A photography prediction: the future will include (1) wearable, (2) video (3) all-focusing cameras.

1. Wearable

By wearable, the camera of tomorrow doesn’t have to be a pair of glasses. It could be on a jacket’s button, hat, belt buckle, etc. What wearing your camera does is free you up from consciously choosing to take a photo. Everything you see while wearing your camera will be recorded from the point of view of your camera. This is like livestreaming yourself, but the streaming to the public part would not happen (unless you opt to). (via BB)

2. Video

As Vincent Laforet talks about, you no longer need to take a single photo. Instead, you might as well video record everything. Afterwards, you would review a time range to pick your ideal photo.

Video takes up significantly more storage than stills. Since this is the future we’re talking about, small devices like an iPhone Nano will have 10TB, so storage won’t be an issue.

3. All-Focusing

Lytro is a new type of photographic camera. If I understand correctly, their light field cameras aggregate light at many different points. Think of it as many camera sensors recording many light rays instead of the traditional one camera, one sensor. In addition to picking the time of the shot (#2 above), you would also pick your desired focus. (via NYT)

Put it all together

With these aspects, photography will become a constant lens in your life. Privacy controls would be key. But think of the benefits: Evernote would be on steroids and The Hangover would be solved right away.

The exact configuration has endless possibilities. A team of photographers could cover the Olympic Games with an army of Zeiss mounted to drones.

The camera of the future could even use gestures (à la Kinect) to control settings instead of the current screen based menu hierarchy.