Looks Like We’re All Going to Return to Film Cameras

Jess Lee - InVisage CEO

I’m geeking out on this one. Since everyone is a photographer and nearly everything is a camera, it may do the imagination good to understand where technology is going.  I always figured it inevitable that lens resolution would be the limiting factor with respect to image quality.  In some aspects it’s already the case, but I’m talking about what happens when the only way to improve imaging is to improve lens resolution.

How long will it take for your phone camera to be as good as many Digital SLRs?  a) Ten years?  b) Five years?  c) Less than two years?  Not only is “c” the correct answer but we are returning to film; quantum film made by embedding quantum dots into an emulation that coats a plate.

As you’d expect, anything named “quantum” is very small.  Each dot can be tuned to the light spectrum with early production showing a 4X increase in efficiency with significant cost savings as well.  This would mean that your 3 megapixel iPhone camera would be increased to 12 mp.

Interprelated to your high end digital camera, you can anticipate 80 megapixel quantum film cameras with a native ISO of 800 and greater bit depth (told you I’d geek out) means we’d be creating nearly unimaginable photographic detail with a hand held camera in very low light.  The race for technical quality will essentially end.  I’m guessing each photographic file created will be in the neighborhood of 500 megabytes per image as a tiff.

What does this mean for a profession already reeling from 6 years of crazy change?  Hard to know but I don’t see this post becoming irrelevant any time soon.

A more detailed explanation can be found HERE at dpreview.com

For more information, watch this short video in which InVisage CEO Jess Lee explains his company’s breakthrough: