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The last few years we have seen the camera companies concentrating their efforts on transitioning their lineups to mirrorless, especially Nikon and Canon. This means that we have not seen any updates in the premium compact space since 2019, and it remains in a sorry state.

The phones now have a pretty good quality for their main lens, for example, the iPhone 14 Pro has a 24mm f/6.3 equivalent lens, but their other focal lengths are at least two stops slower. This gives a quite high bar to jump over, which would explain the lack of activity. They are however not optimal for taking photos, and I still believe that a well designed premium compact would sell well.

The currently best option, the Sony RX100 VII, is unfortunately a user hostile mess, and I am afraid the camera executives think We don’t want compacts anymore, when the reality is When will we finally get an enjoyable quality compact?

Such a compact would need to be small enough that you can carry it in a jacket pocket. This gives roughly the dimensions of the X100 from Fujifilm, with maybe another inch available for the lens if needed. That would be 13cm x 7.5cm x 3.2cm for the body, and up to 4.6cm extra for the lens to stick out. It needs flash and an electronic viewfinder, a small grip to hold the camera, and controls similar to larger cameras.

Excellent phone integration is a must. This means background transfers of images, fast transfer speeds (above 500Mps), user defined transfer formats (not only the small 2 mega pixels, and including full raw formats), and use of the phone as a remote with lag free video transmission. The compact should come with builtin flash memory (provide 64GB and 256GB variants) for better robustness, and it would be nice if it could share the battery type with its mirrorless siblings.

The sensor should be the DX crop (1.5x). We cannot provide a super zoom lens without too much compromises, so I would aim for two lens variants: 12-40 f/4-2.8 wide angle, and 16-80 f/2.8-4 universal. These are the most useful ranges when walking around, where you accept some limits in flexibility to get down to a truly compact package.

It also needs to be high performance. Autofocus, and capture speed should be of a level comparable to the Z6 II, so that it can serve also as a second camera. This would not come cheap, and I think a price of $1799 / $1999 for the the universal and wide ranges would be appropriate. Given the niche it fills, and the fact that current performance is so high that you would still be happy with it in ten years, it would sell well even at this price.

With Nikon expected to unveil the Z8 tomorrow, I wonder whether we will see an automatic HDR feature.

With a full electronic shutter you no longer have any vibrations that could impact on image quality, and with a shutter speed up to 1/32000 and a below 4ms full sensor readout, we can now take two exposures in one go, without movement that would make combining the images too hard. The bandwidth and memory size is there to store a handful full sensor readouts in memory, so we can first read out just the raw data, with absolute minimal delay between shots, and then process all captures in the group at leisure. That headline 20fps would still be 8 pairs per second, fast enough to apply this automatically when the camera detects potentially blown out highlights. Ideally I would love to use an automatic 5 shot approach to highlights, capturing fast-slow-fast-slow-fast sandwiched to get highlight data that can be even better combined with the main shot. That might be pushing it a bit much with 3.5ms sensor readout, but it is an aspirational goal when we get the readout speed down to 1ms.

The Sony RX100 is one of the best compact cameras you can buy, a technical marvel that provides pretty good quality in a compact package, has good auto focus, a reasonably fast lens (one stop slower that a crop sensor camera with a kit lens for the 24-200 m7) that is surprisingly sharp, and can even get into macro range with a 1:2 magnification ratio. Hardware wise there is little to complain about, we are very close to what is physically possible in such a small package.

Unfortunately, it also has an interface that puts people off Sony cameras for life. Part of it is just a wrong priority on size at any cost:

• The tripod mount is not located beneath the optical axis, but off center and so close to the battery door that putting a plate will necessarily block it. Moving it below the axis would free the door, and make holding the camera with a plate attached more comfortable.

• There is so little space for controls, that they are all cramped, and make modifying settings less smooth than it can be. The Nikon 1 V3 was only marginally smaller, but it allowed for just enough additional controls to have two dials to modify settings in addition to focus and zoom rings on the lens.

• The body is slippery because it has no integrated grip. Everyone puts an extra grip on it, it would be so much better to integrate that, and use the extra space for a larger battery.

Making the body 1cm wider and 4mm higher, and adding an integrated grip would keep the camera pocketable, but allow enough space to rework the controls to be much easier and more fun to use. Also the touch screen has a pretty wide black margin on its left, so you could move that margin to the right, and add a few control buttons there to improve direct control, easily reachable from your right hand.

The control missing most on the camera is support for back button focus. It prevents us from setting the camera to AF-C, and simply keep using that mode if we want precision control for manual focus. The typical approach to taking manual focus image is to use auto focus to get an initial lock, zoom in to get critical focus, zoom out again to ensure the composition is correct, and then take the image. The RX100 has two drive modes for manual focus, DMF with auto focus which is mostly useless because you half press for auto focus, and then keep it half pressed, while adjusting focus, without a way to get back to check composition. Or use MF, which is fully manual focus. There is an option to set a control to toggle between AF/MF, which allows quick switching. But it comes with no indication in the viewfinder, and is still more work than needed with back button focus. Even though you can customize the control rings, focus is not one of the options.

Finally we have the disaster that is connectivity:

• WiFi speeds are too slow, and should be at least 800 Mbps

• Does not support importing raw images over WiFi, and we have no choice of the processed format that we want to import. It is fixed at 2MP images (actually 1616*1080, even smaller, and not even 3:2), or VGA thumbnails. No choice to define your own processing of the 5472 × 3648 pixels. I often find that a higher pixel count (e.g., 3000×2000) with more aggressive compressions yields an overall nicer image, and it would be nice to have more options. Also the app really needs to learn not to show superfluous pop ups every time I do something: Why interrupt me with a popup of my selected transfer quality, when this could be just a small indicator in the images list?

• Connection is not possible to initiate from a paired device. You must activate the Send to Smartphone function on the camera to start the WiFi network. Why can we not use Bluetooth to tell the camera that it should start its WiFi? A good Bluetooth chip that advertises maybe once every second (plenty fast to initiate contact) is able to run half a year on a CR2032. Even better would be if we could get Apple to support open protocols to achieve AirDrop performance, with the network all happening in the background.

• USB is still Micro-USB with 480 Mbps, this really needs to become USB C with at least 5 Gbps, preferably 10 Gbps, adding also power delivery that can charge and operate the camera at the same time.

• In support of this read speed, the next model should switch to CFExpress Type A cards. They are roughly the same size as SD Cards, are more durable, and have faster speeds. Or maybe even move on to internal flash. 128 GB would be enough for normal usage, you could add a 512 GB model for heavy users, and at Apple prices of $400 for 1TB it would still be cheaper than cards costing around $1500 per TB for capacities up to 256GB.

The problem with dedicated cameras is that they have a very dated interface that is not for modern times, and that for simply sharing an impression the quality of the smartphones is already overshooting. So dedicated cameras are now only for people seeking to snap great photos, and willing to put up with a lot of annoyances to finally share those photos. 
To share, the connection must be wireless, and once set up, pictures must appear magically on the smartphone: you want the experience to be: shoot on the camera, quick check on camera, pick up phone to share the photo. Allow for automatic posting to be configured on the phone. Spending 30 seconds to move a file via memory card is simply too much, not to mention not even possible with most phones.

The issue is of course that it is impossible to achieve this kind of integration without help from the smartphones, that they must provide a way to implement background transfers. The technology is there, but it must be supported by Google and Apple. Apple actually has implemented everything to make AirDrop a reality, it would need to provide a way to extend it to third parties. Of course the camera makers have lost the influence to get these connections made.

The user interface of the cameras is also pretty problematic, especially since they have now so many options to configure instead of allowing us to concentrate on the artistic process of creating impressive photos. As an intermediate step one should move everything not typically changed during shooting to the much better interface on the phone.

Printing is dying, as we are currently seeing the same transformation both with books and with photos: casual use moves from print to tablets, while at the same time getting high quality prints is getting more affordable and popular.

With photos we see that the typical print is now almost completely replaced by the tablet, or even the larger phones, which is not only cheaper but also has since the 3rd generation iPad a better quality. And since then the quality of the displays has only increased, with very good factory calibration, and now almost perfect color stability when viewed at angle. Combined with the convenience of the phone, now home printing only makes sense for larger prints, for those you want to keep visible in your home.

These are not that many prints, so it will be cheaper and likely of better quality to have them printed. And since the images you put on your wall are at least semi public, there will be no privacy problems with having them printed by strangers. These are bleak times for selling printers, as the retina iPad has also made reading normal documents electronically quite feasible; I have completely stopped printing any technical documentation since getting my iPad 3.

Books will follow the same path, the paperback will be replaced by the ebook, while we will keep some books around, more as keepsakes and for presentation than for actually reading them. It will become more like a special occasion, with paper ceding the entire middle ground.

On the low end we will likely continue to have flyers, as they are so much easier to use. You can grab a flyer with a hand, and stuff away in a pocket, with no need to take out your phone, figure out how to accept the flyer and then accept it. One must also not forget that the higher marginal cost of flyers act to limit spamming, and people are already fed up with email spam, they do not want seeing strangers popping up adverts on your phone while out and about, so I suspect that location based advertising aimed at passerby’s will mostly move into your maps and search apps, or maybe sales apps used to find good deals. Because you need to intentionally pull your phone out, it will aid more in augmenting the experience once you are already committed, instead of grabbing your initial attention.

Thom Hogan has a nice article on the future of cameras. I agree that having a workflow that allows for quick and seamless sharing is pretty essential. Here we have two use cases:

• Just sharing photos in some sort of public folder

  This works well for a dedicated camera, if you can set it up before you start shooting. The setup would typically happen on the phone, as it has the better screen, in the form of a “share for the next x hours” option.

• Share a photo but adding a few words for each photo

  A lot more difficult for a dedicated camera. The best you can hope for is having the captured images ready on your smartphone to send on, as the ability to enter text on the camera is rather weak, and even with a touch screen would be rather clumsy, given its typical weight and shape.

The technical challenge will be to provide a great integration with the smartphone or tablet. Essentially you will want to use a combination of Bluetooth Low Energy and WiFi Direct, which would allow the connection to be always on, and would allow the camera to send pictures to the smartphone app / photo stream without having to do anything on the phone beforehand. You want to have a workflow of take picture(s), pick phone up, send photo with the just taken pictures already waiting for you on the device. And this is only possible with appropriate hooks on the smartphone OS, allowing a camera to activate a data connection to an app, even when this app is not running.

If we look at the currently offered cameras, we see a wide range of sensor sizes, as seen in the table below as a multiple of the smartphone sensor size.

If we look at these numbers, we immediately see why sales of compacts are collapsing: they do not offer a sufficient improvement in quality compared to smartphones, especially when we consider that the typical phone has a fast fixed lens. And whatever little extra in quality compacts can provide is more than compensated for by the easier sharing available from a phone, and the much more intuitive interface provided on the phone.

This leaves only the enthusiast market for the dedicated camera makers, for models from the RX100 upwards. The opening they have come from these improvements:

• Better low light sensitivity, as the phones become quite grainy with sunset, let alone typical indoor lightning

• More choice than a fixed focal length

• Higher image quality thanks to inherent advantage of larger optics and shallower depth of field

• Better focussing speed

The good news for camera makers is that, apart from speed, these are inherent advantages from making larger cameras, and that smartphones would become too clunky were they to follow this road. The bad news is that the smartphone is good enough for display on a Retina iPad when the image was taken in sunlight. On the other hand the improved tablet screens will make the quality deficits of a smartphone camera more visible, and so increase demand.

Jobs Still Available To Dedicated Cameras

So which jobs regarding image capture cannot be sufficiently done by the smartphone?

• The always with you camera that will give good quality even in bad light

  This is what the RX100 excels in, with the X100s and RX1 as options with more weight in return for more quality.

• The travel camera

  This is one of the most important reasons people want a better camera. Here weight plays an important role and makes M4/3 a very good option, for example with a 14-140 zoom and a f/2.0 or faster pancake, when you need something better than the RX100.

• The kids/sports camera

  Both demand quick focus to follow the action. This is the one area where the phase detection in mirror cameras still is an advantage. But with them slowly moving onto the sensor as well, this advantage will remain short lived. The Nikon 1 already has amazingly fast autofocus.

• The reporter

  As far as quality is concerned, a well served market. What can be improved is the speed with which images can be processed and forwarded. This mainly calls for fast and frictionless transmission of images, where there is still quite some room for improvement (background download of images onto the iPad/iPhone, for example).

• The exhibition camera

  Here people have time to compose their shots, and they want the best technical quality, e.g., for product shots. This is where you go larger and larger until you no longer can handle the mass efficiently. This is where the best image quality is still analog, from a large format with the film scanned. But it is also a niche that is very difficult to serve, as 36 MPixel at 200 dpi are already 45×30" (112x75cm).

The UX Trap

The greatest problem facing all camera makers at the moment is that they do not really understand how to create easy to use software. There is still an immense potential in using displays to make cameras easier to use, to better integrate with phones to make sharing images easier (and maybe even move advanced settings over to their larger screens), to rethink camera operations like Camera+ on the iPhone did, to leverage the iPad as an advanced remote trigger with live view, e.g., for macro photos.

There are so many obvious points to improve upon, for example:

• Why do DSLRs still use a primitive LCD display in their finders, when they could use a Retina class color display? It would require a custom cut, but with a roughly a million units annually this should be possible to get. And it would make it so much easier to display all relevant information in them, making us more productive.

• Why is Wifi/Bluetooth 4.0 not standard, downloading small jpegs in the background to your phone so that they are immediately available for sharing? Why can’t we use the iPad to browse and process raw images, before sending them on, without requiring us to move a card?

• Why do cameras still have so many image processing functions on board when these can be done much better on a phone or tablet with their larger screens? Why do we not have any help with filtering our photos for the good shots?

Nikon offers the WU-1b as a companion wireless adapter for the D600, which works with WMAU (Wireless Mobile Adapter Utility) on the iPhone to allow remote shooting. The app works well, but it is also extremely limited in what it can do, making you constantly wonder what it could have been.

The adapter itself is minuscule, only 3 grams and roughly the size of the flash shoe. It offers about 2 hours of battery life on the camera when you have live view on all the time, which means that it will last long enough for occasional use.

The interface is utterly frustrating. When you have live view on your device active, you cannot change any setting at all, neither on the device nor on the camera. The only thing you can do is tap on the screen to initiate focussing. This works, and is invaluable when you need to place your camera in odd places, but it could be so much better. Given Nikons history of artificially limiting their firmware ( bracketing comes to mind), I suspect they want to protect their PC remote program. But they should really keep in mind that this is future: Who wants to carry a laptop when an iPad mini can do the job just as well?

Macro/still images when shooting from odd angles

In practice I found it much less useful than I hoped for. Having a remote screen makes adjusting the camera easier, but you really would like to have both hands free for this. Here a Glif for your iPhone together with a GorillaPod will help.

Once the camera is positioned right, I was annoyed by the lack of feedback and manual control in the app. There is no ability to zoom the display to check on focus, and test photos download slowly, in like 10 seconds, so using this for your checks instead is also frustrating. I cannot change any camera settings remotely, tap to focus is supported, but no sign of manual focus adjustments, aperture or exposure compensation. And when you change a setting on the camera, you cannot simply do it, you need to first leave the remote view in the app.

Shooting wildlife and children

Sometimes your presence behind the lens will disturb your subject, for this a remote release can be great. This one has a problem: it is slow. Slow to update the remote view, you can have delays of up to 200ms, and slow to focus, as you only have contrast autofocus available, which can take a second. But with a static camera you will already be focused on a specific location, so in practice the update delay is most annoying. But you will also run into the problem that the Nikon mirrors are loud; a mirror less camera would be much better for this.

Self portraits

Tap to focus makes it quite easy to set the correct focus point, and with the human face having enough contrast, the camera will lock on correctly. And the live view makes it much easier to position yourself correctly for the shot. As you will do a few test shots anyways to get the composition right, it is much less annoying to have to change settings on the camera. Overall finally a niche where the adapter is enjoyable to use.

Improvements I’d like to see

As it is the adapter has too many little flaws to recommend it unless you really need the remote live view to help with composition. What I would like to see in the future:

• Higher speed

  Slow live view updates and low download speeds are a constant irritation.

• Better remote focus support

  The lens has an autofocus motor, this should be used to do remote manual focusing. And add the manual focussing aids: highlight the focus area in the image, and allow us to zoom the remote view

• Remote settings updates

  Modern cameras have become quite complicated computers, and we do not need all settings remotely, but please provide the important ones: aperture, exposure compensation, ISO sensitivity, flash exposure compensation and shutter speed.

• iPad support

  Especially with the mini out now, it would be great to able to use the larger display.