiaomi, Foxconn, Zhongyi Optics and others that aren't on the radar yet. We'll all get our gear from AliExpress (if we aren't already doing that).

The impact of AI/Deep Learning technology on digital imaging will be massive, as we are already seeing in smartphone photography, drones and gimbal cameras like the Osmo Pocket. This will result in radically improved debayering, denoising, upscaling, sharpening, color-upsampling & other image quality improvement algorithms that will push major image quality factors from hardware (optics & sensors) to software (computational imaging). In the 2020s, we will see this impacting consumer/prosumer video - not just smartphone stills - for the first time. Chinese companies will be quicker (as they already are, take DJI and Huawei) marrying AI imaging and camera hardware.

And yeah, without wanting to spoil anyone's party, I don't expect the world to manage climate change, so we'll miss the 2 degrees mark. In the 2020s, this will lead to the realization that many coastal cities and whole countries have no future, which in turn will result in banks and other investors (hedge funds, pension funds etc.) massively writing off real estate value in their books, which will likely cause another global financial system crash and disrupt global industrial supply and transportation chains. So there's a good chance that business won't continue as usual, and that the days of affordable new gear will be over for those who don't belong to the 1%.

- Predictions = speculations. Will eat my posting in December 2029 if my expectations were wrong.

[PannySVHS]

Some AI for enhancing or "common sense" intelligence to lessen our greed and our ignorance towards the well being of our planet. How about some planet saving algorithms to change our consumer and social behaviours. Learning other languages than English would be nice, having time for that since technology is doing all the work for us, now that would be nice. Eating tomatoes and some good bread and cheese in a clean air enviroment and filming all that beauty with a hacked GH3. Vitaly never got around to find that hidden 10bit mode unfortunately.

[Geoff CB]

45 minutes ago, rawshooter said:

The impact of AI/Deep Learning technology on digital imaging will be massive, as we are already seeing in smartphone photography, drones and gimbal cameras like the Osmo Pocket. This will result in radically improved debayering, denoising, upscaling, sharpening, color-upsampling & other image quality improvement algorithms that will push major image quality factors from hardware (optics & sensors) to software (computational imaging). In the 2020s, we will see this impacting consumer/prosumer video - not just smartphone stills - for the first time. Chinese companies will be quicker (as they already are, take DJI and Huawei) marrying AI imaging and camera hardware.

I'll agree and go one further, manufactures that embrace this will succeed, those who ignore it will die.

[kye]

I agree with much of what @Oliver Daniel suggested, including the IBIS and EIS taking over gimbals.

I think the technical solution for this might look very different though, but let me set some context from the other thread about how far we’ve come in the last decade..  in the last ten years:

• the 5Dii accidentally started the DSLR revolution
• the BMCC gave RAW 2.5K to the humble masses
• we got 3D consumer cameras
• we got 360 consumer cameras
• we got face-recognition AF, we got specific face recognition AF, we got eye AF
• we got computational photography that used multiple exposures from one camera 
• we got computational photography that used multiple dedicated cameras (and other devices like time-of-flight sensors) and did so completely invisibly
• we got digital re-lighting
• we got the above 4 points in the most popular camera on the planet
• we got 6K50 RAW

So, from before the DSLR revolution to 6K50 RAW and AI in the most popular and accessible camera on the planet in the last decade....

I think that we should take some queues from The Expanse and look at the floating camera that appears in Season 4.

I think consumer cameras will go towards being smart and simple to use for the non-expert as phones continue to eat the entire photography market from the bottom up.  They’ve basically killed the point-and-shoot and will continue to eat the low-end DSLR/MILC range and up.

So I think we’ll get more and more 360 3D setups by default in an over capture situation where they have cameras in the front/back/sides/top/bottom/corners which will mean that they can do EIS perfectly in post.  That will eliminate all rotational instability, but not any physical movement in any direction (how gimbals bob up and down when people walk with them).  This will be addressed via AI, as the device will be taking the image apart, processing it in 3D, then putting it back together again.  It won’t take much parallax adjustment in post to stabilise a few inches of travel when objects aren’t that close to the device.
We won’t get floating cameras though, that would require a pretty significant advances in physics!

This AI will enable computational DoF and other things, but I don’t think these will matter much, as I think shallow DoF is a trend that will decline gradually.  If this is surprising to you then I’d suggest you go watch the excellent Fimmaker IQ video about the history of DoF, and take note that there was a period in cinematic history when everyone wanted deep DoF and once it became available through the tech the cinematic leaders of the time used it to tell stories where the plot advanced in the foreground, mid-ground and background simultaneously, and everyone wanted it.  The normal folks of today view shallow DoF (and nice colours and lighting design and composition for that matter) as indicating something is fake, and it becomes associated with TV, movies, and large companies trying to PR you into loving them while they deforest the amazon and poison your drinking water.  The look at authenticity is the look of a smartphone, because that’s where unscripted and unedited stories come from.

The last decade started with barely the smartphone, now the smartphone is ubiquetious, and so developed that they basically all look the same.  Camera phones basically didn’t exist a decade ago, now we have had the first feature films shot on them by famous directors (publicity stunt or not).

People over-estimate what can happen in a year, but underestimate what can happen in a decade.

[IronFilm]

6 hours ago, Oliver Daniel said:

Death of the Gimbal 

They will always have their place in high end TV and cinema, however for nearly everything else, I think we’ll see them replaced with insanely improved IBIS and a boat load of sorts gimbal-ish “fluid movement” remote type pistol grips. Every man and his dog will have them. 

 

I’m skeptical about gimbals dying out, but yes that’s might happen with steadily improving IBIS (however some companies might struggle at this, such as Sony who are trying to shoehorn a full frame sensor into an APS-C mount) however the really big change will come from integrated motion sensors into the camera to read back hyperaccurately for EIS with a sprinkle of AI magic 

 

 

6 hours ago, Oliver Daniel said:

The Fall of RED

The Chinese will knock them out like a weapon in the nuts and force out a RED army of affordable cameras named after mystical creatures. 
 

Wonder which Chinese brand will deliver the killer blow, Kinefinity or Z Cam?

 

 

3 hours ago, kye said:

the 5Dii accidentally started the DSLR revolution

 

False, the Nikon D90 “accidentally started” the HDSLR Revolution. 

And as the Canikon dulopoly watch each other like a hawk, Canon went “oh shit, we’d better add a video feature to our next release” (the 5Dmk2).

If Canon gave the slightest damn about their users they’d already have put video in their Canon 50D, or even earlier. 

 

 

3 hours ago, kye said:

• we got 3D consumer cameras
• we got 360 consumer cameras

And then shortly after, a few years later, those niches died out. And are no longer in peak fashion 

[kye]

38 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

And then shortly after, a few years later, those niches died out. And are no longer in peak fashion 

The way I see it is that they haven't died out at all, they're either being used for over capture (360 cameras are almost good enough for that now - I've started to see people using these in "real" productions - for example check out Tiny House Nation on Netflix which used a GoPro Fusion for getting multiple camera angles and action/reaction shots in the tiny houses they're filming in and around) and 3D will also "come back" because it's a technology looking for a use and we haven't worked out what it's really for yet.

Even if 3D never becomes a publishing format and stays in the over capture space, AI will really benefit from having multiple cameras with parallax of varying amounts.  For example if you have a single 'normal' camera and have a time-of-flight camera / normal camera pairing to the left and another pairing to the right then you can get excellent depth, you have a second (or third) perspective for when objects are close to the camera and block one perspective, and you can also see slightly behind the subject and can use that information to change perspectives slightly, either 3D camera adjustment for offset stabilisation, for 3D effects (I've seen facebook images that use the portrait-mode of the phone to create an image with multiple planes that animate when you scroll or tilt/rotate the phone) etc.  even just to see what's slightly behind the subject and you can then blur it for better bokeh simulation, the possibilities are endless.

If you're going to stay current then you're going to have to separate the capture format from the publishing format.  Computational photography separates these by definition by processing the input before it becomes the output.

[kaylee]

oooo i love new years prediction gimmicks, and this is a new DECADE...!!!! ? ???

ok: I PREDICT THAT BY 2030 VR WILL BECOME A THING, AND THAT VIDEO GAMES WILL LEAD THE WAY

who knows, it could be like a nintendo system, where the ‘graphics’ are simple, but it pulls ppl in, and changes the game

that or p0rn lolol

[leslie]

1 hour ago, kaylee said:

oooo i love new years prediction gimmicks, and this is a new DECADE...!!!! ? ???

ok: I PREDICT THAT BY 2030 VR WILL BECOME A THING, AND THAT VIDEO GAMES WILL LEAD THE WAY

who knows, it could be like a nintendo system, where the ‘graphics’ are simple, but it pulls ppl in, and changes the game

that or p0rn lolol

So  your saying theres a 50% chance that the girls on film thread will go ballistic ?

[kaylee]

36 minutes ago, leslie said:

So  your saying theres a 50% chance that the girls on film thread will go ballistic ?

lol remember the pokemon app a few years back that brought society together...? thats what im picturing ?

p much anything where ppl in western culture can become MORE disconnected from reality seems to be a big hit 

[Video Hummus]

9 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Wonder which Chinese brand will deliver the killer blow, Kinefinity or Z Cam?

DJI.

13 hours ago, rawshooter said:

Predictions = speculations. Will eat my posting in December 2029 if my expectations were wrong

You might have to eating this post if your right anyway because of the world famine and mass migration. 

4 hours ago, kaylee said:

that or p0rn lolol

Definitely will be VR pr0n and a VR Pr0n film festival called “Pr0n.

@Oliver Daniel i think there will be a flash of film again too, Because everything old is new again. There will be nostalgia channels on YouTube Like there are ASMR videos. Oops, did I just give away the best YouTube Channel idea of the next decade?

[BTM_Pix]

2 hours ago, kaylee said:

p much anything where ppl in western culture can become MORE disconnected from reality seems to be a big hit 

There have been large amounts of 2019 where I've already felt like I've been in some sort of VR experience minus the cables and the helmet.

[IronFilm]

11 hours ago, kye said:

The way I see it is that they haven't died out at all, they're either being used for over capture (360 cameras are almost good enough for that now - I've started to see people using these in "real" productions - for example check out Tiny House Nation on Netflix which used a GoPro Fusion for getting multiple camera angles and action/reaction shots in the tiny houses they're filming in and around) and 3D will also "come back" because it's a technology looking for a use and we haven't worked out what it's really for yet.

 

I reckon 360VR has better chances of coming back as a delivery format than 3D, there is still much more life left in 360VR than 3D.

 

 

2 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

There have been large amounts of 2019 where I've already felt like I've been in some sort of VR experience minus the cables and the helmet.

 

You've actually living in 2039, having a vintage 2019 experience. 

 

2 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

There have been large amounts of 2019 where I've already felt like I've been in some sort of VR experience minus the cables and the helmet.

 

You've actually living in 2039, having a vintage 2019 experience. 

 

[BTM_Pix]

5 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

 

You've actually living in 2039, having a vintage 2019 experience. 

 

 

You've actually living in 2039, having a vintage 2019 experience. 

 

And its in stereo judging by this then.

[IronFilm]

2 hours ago, Video Hummus said:

DJI

Ohhh... That would be a surprise, but also quite possible that DJI could put out a RED beater   

As DJI has already made their large sensor RAW drone cameras

Next step is for them to take that same camera and turn it into a more crew operation friendly camera for when using it purely on the ground