[clra]

Great article.

I was hoping that the author would add something about the UIs of these cameras. The bodies of modern DSLRs are jampacked with every kind of knob, control, button, dial, and dongle that you can possibly think of.

To a large extent, that's kind of the whole point — these cameras are for professionals and professionals ostensibly need to be able to adjust every aspect of their picture. But in practice, 95% of users aren't using 95% of these adjusters 95% of the time. Most people are changing their aperture, exposure compensation, and a small handful of other things, and yet, dozens of other readily-available and features are still bolted onto the camera that get used roughly never.

There are other downsides besides complexity too. Fuji's mirrorless X100 series is a popular camera with consumers and for years it's shipped with an exposure compensation dial right at the top edge of its body. For just as many years the thing's been loose enough and with little enough inset from the outside that whenever you throw it in a bag or something, there's a pretty reasonable chance that it'll come out cranked all the one way or the other. Sometimes you don't notice, and there goes your shot.

The possible fixes are pretty easy — either move it in so it's less prone to accidental adjustment, or take the units off the thing so that it could optionally be reset every time you turn the camera on, but Fuji will probably never fix the problem – the way things are is the way things are, and they should stay that way.

It would be insanely great if instead of just cargo culting what they themselves have done in the past and what everyone else is doing, camera manufacturers started to think about optimizing these designs for the benefit of the user a little bit. Unfortunately, they never seem to.

[ioulian]

> The bodies of modern DSLRs are jampacked with every kind of knob, control, button, dial, and dongle that you can possibly think of.

That's what I actually like on the more "expensive" camera's, the ability to control everything just with single click/rotation.

I'm mostly shooting manual, on my Canon 5D I have a dial for apperture, smaller dial for shutter speed and a knob for the focus point(s). When I used Canon 500D from my friend, I couldn't use it in manual as this requires you to push one button, to then change the shutter speed with a dial (the same one that controls the apperture (or vice versa I can't remember anymore)).

But I think canon is doing it alright as the "entry" level DSLR's like 500D are meant for normal users who just want a point and click camera for most of the time, and don't need that many knobs and dials. While the professional versions have a lot of controls.

But then again, this all goes to personal preference, and most users will buy a camera that they like to use, with or without many controls. I haven't seen anyone with a 5D saying "I'm not happy with total control of my camera", but I heard more people say "Damn, I wish you could change this value much faster and not go to the touchscreen"

[Steve44]

> That's what I actually like on the more "expensive" camera's, the ability to control everything just with single click/rotation

I use Nikon and have gone from D200, D300, and now a D700 because I love the quick and direct access to a lot of the controls. The consumer bodies are great cameras but once you become accustomed to the layout it is really useful and logical. I presume the Canon pro range is similar.

[matwood]

Nikon is known to be one of the best at quick access through shortcut physical buttons. The problem with Nikon is discoverability is bad, but once you're in the know it's awesome. According to some, the shortcuts are better than what Canon provides. I've never even held a Canon camera so I can't comment. :)

[clra]

Yeah, I'd definitely concede that some people are making pretty frequent use of this stuff, but I meant to suggest that if you really started looking around, you might be in the minority. Optimizing for the majority of buyers would probably involve removing a few things that most people are probably never going to use.

> But then again, this all goes to personal preference, and most users will buy a camera that they like to use, with or without many controls. I haven't seen anyone with a 5D saying "I'm not happy with total control of my camera", but I heard more people say "Damn, I wish you could change this value much faster and not go to the touchscreen"

There might be a few other options for design around this type of thing. I really like Leica's approach here for example: keep the settings that are really often needed on the body, relegate the less-frequently used features to menus, but then provide accessible custom profiles that are totally user-configurable and which can be switched between easily. After doing a few test shoots with a Leica Q, it feels like a nearly perfect compromise to me.

[iamatworknow]

>Optimizing for the majority of buyers would probably involve removing a few things that most people are probably never going to use.

You think people aren't buying cameras on the level of the 5D because there are too many buttons and knobs, and not because the market for a $2.3k US camera is small to begin with? The thing could be completely smooth and still only dedicated camera aficionados or professionals would buy it at that price.

[oliwarner]

> features are still bolted onto the camera that get used roughly never

I see your argument about making sensible choices on smaller form factors but DSLRs aren't point and shoot.

There's only one button I "roughly never" use on my D750 (the little "i" button). Everything else gets a hot supper. And it's not just that I use those features, I mean I use them all the time. In environments where I need the muscle-memory to affect them quickly. Things like ISO, bracketing, flash and focus and aperture priority modes. I don't think I'm unique.

I won't tolerate a camera that forces me to disengage with what I'm doing so I can fanny around in a menu system.

[jpatokal]

> The bodies of modern DSLRs are jampacked with every kind of knob, control, button, dial, and dongle that you can possibly think of. ... But in practice, 95% of users aren't using 95% of these adjusters 95% of the time.

Amen. I've been casually shooting with a Nikon D70 and now a D7000 for around 15 years now. Here's an illustrated guide to every single physical control on the D7000, which isn't even a high-end camera:

http://kenrockwell.com/nikon/d7000/users-guide/controls.htm

...and for many of those I'd need to read the manual to find out what they even do (Fn? Lv?) and I struggle to find any reason I'd need to twiddle with, say, the image compression (QUAL) so urgently that it needs a dedicated shortcut button.

[the_af]

> But in practice, 95% of users aren't using 95% of these adjusters 95% of the time.

Not a snark: maybe 95% of users didn't need a semi-pro DSLR and should have gone with a smartphone or a point-and-shoot instead? The remaining 5% need those knobs and controls, and would be left with a less useful camera if they were removed or simplified.

[iamatworknow]

I'm in that 5%, for sure. When looking for a smaller camera than my DSLRs to carry around I was tempted by the Ricoh GR and Sony RX100 series, but ultimately their lack of manual controls turned me away and I went with Fuji's X100T.

[jdeibele]

I want long lenses for taking pictures of my kids playing soccer. The phone on my camera just isn't going to work for that. Nor will point-and-shoot telephotos because they're too slow to focus.

[clra]

> ...and for many of those I'd need to read the manual to find out what they even do (Fn? Lv?) and I struggle to find any reason I'd need to twiddle with, say, the image compression (QUAL) so urgently that it needs a dedicated shortcut button.

Right! Physical buttons and dials are great, but after a certain point adding new ones isn't an improvement to the interface anymore. Too many of them makes the interface overly complex and more prone to accidental adjustment. `QUAL` is a perfect example of something that belongs in a menu.

[cageface]

I've been using a Sony A6000 lately, which has a great auto mode that will pick pretty much every parameter for a shot for you and do a good job of it. As you learn more about the camera and photography you can start taking more control.

However, I've found that smart phone cameras have gotten so good that they match or even beat the A6000 for a lot of shots so I tend to use it only for very specific kinds of pictures now.

[sliverstorm]

They are already aware of this, and already tweak cameras accordingly. Have you ever compared the buttons, switches and dials on a Rebel to a 5D? Every time I try to shoot with a Rebel I find myself wondering where all the buttons I want to use have gone.

[1_2__4]

Maybe they HAVE thought of these things, and what you think consumers want in cameras is wrong? I disagree with almost everything you want for cameras and would consider them worse products if they implemented them. Not everything should be a shitty tap-screen mobile interface awash in whitespace and crappy icons. Physical controls are better, when you don’t have time or attention to fiddle with displays. That you don’t understand that is not a failure on the part of camera companies.

[mark-r]

There are actually very few controls that you need to fiddle with while you're taking the picture. Take white balance for example - you only need to set it when lighting conditions change, it's very unlikely that you need to change it on every shot. A touchscreen for that would be better than having to scroll through the choices with a control wheel or buttons.

The modern trend of replacing descriptive text with icons needs to die.

[leejo]

> Sometimes you don't notice, and there goes your shot.

That's because you're not using the EVF, which you should be. The single most useful feature combination I find on the x100 series cameras is the EVF combined with the exposure compensation dial. This relates to the following annoyance from the article:

> No focus information in viewfinder

Any need for this is negated by a well implemented electronic viewfinder. Fuji are killing it on this aspect. An EVF will give you: exact framing, exposure, white balance, focus, and depth of field. You get none of this in a traditional optical viewfinder. It completely removes the need to "chimp" and you can concentrate on shooting photographs rather than reviewing what you just shot.

[clra]

> That's because you're not using the EVF, which you should be. The single most useful feature combination I find on the x100 series cameras is the EVF combined with the exposure compensation dial.

That's a fairly strange assumption to make. A performant EVF is one of Fuji's greatest innovations, and also one of its most conspicuous. Of course I'm using it.

Unfortunately, sometimes you're shooting from the hip (literally or figuratively), and not verifying every setting before you do. Sometimes, the EVF is almost unusable because you're out in bright sunlight. The existence of an EVF doesn't compensate for poor body design.

[leejo]

If you're shooting from the hip then, by definition, you're not using the EVF. I'm surprised you've had problems in bright sunlight, I can't ever recall the EVF being hindered by that (I've spent three years shooting a project with the local ski club with the camera so it's fair to say I've seen plenty of bluebird days).