One can pursue this thread on many levels, "What is the future of Painting? What about glowing nanoparticles embedded in oil?" The future and history of any artistic pursuit can be analyzed on infinite levels. I think view cameras and platinum printing are cool! Optics really is not my area of engineering. In "professional" digital equipment the trend has been towards more pixels, on a bigger substrait (so we can reuse our old 35mm film lenses). [It sure would be nice to make use of my 20mm wide-angle again someday...] What I wonder is, how much SMALLER is it possible to make the sensor before the size of each individual pixel cell comes up against some physical law? Smaller means less battery, cheaper, and faster. [It also, with today's technology, means more noise, which may be the physical limitation.] With smaller sensors I'd invision the little "hat" camera, that could be capturing HDTV as I walk down the street. With the smaller sensor it should be possible to build a small 14-600mm F/1.2 zoom, that would fit in the "hat" camera. With smaller sensors, the speed should increase. Forget about spot metering. My camera/computer should evaluate the exposure of EVERY pixel, on the fly, at the instant of taking the shot! Actually, it should take a couple shots, before and after I actually press the button. The camera's reflexes to capture the ideal moment should be better than my aging fingers. The biggest advance, which I hope happens soon, is a practical way to zap dust off the sensor! In the near term I think there will be advances in storing, retrieving, and displaying the results. Flat panel wall-hangings will open up new ways of using stills, video, and sound. There really must be a better way for me to find where in my hundreds of CD's is the pic of Aunt Bertha at the Beach. Personally, I do not understand the "camera phone" trend. But it is safe to say the trend will continue, and portable retrieval and viewing, and sharing, will evolve.