Why do New Cameras (both digital and film) abandon the traditional controls?

[bart feliciano]

I was playing around in the store with a newfangled auto robo camera

and was utterly dumbfounded by the interface.

 

The controls for modern cameras are astoundingly bad!

 

Why don't they make the traditional controls available and THEN worry

about how to address the whizzy whazzy robo controls?

 

I almost dropped an expensive camera because its bleeping caught me by

surprise.

 

It's like replacing a car's steering wheel with some touch screen

slider. Or having to dig through menus to accelerate.

 

I sure hope future digital cameras have the traditional controls on

them (then maybe an additional joystick for the other stuff)

 

Why don't the new cameras (both digital and film) have the traditional

controls?

 

Grrrrr...

[chad_hahn]

You might remember that the F4 had traditional controls, because Nikon said that Professionals were hesitant to change.

 

It confuses me as well, some cameras don't allow you to physically change the f-stop, you have to turn a jog wheel or something.

 

This is why I got rid of almost all my electronic cameras and go with ancient iron the M4 and F2

[henry_ting2]

The main reason is cost. Mechanical parts and functions require toolings, labourous assembly and adjustments etc. Switches (a simple electronic contact) and software algorithm (programs) are a lot cheaper and upgradable by rewriting programs. That's how Bill Gates becomes to be the richest man on the planet.

[charles barcellona www.bl]

Captain Proton would approve (for Voyager fans).

 

I know Canon has no controls on the lens for aperture, so its on the body someplace, depending on the body. What I really dont like on the Canon bodys, even though I use them, is the back door wheel. Its always getting turned, and the lens opening, or exposure correction, is going to change. It ought to have positive firm stops like a lens stop IMHO.

 

Just another reason I haven't touched an SLR in two years ('cept the Hasselblad)

[terry_rory]

These 'new' interfaces ARE traditional to a whole generation of Playstation users / digi-camcorder jockeys / palm pilot users / MP3 listeners / WAP phone customers etc. It is just that YOU are getting older. They are not bad or difficult controls to use if you have grown up comfortably with all this 'new' stuff.

 

In fact I know people in their 60 and 70s who are quite comfortable with producing thir own digital camcorder home 'movies' and cheerfully edit them / dub music / add subtitles etc. They are also comfortable with digital P&S camera's, PC's, e-mail and the internet and Photo-Shop. It tends to be the very old and the very young who are comfortable with progress. It is the middle aged (like me?) who get twitchy about change and want to cling on to the past.

[raymond_tai]

I'll have to agree with Henry here. Precision mechanical linkages cost more to manufacture than chips and micromotors. Just think mechanical vs. quartz watches and the differences they fetch.

[seth_hosler]

A nice alternative is the Minolta interface: Full electronic control that feels mechanical.

 

My principal point of agreement with you--and this goes for stereos as well as cameras--is that I wholly and viscerally object to the replacement of knobs and dials with buttons.

 

Maybe I am just becoming an old man (at 28!), but II just hate fiddling with buttons--especially buttons with multiple functions.

[joey]

Try handling a Maxxum 7 for a few minutes... the interface is incredible! I too have a thing for the old mechanical controls, but I get enough of that with my medium format kit. The Maxxum 7 really does have a nice interface, though, as far as electronic cameras go.

[steve_barnett2]

The high end Canon EOS cameras, like the EOS3 and 1v are paradigms of easy control, and they have no conventional dials at all, just buttons. It is hardly necessary to read the manual to get the thing working in all normal modes, just so long as you know something about photography first, like the difference between aperture priority and shutter priority. The instruction book is necessary for the more clever functions, and would even tell Charles that he could turn the rear wheel (shutter, aperture, or focus) off!

[nigel whitaker]

I find that some 'traditional' cameras can also be confusing, there's always some small lever or button, that is overlooked, until someone else points out that it's a useful feature, like mirror lock up for example. At least Canon print icons next to most of the buttons (I know some aren't immediately decipherable, but at least they are standard across the brand).

[gerry_szarek]

The SLR manufactures are trying to kill off all the M Leica users!

 

Seriously the reason for their going fully digital in Canon's case is purely cost, it also allowed them to design one type of lens interface for all camera bodies. I haven't a clue about Nikon, etc.

 

Now on the 10D in M mode you have 2 wheels one for aperture and one for shutter speed (it's nice), however on the 300D (Rebel Digital) you have one wheel only, to get the other setting you need to press a button AND turn the wheel (YUCK).

 

Car radio's are the worst affenders, with those stinken little buttons give me 2 knobs and be done with it.

 

Gerry

[jay_.]

And I thought you guys didn't agree with me ;>)

[albert knapp md]

Charles is quite right. WE are getting older ! We must adapt or

suffer. Remeber all those horse carriage makers one hundred

years ago ? Some jumped on the combustion engine

juggernaut, but the bulk failed to and perished. Sic transit gloria !

[bob haight]

The industry can now replace hardware (camera bodies) every year or so with consumers, in this throw away age, instead of people keeping mechanical camera bodies forever.

[kevin m.]

"Car radio's are the worst affenders, with those stinken little buttons give me 2 knobs and be done with it"

 

Hear, hear. I'm about to take a crowbar to the dashboard of our Volvo to rip out its stupid factory radio. 87 micro buttons and still no search/seek function I can find!

 

So much bad design out there. Showoff engineers trying to seduce know-nothing consumers.

[jay_.]

Exactly why I'll give up photography if I'm reduced to using a digital camera. I may not be able to avoid everything in life that's geared to a generation raised in video arcades but I sure as hell don't have to spend megabucks on a hobby that's been hijacked by computer geeks whose brains were hardwired to Gameboys at birth.

[william_henry_hurry]

I'm fully agreed with JAY, Me too I'll give-up photography if films-cameras ended.-

[carey_russ]

Bart said: It's like replacing a car's steering wheel with some touch screen slider. Or having to dig through menus to accelerate.

 

Have you seen or attempted to use BMW's ``i-Drive''? They're getting there, it's even more counterintuitive and aggravating then their radio buttons....

[jeroen dommisse]

You people should definitely check the upcoming Panasonic Lumix DMC-LC1. Someone over there in Japan lent his ear to the Leica fanbase and designed a very Leica-alike digital camera with a 28-90 Vario Summicron... All hand-operated!

 

http://pcweb.mycom.co.jp/news/2003/10/02/13.html (in Japanese)

[john_r._fulton_jr.]

>>>Bart said: It's like replacing a car's steering wheel with some touch screen

slider. Or having to dig through menus to accelerate. <<<

 

Bart, I drove a Mercedes S600 recently. The radio completely dumbfounded

me. It had a grid of buttons and---I'm not making this up--I couldn't even figure

out how to turn it on. OTH, the S600 with it's V12 really doesn't need a radio.

There's plenty of entertainment available under the right foot. :->)

[joel_matherson]

A study I saw done here in Australia on the reasons for rapidly increasing child obesity cited that fewer children are going outside to play and sit for hours just playing games in front of computers. I have also heard one teenager say he didnt feel he should have to go for a driving test because he was an expert at Playstation Rally games! I agree with Jay, when computer geeks start designing products user friendly stuff goes out the window. One example recently came to mind when I was shopping for a new mobile phone. I researched the model most suited to me and went in to purchase it, the sales guy said to me that it didnt have a coloured screen. I said that it didnt have a camera or anything in it so why was that necessary and he said anyone whos anybody has a colour screen these days. I replied that my reason for using a mobile phone was to phone people and when the phone was at my ear I probably wouldnt appreciate the coloured display. He said I was being old fashioned. I went somewhere else.

[xavier_dalfort]

YEs, those cameras are far from the cameras we know.

 

As per comment, I think it is time to re-invent the camera obscura and pin-hole shoe box using medical plan film (BW film for Xrays)

 

I've seen on the Nikon the histogram display of the picture. Thus it enables to modify immediately the colorimetry of the pictures.

 

Sorry, it requires too much training, I give in!

 

But it's not because you master a play station game that you have the imagination that creates an image.

 

FWIW.

[al_kaplan1]

Jay, your remarks here are in complete agreement with my thoughts on the matter, but not your usual caustic self! You got that cold that's making its way around South Florida? Something is affecting you! The radio in my Toyota truck has been on the same station since I bought it 8 years ago. I'm not about to risk having to spend another hour trying to find the station again. I can't risk trading in the truck on a new one because the radio still has an analog volume knob!

[majid]

The lack of an aperture ring on Canon bodies allows (among other things) autoexposure on their tilt-shift lenses. The mechanical linkages to transfer the aperture setting to a tilted and/or shifted diaphragm would be too expensive and unreliable (indeed, Nikon does not offer AE on its PC lenses).

 

The twin dial setup on my 10D is no harder to use than the rings on my M6 and Summicron 50 (and I get feedback on the shutter speed and aperture in the viewfinder). If you use ultrasonic lenses on Canons and Nikons, you can also override focus manually at any time.

 

My only (minor) gripe is they don't offer half-stop aperture changes like Leica does, but I usually meter in Program mode and then alter to taste with program shift and exposure compensation rather than dialling in the aperture and shutter speed directly.

 

Digital cameras have actually improved the user interface of modern automated cameras as the on-screen menus on the LCD have meaningful text rather than impossible-to-memorize custom function codes.

[kevin m.]

In the latest issue of the <i>New Yorker</i> magazine, there's a cartoon that captures this perfectly:

<p>

A woman is looking over the goods at an electronics store and asks the man behind the counter, <i>"Got anything newer and more useless?"</i>