Indestructible change

The Newer, Faster Face of Innovation

As technology continues to improve I am amazed at the new products and services that appear each day.   Seeing new products change their face so rapidly makes it difficult to keep up!  Innovation and creativity play a very important role in the success of products today.  It seems that everyone has some desire to have the latest, most efficient or “coolest” product on the market, putting pressure on product developers to keep up.

I have a love for taking pictures and though it is not as much of a hobby as it was freshman and sophomore years here at UT, I still love looking at the new digital cameras that are in stores.  Every time I go to Best Buy it seems there is a new camera with a new optical/digital level of zoom or larger LCD screen, it is hard to keep up! Most recently and probably the most innovative change I have seen in digital cameras is the touch screen LCD. 

In middle school, as I was packing for summer camp, one of the key items I had to have was my disposable camera to document all the memories.  I always tried to convince my mom to let me take her 35mm camera with an extra roll of film but her reply was, we’ll stop by the drug shop and get you a disposable”.  I eventually got my very own camera for my 12^th birthday and loved that heavy thing.  It got rather expensive developing film and then buying more film thus; I was not the avid user of my 35mm camera as I thought I would be.

            Thinking back to what cameras used to be like and where they are today is incredible to me.  In my lifetime, I have seen the transfer from using film in your everyday usage cameras to now more complex, digital file storage.

In the 1800s, Kodak cameras were sold with the film already loaded inside and users had to send the entire camera in to get the film developed.  It wasn’t until the 1900s that consumers were able to use 35 mm film and develop their own photos.  Now, in the 2009 camera users can take pictures and develop them themselves with new printer capabilities or simply upload and keep them on their computer. 

A simple little chip can hold hundreds of photos compared to a roll of film that withheld 24 exposures.  With this technology, it is easier to capture special moments in life.   The ability to take multiple pictures of one event with a digital camera is much easier to get a good picture compared to the cost of wasting multiple exposures on your 35mm camera.

Since the digital camera came out in the 1990s there have been incredible improvements in its performance.  Digital Camera manufacturers have made these cameras very small and increased the size of the LCD screen for more convenient usage.  Despite the size of these cameras they are still able to carry an incredible zoom power and shutter speed.  The industry continues to innovate and improve camera features to better serve the consumer. 

As mentioned in the article, “The New, Faster Face of Innovation” experiments are becoming more efficient and more pervasive as IT improves.  In using experiments to find out what kind of improvement to make next on the digital camera they have found it important to make this product unbreakable.  As digital cameras are often tossed around and thrown into backpacks or purses they don’t have a long lifespan.  In discovering this though experiments and customer experience producers have found a way to create a unbreakable and waterproof camera.  To me, this is the best invention yet in the digital camera era.  My camera has been through it all and is on its last leg, knowing there is a replacement camera out there that can go through it all and remain standing is great news to hear!