10 cool cameras the world needs today

1) Nikon D3R ‘Remote’

Being trapped behind the camera to shoot is very limiting, like if you’re trying to herd wedding guests into position, hold back pedestrians while you shoot a landmark or photographing timid creatures which won’t appear until you’re 30 feet away. Ordinary wireless remotes are all right, but they don’t show you what the camera sees and you only get a subset of the camera controls. But what if the entire back panel and grip was detachable? It could carry on communicating with the camera body wirelessly so that you still get to check the LCD and work the controls even as you walk away. Is there enough bandwidth in a wi-fi connection for a live LCD update? We manage to watch streaming videos via wireless laptop connections, so why not? We’ve picked the Nikon D3 for this because Nikon already knows plenty about wireless comms, but it could just as easily be a Canon. A neat idea to differentiate the Canon EOS 1Ds Mk IV from the rest, maybe...?

2) Olympus Trip D

Olympus chose the PEN as its inspiration for the first Micro Four Thirds camera, but did it choose the right model? What about the Olympus Trip 35, a basic but top-quality snapshot camera that sold in its millions in from the 1960s to the 1980s? It was plain and simple even then, but had some very useful properties. One was a fixed focal length 40mm lens, which allowed a very big, bright direct-vision viewfinder. Another was click-stop zone focussing using a ring on the lens, while a selenium cell around the lens provided battery-less light metering. Now imagine a Micro Four Thirds version with Olympus’s 17mm pancake lens fixed in place, also with a direct-vision viewfinder, click-stop focussing and solar-powered metering (a button cell inside the camera could store the charge). You’d have a robust, classically simple camera that even your grandma could understand. And Olympus would get to exploit its heritage that little bit more, gain some brownie points for innovation and establish its green credentials. And never mind Lomos and Holgas – this would be a cult camera for the digital age.

3) Sony NEX-Pan

The Hasselblad XPan was an extremely unusual panoramic film compact manufactured between 1998 and 2006 which proved enormously popular with landscape and architectural photographers. It could be used as a regular 35mm compact, but could also be switched to shoot double-width panoramic images, still on 35mm film. In fact, while it was branded a Hasselblad, it was in fact made by Fujifilm... maybe a tie-in between Hasselblad and Sony isn’t so likely, then, but we couldn’t resist the ‘NEX-Pan’ pun. But imagine this: a full-frame sensor in a bigged-up Sony NEX body, taking standard full-frame Alpha/Konica Minolta lenses and with switchable aspect ratios like 3:1 (the original XPan), 16:9, 3:2, 4:3 and even 1:1. Sony’s full-frame sensor would be big enough to deliver top quality even when cropped, and Sony already knows how to make mirrorless cameras.

4) Canon PowerShot SX1 IS Legria

The cheapest full HD Canon Legria camcorder costs the same as the mighty PowerShot SX1 IS, which also shoots full HD, has a 20x wideangle zoom and also, as it happens, shoots massively superior stills, with full auto or manual control and at up to 4fps. So why are we still buying camcorders? If people like that typical camcorder ‘torpedo’ shape, all Canon’s got to do is twist round the SX1’s components like some kind of Transformer toy and we’ve got the perfect hybrid stills/movie camera. The convergence between stills and video is obvious, as is the fact that stills cameras shoot much better video than video cameras do stills. Canon is one of the leaders in the field of full HD stills/video technology so it’s ideally placed to sweep all this old camcorder nonsense aside, once and for all.

5) Nikon CoolPix 9950

OK, so articulating LCDs are useful, but they can also be fragile, fiddly and, by the time you’ve flipped them out and swivelled them into position, visually disorientating. So why oh why oh why did Nikon discontinue the CoolPix 995? For those who don’t remember, this was a camera in two halves, with a meaty pivot in the centre. One half held the lens, the other held the LCD display and controls. You could twist the camera into whatever orientation you needed without even having to think about it, for overhead shots, ground-level macros or portraits. You could get a big, fist-sized grip on both halves and it was a hugely satisfying camera to use. So how about it, Nikon? All it needs is a decent 3-inch 921,000 pixel LCD and a modern 1/1.8-inch sensor (the same size as the old one). Camera design has become deeply conventional, driven more by marketing than design innovation. The world has never needed the Nikon CoolPix 995 more than it does now.

6) PhaseOne 645 digital field camera

PhaseOne’s modular 645 camera system accepts a variety of digital backs and lenses using a design rather like a large medium-format DSLR. Indeed, digital imaging has slowly taken over from that last bastion of film, large-format photography. Or has it? Where’s the digital replacement for the old field camera? Big and simple they might be, but field cameras also have the flexibility offered by lens movements and rack focusing. You can use rising front movements to correct converging verticals and tilt/swivel movements to maximise depth of field where your subject’s on an angled plane relative to the camera. Used properly, a field camera can deliver perspective correction and depth of field difficult to achieve with smaller formats. So why can’t we have a digital field camera with a big LCD on the back instead of a ground glass screen and a lens on a plate at the front connected by old-fashioned bellows and, if necessary, a cable to carry focus, aperture and other data?

7) Flip 2

The Flip is the iPod of digital video. Its breathtaking simplicity means you can forgive it all its shortcomings in terms of specs, features and gadgets. It does a simple job brilliantly, but of course it’s designed for video not stills. But what if it had a bigger 1/2.3-inch sensor to take reasonable quality stills? Keep the fixed focal length lens, because then it won’t need a zoom button or autofocus, and make it fully automatic to keep the operation as simple as possible, just like shooting movies. And above all, keep the shape, because it’s perfectly adapted for one-handed shooting. In fact it’s staggering that camera makers continue to produce compacts with the traditional horizontal design. They’re too awkward to hold, too easy to drop and there’s nowhere to put your fingers without accidentally pressing something. Camera manufacturers need to watch out. They put too much faith in gadgets and too little in ergonomics, leaving the door wide open for simple little devices like the Flip.

8) Kodak Box Brownie D

If Olympus can return to its roots with the PEN, why can’t Kodak? The Box Brownie is an icon of photographic history and celebrated for its low cost and simplicity. And yet Kodak’s devoted all its digital camera efforts into turning out the same predictable digital compacts as everyone else. But imagine a digital camera which is physically just like a Box Brownie. You could have a leatherette case to keep off the scuffs and and a flip-up LCD in the top for shooting either at waist-level or eye-level. The box shape is infinitely practical – you can just put it down anywhere – and the spare internal space (the digital components wouldn’t take up much room) could be converted into compartments for cables, memory cards and spare batteries. The old Box Brownie was a fair old size, true, but a digital version could be a whole lot smaller and still be just as practical.

9) Pentax K-s (‘s’ for Student)

Pentax has a long history of producing simple, affordable and workmanlike cameras and has been particularly popular with colleges. And there are just as many photography students today as there ever were, all of whom want to learn the basics of shutter speeds, apertures, ISOs, focusing and the rest. So here’s the plan: Pentax should take the K-x and remove practically all of of the automation, fitting a shutter speed dial on the top plate and an electronic aperture control ring around the lens. This shouldn’t be too difficult – Canon’s added a similar ring control to the PowerShot S90 and it works brilliantly. Electronic control would mean that Pentax wouldn’t need to re-engineer any of its digital lenses (aperture adjustment is handled by camera bodies these days) but it would still end up with a classic manual camera perfect for students.

10) Ricoh GXR II

The GXR shows that Ricoh is not afraid of a bit of lateral thinking, so here’s a bit more. What if it made a series of camera units consisting of mounts for Canon, Nikon, Pentax or other lenses? You could keep the same GXR body throughout, but swap units according to the lens maker. It might mean some tricky licensing negotiations, but if independent lens makers like Sigma and Tamron can do it with third-party lenses, why shouldn’t Ricoh do it with third-party bodies? You would then have something very interesting indeed – a compact body which would fit your current DSLR lenses via the appropriate unit. You could take it out on days when your DSLR would be just too bulky or keep it as a spare body when you go out on a shoot. These ‘lens’ units would need an APS-C sensor, of course, but Ricoh’s got that already.