Digital Photography: What's New & Exciting Right Now? (Part 3 of 3)

4. Smarter Focusing

Cameras are getting a lot smarter about what to auto focus on. A great example available today is the face recognition capabilities in some of the Canon PowerShot cameras.

Face recognition means that the camera can detect a face in a scene, and then focuses on the face so that the face will be in focus (rather than the focus being on some other object you don't care about). Face recognition also guides the camera to optimize the the exposure of the face.

Since cameras often just focused on the nearest object, this can lead to a huge improvement in auto focusing. It also means that a person's eyes, rather than their nose (which is usually closer) will often be in focus, resulting in better photographs.

For example, if you want to take a picture of your daughter holding her new puppy, many cameras today will recognize her face and automatically ensure she's in perfect focus.

Further, as cameras become smarter and make better guesses about what you'd like to have in focus and what to blur, the quality of your pictures will improve.

For example, awhile back I took pictures of my niece and nephew throwing a frisbee (she's a champion frisbee player). I set my Canon XTi on "Sports" mode since they were moving fast and I'd never taken action shots before.

The camera did very well in terms of focusing on them and freezing the action. However, it selected settings that also had the background trees and dirt in very sharp focus. You can see what I mean in this picture of my niece about to catch the frisbee here.

As cameras get smarter, the focusing will likely automatically blur out this uninteresting background so it doesn't distract from the subject of the photograph -- in this case, my niece and nephew jumping to catch the frisbee.

What this means for you: Your photographs will improve -- we predict it will seem like the camera is "reading your mind" and taking the picture you WANT more often, rather than focusing on something distracting you didn't even notice in the shot.

5. Photo Sharing

As we've said many times, most people don't really know what to do with their photos after they take them. We're committed to helping people get their photos off their cameras and computers, out of their shoe boxes, and sharing them in new, exciting and fun ways.

There are already devices that let you upload your photos automatically from your camera's memory card to photo sharing sites over wi-fi. Many people have had good luck with the EyeFi card that can be added to your camera. This makes it very easy to start sharing your photos. But there are SO many more possibilities.

What this means for you: Over time, we predict there will be more -- and much easier -- ways to handle the technical aspects of photo sharing. And, the number of fun and exciting ways to share your photos (which is what this site is all about!) will continue to grow. Very exciting!

I hope you've enjoyed these predictions about where digital photography is headed. As the song says, the future (of digital photography in this case) "is so bright, you'll have to wear shades." :D