-designing and manufacturing imaging/cmos chips at scale is very hard and expensive. Also - camera companies, especially large Japanese ones, are not the most agile organisations
-alternatives to bayer sensors (like Foveon) have not been commercial successes. My guess is that we will have better alternatives to current digital imaging, it will just take time because in an area with little competition profits are maximised with incremental, slow updates. Right now Sony sets the speed
-the light field stuff is super interesting, but I have a feeling it will be more successful in displays (especially VR/goggle displays) than in cameras. For cameras post-shot focus can be done with computational photography (like with the recent Android default camera app) or even faked with 2d post effects like in many instagram clones - most consumers don't care
-very much looking forward to rec2020 and higher dynamic range video becoming the norm. There is no reason to be stuck with 8bit recording formats even for consumer devices
-I remember reading dynamic range sensitivity with human eyes is related to field of view, so a display that is only in the foveal part of the vision - even if it can pump up huge dynamic range - might not be a good match for the eyes
Sony's doing some fantastic things right now, and I can only hope they gain enough traction to see things through. The RX100-III is bloody impressive, although I'd still like it if I could take stills at 4K/Rec.2020
As for the eye, it's both field of view and ambience, so cameras are hit twice when it comes to overcoming a hurdle: they can only do absolute capture rather than contrast, and their apertures (which control how much light hits the sensor at all) aren't particularly dynamic so they can't microadjust.
Still, there's lot of promise out there, it'll just... take a while. A Foveon-style light field sensor without the noise of the Foveon X3 (its gamut was HUGE, much bigger than Rec.2020) can have my money as fast as I can throw it at the screen, really.
sony have a lot of traction, they have the majority of the imaging chip market. Rxiv is going to be my next pocket camera, check it out. And will probably pick up a sigma dp3 Merrill on eBay, there is something wonderful about the detail it resolves.
Blackmagic is another cool company, they don't make chips but their FPGA based RAW video cameras rock and they put out more firmware updates for all of their cameras in a year that Sony etc do in 10 years.
I'm using an RX100m3 as my pocket camera right now (after half a year, I'm still rarely using the EVF though, so I guess I could've got an m2 instead and saved a few hundred) but I've been eyeing Black Magic's hardware for a while. That EF mount 4K Cinema Camera looks delicious, although right now still a little pricey.
-designing and manufacturing imaging/cmos chips at scale is very hard and expensive. Also - camera companies, especially large Japanese ones, are not the most agile organisations
-alternatives to bayer sensors (like Foveon) have not been commercial successes. My guess is that we will have better alternatives to current digital imaging, it will just take time because in an area with little competition profits are maximised with incremental, slow updates. Right now Sony sets the speed
-the light field stuff is super interesting, but I have a feeling it will be more successful in displays (especially VR/goggle displays) than in cameras. For cameras post-shot focus can be done with computational photography (like with the recent Android default camera app) or even faked with 2d post effects like in many instagram clones - most consumers don't care
-very much looking forward to rec2020 and higher dynamic range video becoming the norm. There is no reason to be stuck with 8bit recording formats even for consumer devices
-I remember reading dynamic range sensitivity with human eyes is related to field of view, so a display that is only in the foveal part of the vision - even if it can pump up huge dynamic range - might not be a good match for the eyes