WVIL, A Glimpse At The Future Of Photography After Cameras Die

As digital cameras have outgrown their bulky origins and continued to miniaturize, some photographers and cinematographers joke that soon the “camera” itself will disappear, leaving just a lens with a chip and a screen on the back of it.

That’s basically what the designer/photography nuts at Artefact have created with their WVIL concept camera, which looks like a DSLR lens with an iPhone stuck to it. But Artefact considers even that radical design as a starting point, not a destination — after all, if your camera is just a lens with a chip in the back, why not make the viewfinder detachable from the lens and really get crazy?

It’s all right there in the name: WVIL stands for “Wireless Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens.” It may only be a concept for now — Artefact has made physical models for ergonomic study and user interface mockups — oh, what a concept it is. “If you look at camera architecture, there’s a missed opportunity that the camera industry has brushed away,” says Markus Wierzoch, the WVIL’s lead industrial designer. “With the first digital cameras, the industry was quick to replace the medium, film, with a sensor, but the rest stayed the same. But modern connectivity opens up a lot of different options, like being able to detach the lens from the viewfinder. What if you could go to a party, mount three or four lenses all over the room, and control them all wirelessly with one ‘camera’?”

Read and see more at Co.Design