[daleharvey]

This SDK only works on the top end Fuji's, the cheapest one supported starts at £850 (body only)

Fuji has famously terrible app support, its a nightmare to set up and cuts out constantly, transferring images over wifi is slow and unreliable to the point of it being useless, the remote shutter is unreliable and doesnt have any of the extremely simple to program features that intervalometer's have. You can't shoot tethered unless you have one of the above very expensive cameras.

The whole software ecosystem around cameras is awful, I would love to see some open source community initiatives to be able to control these cameras and extend their functionality but I haven't seen much of that in the photography community.

[KolenCh]

First sentence incorrect. £850 is not top end.

A typical high end camera product would starts at $2000, and nowadays more often than not is $3000+.

A quick search shows the top end of Fuji X mount is $2000+.

And that’s not even the top end of Fuji’s, which goes to the medium format GFX mount.

For your other points, I know you’re talking about app, but Fiji has been famous about their software support in terms of how long they continue to update their firmware. They even market it Kaizen. And it is an objective truth that you can verify by comparing to how often other brands upgrade their firmware (Sony is not bad but still not as good.)

There exists open source softwares on camera, just may be not Fuji (I don’t know.) If you want open source softwares running on camera which significantly increases its capability, try Canon’s. That one is the most mature.

[ashtonkem]

I haven’t tried Magic Lantern yet, but I have been reasonably happy with Canon’s remote app. It has been reliable so far, with the only downside being that it doesn’t offer GPS tagging for my camera (EOS 80D)

[HNHatesUsers]

The lack of an intervalometer in ANY camera today is an insufferable insult.

Not to mention that the assertion in the title of this post is wrong, at least in the USA. We have a federal law called the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act that makes it illegal to void the warranty of a product simply because the user modified it.

Canon cameras have enjoyed some fairly active open-source/hacker support. Check out Magic Lantern and CHDK (I can't tell if that one's still maintained).