One thing I don't get about digital camera companies (writing "digital" before "camera" is starting to feel a bit like writing "Automatic" before "computer") is why they all seem to be focused on making cameras that take better and better pictures. More megapixels, better lenses. I don't care about any of that stuff, and I bet a lot of other people think the same way. I wonder why digital camera makers don't think more "Lomo" or "Photoblaster" and less "Leica". Even the basic, measurable features could be looked at this way. I have no interest in upgrading my 3.2 mp camera to 5 or whatever, just like I thought my 1.3 mp camera was fine before it got smashed. But I would think about buying one that could take pictures way faster, or could take pictures in the dark better.
Is there such a thing as a digital polaroid camera? I don't care how crap the pics are, but I want a digital camera that lets you take a pic, then say, "oh that's a good one", hit the green button, and print it out. And then print out another copy for your friend. That way you don't have to sweat taking bad pics and blowing a $1 polaroid shot like you do with a real polaroid. Why don't they have these? How hard could this be to build?
What I really want though is a camera that looks and acts totally like a normal still camera, but secretly, its always recording video and audio. It's actually a video camera and whenever its "on" its recording. It has a buffer where it stores the last 30 seconds of video. The old video is continuously getting tossed. When you press the shutter button, it saves the last 30 seconds to the long term storage. When you're at somebody's wedding or something and somebody says, "ok, get together, let's take a picture." Everyone gets all smooshed together and puts on their camera face, and the pics come out basically the same. What I'd like to have is that 30 seconds while everybody was figuring it out. The tail end of the joke, somebody putting his drink down, somebody picking hers up, somebody fixing his hair. You'd hear the off-camera voice of the photographer going "say cheese", everyone would smile, and the video would end there. It would be super cool to have a book of those that was years and years long, but arranged like a normal photo album, and the static presentation would be just that last frame, so it would look like normal photos. But you could click on each one and see the video of your friends teasing each other at high school graduation, or somebody pulling your friend that always groans about pictures back into the frame. It would be on some serene melancholy action.
