Every year I post a list of predictions for the photo industry. Before I post next year’s predictions, I thought I’d do a post-mortem on my 2012 photo predictions. http://photofocus.com/2011/12/04/10-photography-predictions-for-2012/
I score myself as follows…
100 if I think I got it mostly right. 50 if I think I got it half right. 0 if I think I got it less than half right.
1. A major camera maker in Japan will either fail as a company, face reorganization, bankruptcy, or be acquired by a larger company.
Score: 100 – Olympus lost a major stake of itself to Sony and there were smaller, less well-known camera companies like Cosina that all but went out of business, dropping major lines, etc.
2. Technology like that found in the Red Scarlet will become significantly less expensive and at the same time, more powerful.
Score: 100 – Black Magic Camera
3. Camera manufacturers will continue to create, market and sell cameras that are small in size, but yet produce images similar in quality to larger DSLRs.
Score: 100 – many examples but the Olympus OM-D is probably the best example.
4. Field cameras (like the Lytro) will get more buzz next year as more and more companies introduce the technology.
Score: 0 – while Lytro itself got some buzz nobody has yet copied or introduced this tech into a major camera lime so I got this one wrong. Not to be de-railed, I’ll add it back to the list next year.
5. One of the major photo associations will fold in 2012.
Score: 50 – PMA essentially folded, stopping its decades old trade show and merging it with CES. It’s but a tiny shred of its former self but technically still alive with a tiny staff so I’ll score myself half-right here.
6. Video and still photography will continue to grow closer to merging as programs like Photoshop start to support both.
Score: 100 – All the Adobe products for still photography now include video editing capabilities. All current DSLRs and almost every point and shoot or compact camera now includes video. There are a dozen major workshop companies now offering video education for photographers.
7. We will see an announcement by a major camera manufacturer of the intent to ship cameras that contain micro SSD drives.
Score: 0 – at least I didn’t see this announcement from anyone. If you did, please let me know so I can correct my score! According to some engineers I talked to, this is too expensive right now.
8. Apple will announce the end of life date for the MacPro. Laptops will be the new desktops and tablets will be the new laptops.
Score: 50 Apple didn’t announce it but it’s still true. There’s no new Mac Pro in the works and indeed Laptops are the new desktops and tablets are the new laptops. Apple is moving away from pro apps and becoming a straight up consumer company.
9. Professional photographers will need to find business models that better support electronic delivery or face disintermediation.
Score: 50 yes they NEED to find new business models but they aren’t doing it at a rate that I think will keep pace with demand. But the need is there and there are lots of companies offering electronic delivery without compromising intellectual property rights.
10. There will be a major failure in the cloud computing space that causes photographers (and other digital data users) to rethink storing valuable images/data in the cloud.
Score: 100 Amazon had a major failure that caused lots of concern.
http://siliconangle.com/blog/2012/07/02/amazon-explains-their-public-cloud-failure-outage-causes-outrage/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/02/amazon-power-outage-cloud-computing_n_1642700.html
So my score was 650 or 65%. I was more right than wrong but not as good as some of my previous years. Hopefully I get to 75% next year!
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