Camera then, was all hardware features and functions. All purpose were geared towards crafting out the most useful light-capturing steel-box man can make. This was an early rendition of what camera is:

A few decades after that about 10 years ago this month, Canon introduced the first G series camera. It was basically the same concept with the Canonet 28 pictured above, but how time has mend technology and cameralogy to a different level; film was replaced with its digital counterpart, and thus brings out a totally different kind of consumer expectation of what camera has to bring about; it was all about the picture.

Sad, but true, was how intangible picture quality is, the only tangible norms of how great a camera takes its picture was how many colors, pixels, more-and-mores the little machine can produce, it was all — then — megapixel & [insert tech-marketing terms here], and whether the camera can make good looking picture on the spot regardless its lighting condition — a friend, whom I cannot name here — had a simple testing method of swinging the camera up and down while snapping the picture right at the counter in the camera shop; lightings & composition aside — any camera that can produce something that looks ok on the LCD is deemed great, otherwise, they’re all doomed.

Well, it was only until the world decides otherwise that camera makers started to shift their own focus.

G1 came out on Sept 2000, exactly a decade ago this month. I have no idea what happened to G4 and G8 — Canon skipped to G5 and G9, consecutively — but despite the G-12 naming, the G series has only 10 models to date, wiki has a product history table here.
When G11 was introduced and the S series was resurrected with the superstar S90, it was a beginning of something excitingly right:

• Canon forfeited the megapixel race and decided to move on with IQ (think G11, S90).
• Usable design has once again become a feature that was once lost.
• The good old meets the exciting new.

So the result is this new G12, which the following — I think — is a winning streak:

• High-sensitivity 10 MP CCD sensor, HS System, HDR, DIGIC 4 & RAW support.
• 28mm wide, 5x zoom lens, Hybrid IS
• Vari-Angle LCD, Electronic Level, Front Dial & Manual Mode.
• Front Dial, Full Manual & RAW
• 720p HD movie capture, HDMI support.

I think 10 years is enough, I am loving this pattern and I think I will be getting the G12 like everyone else.

© Apple

What if, suddenly the world go around, and people start to think that our camera should be capable of playing music, albeit from the memory card, or stream your iTunes from your iPods?

What if, suddenly, camera engineers finally figure out how to integrate a multi-touch full body display at the back of your camera and design a highly usable camera interface, just like your iPhones/iPod Touch, and — for god’s sake — reasonable enough to open the cookbook and let people develop apps on it — just like your iPhones/iPod Touch?

The problem is, the other side is doing such a great job at those, and have already accomplish all that, at the same time, slowly implementing highly useful camera technology and features into their cam… (oops, I mean) iPhones & iPod Touches.

That other side if of course none other than Mr. Steve Jobs & The Apple Design & Engineering team, and our side is none other than the obscure anonymous folks with no names and no faces to credit too.

In just a few months time after they first revealed their next generation, 5-megapixel, backlit sensor iPhone 4 camera system, they announced today that their next version of the iOS software 4.1 will include an HDR feature, directly built into their camera app.

Now, let’s savor this moment and allow us to think, what, in recent time that our dear Canon, Nikon, Leica, Olympus & many other imaging giants have done even so much as a built-in HDR feature? Let alone the multi-touch display thing, I’d settle for just an easy-to-use button layout & software operation interface. If they really think they can’t do it, they might as well consider making an iOS app and an iPhone/iPod Touch dock interface at the back of the camera and let us just enjoy taking pictures again.

Right now, my iPhone is practically a better camera than my EOS. I’d like to see it change.