What "way" has the camera industry actually pursued, whether you think it has lost its way or not? I'd suggest the industry has been, for a century or so, finding solutions to problems which make making photographs difficult for the general public.
Once someone had the bright idea of coating clear film with the photosensitive emulsion, photography escaped the clunking glass or metal plates for sheet film and shortly after, roll film. The Box Brownie was one way of using this and made its manufacturer a lot of money selling them, and the film, to the public at large. Refinements followed: different sizes of roll film, reusing 35mm cine film (Leica), different picture formats for the same roll, but all refinements on the first good idea.
Away from large format field cameras, nobody had a truly accurate viewfinder: twin-lens reflexes were better, but were still inaccurate close up, viewfinders mounted close to the lens axis suffered the same. The single-lens reflex was a real solution, with a mirror which was swung out of the lens's path before tripping the shutter, but the image on the ground-glass viewfinder screen was reversed left-to-right. Refinements followed: tripping the shutter also flipped the mirror, a loupe built into the viewfinder hood made focusing easier, a pentaprism did away with the image reversal and the mirror was made to return to the viewing position after making the exposure without the user doing it manually.
Focussing has always been a problem: rangefinders can measure the distance to a subject and were incorporated in compact non-reflex cameras: coupling the lens to the rangefinder was the obvious refinement. Reflex cameras showed the image on a ground glass screen so the user could tell if focus had been achieved. Refinements included areas of extra-fine ground glass, microprisms and split-image circles for better accuracy and a fresnel lens to improve brightness.
Exposure timing was first achieved with a lens cap, but faster emulsions and lenses needed a reliable timed shutter. Leaf shutters were followed by focal-plane shutters, until mechanics gave way to electronic timing, exposure timing could be as short as 1/8000th of a second or stretch to many minutes: these are all refinements on the same theme.
The next big step (arguably) was to include exposure metering based only on what the user saw through the viewfinder: TTL metering had arrived. Refinements followed: centre-weighted, spot, integrating, incorporating the meter with the shutter to make the process automatic. Further refinements gave us variable aperture automatics, "Program" setting varying both shutter speed and aperture, exposure compensation and exposure lock for "difficult" scenarios, metering directly off the film during long exposures, "modes" for sports, portrait, landscape etc.
Then manufacturers solved the TTL-based focusing conundrum and the SLR gained autofocus. Refinements brought phase-detect instead of contrast-based methods, focus sensors grew more complex, more accurate, and covered more of the viewfinder area, some pro cameras introduced subject tracking. Focus motors were moved from the camera body to the lenses and got both quieter and faster.
After a lot of R&D, Kodak lost their way by consigning their pioneering digital photography to the back store. Others picked up on digital and started running and Kodak never recovered from their blunder. The digital photography era started and users loved being able to see straight away what they'd shot instead of getting film developed first and professionals discovered their film & processing budget was slashed by going digital.
Digital ILCs have been refining ever since, in resolution available and in features. The speed at which data could be retrieved from the camera's image sensor climbed, making higher and higher frame rates possible and it also became practical to use it for high-resolution video. The dynamic range has also climbed to easily exceed that of film. The high data rates also made it possible to base the viewfinder on an electronic device reading directly from the camera sensor instead of an optical viewfinder, removing the need for a reflex mirror and its mechanism.
The high data rate read from sensors means software can now automate even more of the business of making a photograph, or recording video. Focusing using the sensor data instead of a separate focus sensor means the whole image area can potentially be read for focus. Focus tracking can now cover almost the whole sensor area and software can detect and track faces, eyes, birds, animals if written to do so. I would argue that these are not new problems solved, but refinements of existing solutions. The latest global shutter sensor(s) likewise.
Since the manufacturers have solved so many of the problems users faced and continue refining their solutions, making it very easy for a user to accurately view, focus, expose and also immediately review a photograph, what justification have we for suggesting they have lost their way?
Or is the problem that we can't imagine what the Next Big Idea will be and worry that there's none coming?
