Now that LCD projectors are available in pocket sizes, I can’t imagine why somebody hasn’t incorporated one into a cellphone or compact camera.
Today’s invention is to use a pocket projector to project a part of an image or video sequence into the scene being photographed. This offers numerous extra opportunities for digital creativity. The captured images could be processed in-camera and then superimposed, in some modified form, on the target scene.
This might be done with a section of video, so that, for example, a new composite movie could be created of someone dancing at a given instant, together with their movements of a half-second ago.
Similarly, projecting a grid of fine lines onto a scene and then recording the result could provide a cheap, quick alternative to laser scanning for the extraction of 3-D data.
Or, how about projecting one’s personal watermark into one copy of every shot taken? This would allow someone to provide others with access to the watermarked version…which would be very difficult to remove digitally from its interactions with the 3d scene.