Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing
Great article.<p>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.<p>To a large extent, that&#x27;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&#x27;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.<p>There are other downsides besides complexity too. Fuji&#x27;s mirrorless X100 series is a popular camera with consumers and for years it&#x27;s shipped with an exposure compensation dial right at the top edge of its body. For just as many years the thing&#x27;s been loose enough and with little enough inset from the outside that whenever you throw it in a bag or something, there&#x27;s a pretty reasonable chance that it&#x27;ll come out cranked all the one way or the other. Sometimes you don&#x27;t notice, and there goes your shot.<p>The possible fixes are pretty easy — either move it in so it&#x27;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.<p>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.