(Credit: Panasonic)
In a year filled with camera innovations, we take a nostalgic look back at the year that was in photography.
This year was filled with exciting and innovative breakthroughs — there was the 3D prototype from Fujifilm and an amazing retro concept camera from Olympus at Photokina.
But, it was also the year where digital well and truly took over, with manufacturers slowly reducing production of film cameras and film stock. We also saw another blow for celluloid with the demise of Polaroid.
So, what innovations and trends did we love?
- Micro Four Thirds System
The announcement was a blink-and-miss-it affair at Photokina, with Panasonic and Olympus jointly revealing that they were developing a new photographic system called micro four thirds. It was not so much a revolution as a drastic innovation in digital photography; we saw the first iteration of the world's smallest interchangeable lens system in November with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1. - High-definition video
This was the year when HD video trickled down from high-end camcorders through to mainstream digital cameras, and even dSLRs. Nikon's D90 was the first cab off the rank, with 720p video, but Canon's professional 5D Mark II came back strongly with 1280p toward the end of the year. - Wide-angle lenses
Camera manufacturers were incredibly keen to keep pushing boundaries across the board this year, most notably in making lenses on compact digital cameras wider than before. It seemed that 28mm was the magic number, with some compact models such as the NV24HD from Samsung pushing that to 24mm. - Monster dSLRs
Proving that the megapixel race is on like Donkey Kong, 2008 saw a flurry of big-number dSLRs unleashed onto the market. Sony snuck in and unveiled the 24-megapixel A900. Nikon followed suit in early December with the announcement of the D3X.
Here are the cameras that got our hearts racing this year.
