Apple already sells the world’s most popular camera in the form of the iPhone 4 (based on the number of images posted to Flickr). But what if you wanted something a bit more traditional, with a wider lens, dedicated shutter button, etc, yet still be able to take advantage of the iPhone’s photography apps? Black Design came up with this sweet concept of a camera that is powered by an iPhone.
I’ve always thought Apple selling a camera would be a natural fit for the company—even more so now that they seem dedicated to improving the iPhone’s camera software and hardware. Make no mistake, the iPhone 4 has an awesome camera. But why not put all that newfound knowledge into a dedicated product?
It’s clear that Apple is making iOS flexible enough to run on different types of hardware.
What is the AppleTV if not a similar concept? It runs iOS and even uses much as the same internal hardware as the iPhone and iPad.
Apple’s stated mission for new products is that they have to be class defining and offer something no one currently does. It’s the huge number of camera and image-editing apps available for the iPhone that would allow Apple to offer a best-in-class camera experience—developers wouldn’t have to do much to their apps for an iOS-based iCamera, if at all. Just think what apps they’d come up with if given SDK access to the equivalent of a Canon EOS Mark II’s hardware.
Check out the gallery below for all of Black Design’s concept images.
I would absolutely love a “DSLR” type camera that I could slide my iPhone into to control it.
Big, big problem. Apple updates the iPhone pretty darn often. The iCamera or what ever it would be called would become obsolete within a year or two.
Now to be fair, the iPhone could become an iPod touch/iCamera device when the user upgrades to the next iPhone. That said, the iCamera would have to be pretty cheap in order for someone like me to want to grab it. By cheap, I’m thinking less than $300. Much more and I would just be considering a true DSLR since they would not be much more in price.
Now find a way of attaching “ANY” iPhone to an existing DSLR camera to use as a control device/view screen, or iPad for that matter. :)
I was thinking more along the lines of a standalone camera from Apple that runs iOS.