By Andrew Fildes and James Ostinga
Cory Sanderson is a 23-year-old Australian industrial design student who hopes to do for the camera what the iPhone did for the mobile phone.
His design for a new kind of camera, the AvTv challenges a few rusted-on conventions of camera design and is a contender in the 2011 Australasian Student Design Awards.
Sanderson has completed an Advanced Diploma of Industrial Design and is currently in his fourth year of the Bachelor of Industrial Design course at the University of Newcastle.
He also works part time in his father’s Camera House store in Newcastle, which means he’s well aware of the problems and possibilities of existing camera designs.
The AvTv seeks to address "feature creep", the problem where designers keep adding new features without considering the implications on the usability of the camera. Sanderson has also identified the "Bigger is Better" delusion – the idea that a bigger camera with a bigger price ticket must take much better photos – in Auto – automatically.
His idea is for an interchangeable lens compact, a bit like a new compact hybrid camera but with a new style of interface. 
The rear screen can be detached and used as a remote for self portraits and long exposures.
Forget Auto mode, the AvTv would remain in a form of aperture priority and shutter priority all the time. Two sliders would be shown on the touch screen – aperture (Av) and shutter speed (Tv).
Slide the shutter-speed slider up and the aperture slider goes down to compensate. Slide the aperture slider down and the shutter-speed slider goes up. Move them together and the ISO compensates to balance the exposure. 
As you increase the aperture value (Av) on the touch-screen the time value (Tv) decreases to balance the
exposure.
The user quickly learns the relationship between the three most important variables in photography. Hit a screen button and you’re in manual mode and can slide in some exposure compensation with either slider.
Sanderson has also come up with some novel ideas to extend the camera’s shelf life. The CMOS sensor and processor can be removed from the original aluminium casing and upgraded as required.
The AvTv would also feature a detachable LCD screen: “The camera back can be removed so that the screen can be used as a photo album or the camera itself can be operated remotely by wi-fi from the LCD display for long exposures.”
This is a short excerpt from "Is this the camera of the future?" published in the latest edition of Digital Photography + Design (June-July 2011). To read the full article and see more images look for the magazine in newsagents or subscribe here.