Kodak's Perez raises some interesting points about future of digital cameras

“Digital products and services should not require our customers to be engineers or professional photographers, but rather, should inspire them to be artists and publishers as they capture the moments of their lives.” Said Perez.

Well I say bravo Mr. Perez for having the courage to speak out on this issue. Yes I love digital cameras and what they can do for me, but in fact they are too complex and difficult to use for most folks. I happen to be comfortable with them as I am an early adopter and long time photographer. The average person is not and they struggle.

You go into a store to check out digital cameras and you find dozens of cameras that feature 5 mega pixels. How do you decide? Each camera manufacturer seems to follow the same path of putting out too many camera models that are all seemingly alike to the customer except for different price points. At this point should the consumer even care about mega pixels anymore? After four or five the quality is very good and only by printing in large format (8x10 or larger) do you even realize the quality you can achieve. So most folks are never going to need that level of quality. Let’s get off the pixel bandwagon and start making cameras that are simple to use, provide great quality and that anyone can pick up and use ala the Brownie film camera of olden days.

Speaking of the Brownie camera Perez spoke about that issue in his talk at CES, “Today’s digital cameras are dinosaurs, with the same basic architecture and functionality as the box Brownie camera that Kodak introduced more than a hundred years ago. It’s a lens, shutter, and something to capture the focused light. All the imaging industry has done is to replace silver with silicon. In the next era, we will design digital cameras from the ground up to take full advantage of the creative power that digital technology provides.”

Kodak seems committed to revolutionizing the next era of digital imaging, but the market and the other companies will have to change their ways in order for it to fully happen. NO arguing over standards, no proprietary standards to get in the way of making devices share, connect, and become more automatic.

The recent market shakeout of companies leaving digital imaging (Minolta-Konica to name one), downsizing their line of cameras, and generally changing their approach may be a sign that there is a realization that these devices need to move beyond gadget of the month status and evolve into simple and effective tools for consumers to use each and every day to capture images without having to go through extensive training to do it.

Kodak has three new technology platforms in development to make some of this improvement possible. One is called Kodak Perfect Touch Technology, which automatically detects and fixes common flaws such as under lit pictures, high contrast scenes, back lit shadows and red-eye, without the user even having to know about it.

The second is call e-finder technology, where your digital content would be given a unique identity (a new and updated version of meta tagging), which would enable the organization of images, based on scene classification (yes it would be able to detect that the images were from last Christmas, the beach, or the prom) and possibly even face recognition. This could take the whole digital storage problem and make it go away over night. Imagine being able to find and organize your thousands of images without any tedious wading through folders and renaming files?

The third is called e-moment technology, which they hope to enable a system where images can automatically recognize each other based on metadata and assemble themselves in groups based on how they relate to each other. The example given is having the ability to access easily every picture ever taken of your son or daughter, even if it is in the collection of a relative or friend. Wow that is pretty amazing stuff if you ask me.

It sound pretty high tech and ambitious but if they can spark the marketplace to be creative, listen to consumers feedback, and garner enough innovation they just might be able to light the fire of digital innovation that will keep us from being swamped with gadgets that only complicate our lives instead making them easier and more fun. Taking great pictures should be a fun and important part of our lives without trouble figuring out the camera itself or the process to organize and print those images.

Kodak seems to be putting the lens up in front of them letting the consumers get a good view of the process they plan to implement. Let’s hope the lens stays clean and in focus for this process.

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