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Microsoft's second annual Pro Photo Summit opened today in Redmond, WA with a keynote speech by Microsoft CTO David Vaskevitch and a series of forward-looking technology presentations. The event gathers about 400 photographers and digital imaging industry professionals for two days of presentations and panel discussions on the business and technology of photography.
In his keynote address, Vaskevitch predicted that over the next two years, 12- to 36-megapixel cameras will become the norm for serious photographers and camera phones with increased computing power will become a growing presence in the snapshot photography market. Emphasizing the importance of software innovations and wireless networking, Vaskevitch outlined a vision of the photographic future in which “everything about the process of capturing, storing, organizing, sharing, editing, telling stories with, and working with pictures becomes natural, automatic, immersive, and fun.” He underscored the relevance of mobile imaging technology with predictions that within about five years, camera phones will be more powerful than the most advanced and expensive computers in use today, incorporating six to ten processors, more than 100GB of storage, and up to 5GB of main memory.
The forward-looking Microsoft technologies demonstrated on the first day of the Pro Photo Summit included a tool that attaches a photographer's shoot information from an Outlook calendar to relevant image files, the HD View gigapixel panorama creator, and Photosynth, a program that combines multiple images to create large, navigable composites that is currently in development by Microsoft Research.
Another useful Microsoft Research technology presented was a Faithful Color Fill Flash system that combines two images of the same subject, one taken with flash and one without. The system's algorithms allow photographers to obtain appropriate white balance in mixed lighting, adjust flash exposure after the shot, and effectively double a flash's guide number.
Details on the Summit are available on Microsoft's newly revamped Pro Photo Web site. And stay tuned to PopPhoto.com for more updates later this week.
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