The 6Sight Future of Imaging Conference this year focused on six important trends in imaging technology — and concluded with a session in which attendees representing business owners, photofinishers, technology developers, media, analysts, and hardware manufacturers voted on how each trend would affect the imaging industry.

6Sight, the imaging technology executive conference for PMA, the Worldwide Community of Imaging Associations, was Nov. 15-17, 2010, at the Sainte Claire Hotel in San Jose, Calif.

iPad awarded for feedback

Illustrating the conference’s international reach: David Moloney, Chief Technology Officer of Movidius in Dublin, Ireland, won the post-conference drawing from among the more than half of all attendees who filed out an evaluation form. An Apple iPad is on its way to this lucky attendee.

New Focus for New Year

The conference returns to San Jose in 2011, but in an earlier season to better accommodate the needs of its members: the sixth edition of the 6Sight Future of Imaging Conference will be June 20–22, 2011. The conference will focus on four primary areas in June: Cameras and Capture devices; Printing and Output; Smart Phones and Mobile Imaging; and Social Imaging.

The votes are in, and…

• Digital Cameras

The conference’s camera coverage kicked off with a rousing keynote from Stanford University Professor Marc Levoy, in which he described leading edge image processing technology that can be implemented in cameras today. His primary position was one endorsed by most of the audience: cameras should be “open” to new imaging algorithms and applications, rather than being limited as they are now to the features the manufacturers think consumers want.

Among his many spot-on opinions, Levoy expressed one sentiment the audience particularly applauded: photography is all about sharing experiences, and today’s cameras do almost nothing for sharing.

6Sight members also think cameras need to be easier to use — there are many features and capabilities never understood or used by most customers — and add built-in internet connectivity. Camera companies should see the potential revenue, open the devices to third-party applications, and make them “smarter” and connected.

• Mobile Imaging and Smart phones

In terms of sales alone, phones with built-in cameras long ago outstripped stand-alone cameras. And in the last few years, 6Sight analyst Tony Henning pointed out, phones have also added innovative applications for all kinds of imaging tasks — a new competitive arena the camera industry hasn’t yet even entered.

Many 6Sight members voted that the disparity is a moot point, however, akin to comparing framing hammers to jack hammers: Different tools have different functions. 6Sight analyst Paul Worthington noted, for years the camera industry has claimed it would stave off encroachment from phones by always adding new functionality, and for years it has done just that. “Every year you can get a $200 camera that takes much better pictures than any phone.” Meanwhile, phones may have added apps, but they still skimp on optics — and good lenses are much more important to good pictures than funny filter tricks. Henning agreed, adding that for important events, no one depends on their phone to capture the memory: “You will always take the best camera with you.”

• Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) combines capture, computation, connectivity and photo display in new ways — for example, overlaying useful or entertaining information atop the live image on a camera phone’s LCD.

Worthington notes AR might not be used by many photographers in the next few years, but “anything innovative in imaging improves the entire photography business: customers see something cool, and even if they can’t do it themselves today, it gets them thinking about photography right now, and spurs use of the camera they already have, or perhaps the purchase of a new model.”

6Sight President, Joe Byrd, pointed out that not only does this futuristic functionality benefit all photography by highlighting useful avenues to pursue, it can in the near future be built into cameras to aid and instruct in image capture and sharing. AR, he lobbied, presents a great opportunity for the imaging business — and a little over half the 6Sight participants agreed with him in the final vote.

• Picture printing and output

Here the message was the loudest and clearest, beginning with views from executives at Fujifilm, HP and Kodak in the AIE Output Summit that opened the 6Sight conference: The photo printing business has to redefine itself from ground up. It can no longer mourn lost revenues from easy-to-sell items, and instead has to move on to higher-margin materials such as custom photo books and poster-sized framed prints.

Audience members also pointed out that a photofinisher has to have an online component to stay in business — and more importantly, that the business itself requires inspiring customers to purchase hard copy output: even as they move from “memories to moments,” customers are interested in “purposeful printing, not incidental” — a gift, an expression — not just printing a 4-by-6 of every image to view and share.

“Social media is the final nail in the coffin of the 4-by-6 print,” observed PMA publisher Gary Pageau. Others agreed, but noted that while users can now easily share photos with friends and family without printing, they are also now getting ever-more feedback on their photos — and that incites more picture taking.

The industry may have lost the easy sale of the 4-by-6, Byrd said, but it can evolve to the higher margin sales. “Photo books are how we will document our lives, something to pass on to our children.”

• Video

Here the audience of 6Sight found a mixed message: yes, digital video today delivers fantastic new tools and capabilities — a mobile phone itself is almost a complete TV broadcast system with which one can capture, edit, and transmit video. The problem, however, is just that: when millions and millions of cameras and phones all capture video, there is almost more video made than there are eyeballs (and time) to watch it.

This issue is only going to be exacerbated as always-on video capture devices come to market, cameras worn all day, every day, recording everything that happens in front of you. On the one hand, no memorable event will be missed just because your camera was in a pocket or at home; on the other, no event will be watched and shared, as there will be far too much content for anyone to pay attention to.

• 3D imaging

As made clear by current slow sales, 3D is not yet the huge consumer electronics phenomenon vendors had earlier this year hoped would follow in the footsteps of sky-high HDTV sales. It is also certainly, however, no fad or flash in the pan: 3D is how we naturally see, of course, with our binocular stereoscopic vision, and all “flat” photography is just a poor attempt to emulate natural perception.

The question today is, how can 3D benefit the photography business? By providing a high-margin solid product, Byrd pointed out — the lenticular print, which displays stereoscopic images by overlaying a plastic lens atop a photo. For weddings, vacations, and other once-in-a-lifetime events, customers will pay a premium for a unique, high-value printed 3D picture. Most consumers can’t make a 3D print at home, Byrd pointed out. “But they will want them, and it is a high margin business.” Worthington added that 3D printing provides a business that can’t be duplicated by Facebook or other social media, as computer and phone displays don’t show 3D. Also, as is often noted in arguments for prints versus screens, human beings are tactile: we like holding things. And a lenticular print in particular rewards holding it, as the perspective changes in 3D as you tilt and pivot the print in your hands.

So today 3D imaging is neither a fad nor a boom —but it is a developing photography solution that can soon be profitable.