The photo is of actor Paul Rudd, and it was taken by my daughter. Look at all those cameras. It's crazy, but nearly everyone you know has a camera at the ready, all the time!

Look at how small they've become. I don't think the trend to smaller-still has ended.

Take the announcement this week from OmniVision Technologies as an example. It has two new CMOS image sensor chips coming. Those chips are the receiving end for light that flows through a camera's lens.

From OmniVision's release: "Both sensors can output data in full 5 MegaPixel resolution at 15 frames per second (fps), and record 720p high definition (HD) video at 60 fps, or 1080p at 30 fps. In QVGA resolution, both sensors can output data at 120 fps, ideal for slow motion preview."

1080p is real-deal HDTV. Very impressive.

"But Geoff," you are probably saying, "there are already pretty nice cameras that do HDTV." Uh, right. But this is different. This will shoot HDTV on a cellphone.

That's crazy, again!

The image sensor is just one part of the HDTV chain. Cellphones, by virtue of their size, have notoriously bad optics. High def video from this size device might be a Pyrrhic victory with little actual quality gain.

This will not replace high end gear, yet. However, the guys I work with who haul cameras all day see new breakthroughs like this as just the kind of news their collective backs have been screaming for.