Categories
Social Commentary

The photo industry needs sharper focus.

I’m doing some branding and innovation work for large imaging equipment manufacturer, and I’ve spent a good bit of time looking at the broader imaging industry.  I think low-cost, multifunction connected devices loaded with super smart code will one day replace just about every dedicated device on the imaging market.  Here’s the picture I’d paint –

MIT professor Henry Jenkins has talked a lot about convergence, and he seems to think there’s always going to be a role for dedicated image capture devices.  I 100% agree if “always” means the next 10 years.  Beyond that, I think we’ll be able to take pictures on our smartphones and turbo-charge image quality and tweak depth of field, contrast and colors with intuitive software and end up with a shot that’d make Ansel Adams swoon.

Evolutionary, adjacent innovation is swell, but startup businesses and their upstart thinkers are gunning for revolutionary breakthroughs.  Kodak’s ongoing demise should be a cautionary tale and a mega motivator for big manufacturers to acqui-hire the shit out of as many of those imaging revolutionaries as they can find.

By adamjdevine

I'm a compass with an opinion.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *