[RioRico]

Nikon Shows Off Rather Dull Future Camera Concepts | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

The Multi-Ball, a camera with many, many spherical eyes arranged on yet another, larger sphere.
The Big Screen Camera, a big LCD screen with a pair of handles and a small camera embedded somewhere inside.
And a couple others that will probably never ever be produced either, but they're better than an iPhone.

Are we excited yet?

[Clicker]

The concepts are given to the designers who smoked bad weed

[Digitalis]

I don't even think THC could mess someone up THAT bad. That first design reminded me of the floating torture droid from star wars.

[macTak]

Clearly these are more design concept prototypes than practical future camera concept prototypes. It's a pity then that the designs are so poor....

[RioRico]

Well, the SLR-on-a-stick looks interesting. Sort of. But is it actually holdable?

Nikon Shows Off Rather Dull Future Camera Concepts | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

[Mr. B]

SLR-on-a-stick

good one

[Clavius]

... a DSLRsicle...

[Boris]

No pun intended, but these look certainly more creative to me than Pentax Q that made it all the way to production.

[adr1an]

No pun intended, but these look certainly more creative to me than Pentax Q that made it all the way to production.

Ahh but thats the beauty of a Design Concept... You don't have to worry yourself with pesky details like the cost of Production, Retooling factories, Marketing, Support, Patents, Licensing... and lots of the time - Even being a functioning device!! (Oh the number of 'passive' concepts I have seen )

People quite often mistake the point of Design Concepts - Just look at the way people heap crap onto nearly every Japanese Concept Car... the point is to test 'concepts' - not produce a 'product'... they are two very very different things

Take any 'pipe dream' and wrap some modelling clay around it and sure it can be impressive... but its about 1/10th of getting a product to market Heck - Personal JetPacks is probably a fantastic example of this Or Room Temperature SuperCoductors (Physics be damned!! )....

[Tonto]

For those that missed it this was a pretty cool concept for a camera.
Canon Wonder Camera Concept promises single-lens perfection (video) -- Engadget

[Boris]

adr1an, Donna Dubinsky used to carry a piece of wood carved in a very special way in her pocket. Apple's Newton used to have handwriting recognition back in the previous century. More on topic of Pentax - the odd looking Pentax concept of a small camera with interchangeable lens (shown some time along with K1 or whatever was the name of the camera based on MZ-S and Philips sensor) may have been a mental catalyzer for m43 cameras... Sadly Pentax hadn't yet surprised us with serious innovation in this regard. But then again Pentax is not Ferrari of the industry...

So, somebody's "Design Concept" a.k.a. dream can become your or my reality with time. Thus, it makes no sense to downplay things that look odd. Usually, like it seems you pointed out, there is a great distance between a concept and its realization, but until you step on the road, you don't start moving, or do you?

[adr1an]

...snip...

Umm - Thats what I was pointing out.. perhaps my quoting of your original complaints about these looking way better than a Pentax Q confused you.

I was pointing out design concepts can not only look way better or 'cooler' than something that has to be produced does , but it also often has to not even function like a 'proper one' which again something 'in production' like the Pentax Q - needs to. This is exactly as you pointed out even applicable to a piece of wood in place of a production device... to compare a production product with a design concept- in any manner - is just unfair to either product or concept... The closest you could come is comparing it to what design concepts people threw around 5 years ago - when R+D on the Q Commenced. Can't even begin to compare them to todays design concepts...

I think you need to re-read my post...