This past year saw a lot of changes and additions to camera standards with built-in WiFi and easy-to-use social sharing features becoming almost an industry standard. Image stabilization, anti-camera shake features, and cleaner image processing also became more widespread from
point and shoots to high-end
DSLRs. So, looking ahead to 2014, what features do you think will become "must haves" for cameras of all shapes and sizes?
Myself, I think that built-in WiFi will become more and more of a standard. I also think that camera manufacturers will work on better processing chips so that video and photographs can be edited on the camera on the fly. I imagine that Instagram or a similar photography application will make its way onto cameras allowing novice photographers and professionals to mingle and work together to capture great images and to teach each other various tricks of the trade. Professional photographers can bring a lot of experience in composition and lighting where novice photographers, especially those who are younger GenXers or Millennials, can provide the pros with some great tips in photography networking and Photoshopping.
I also think that GeoTagging and journaling will become more standard. For landscape or wildlife photography, GeoTagging can help show that an image was not staged or Photoshopped in post-production to make it look more vital. Also, GeoTagging can be very useful in things beyond just photography. Imagine that you're lost and all you have with you is your camera. If it can GeoTag a photo, then you can take a quick snapshot of the area around you, upload it to Facebook, and the rescue parties can locate you fairly easily. Journaling -- or appending descriptive information onto the image -- will also become more common, I think. This will be a quick and easy way for people to remember where, when, and why they took a certain photograph. Included in this information would, of course, be the camera and the settings the image was captured with so that if a shot came out particularly well, the photographer could check the settings and try to reproduce the effect in other shots.
So, what do you think? Let us know what features you'd like to see added to cameras or becoming more widespread in the photography world in the comments below!
-- da Bird