The more I read these posts, the more convinced I become that the world is upside down, or at least headed that way.
Fantastic and complex user-controlled technology is not, IMO, any worthwhile Holy Grail of itself. After too many years working cameras for a living, the less I have to mess about these day, the happier it makes me. I have absolutely no desire to interact with a screen and put my little fingers onto the place where I want to focus; I have even less desire to carry around a tripod and make 'considered' decisions about my pictures because the camera is anchored to a three-legged rock; that decision is already pretty much defined when the damned thing hits my face.
I have no yearning to cart around anymore two Westons and Invercones, plus a Minolta Flashmeter lll; far better a built-in device like Nikon's Matrix which beats me on pretty much any day, only needing me to stick my two-cents worth into the deal when I shoot in the gloom of a room towards a window.
I can fully appreciate the sense of pride some slightly less-old photographers still have playing with manual devices/inputs only to come up with what automation could have done for them in the blink of an eye, if not far faster. For a long time after I bought my first of only two dslr cameras I didn't want af lenses, either, and then when glaucoma came to roost and focussing became difficult, I grudgingly used it out of desperation, and now I wouldn't do without it at all, by choice, not only because I can't very efficiently.
If there's one thing I would certainly change about both my digital Nikons it's this: I would do what I think they did with the Df, and remove controls such as aperture and shutter from those hellish little wheels that I invariably manage to turn to unwanted positions as I walk around holding the camera in my hand. It's only Auto ISO, another thing I stupidly used to resent until I went there and tried it out for a while, that saves my ass when those bloody little wheels get shifted!
Except for very special pro situations, I think the less input a photographer has to make physically (I am not including aesthetics such as DOF decisons, nor choice of shutter to suit intent, of course) the better. Isn't that very much part of why cellphone cameras are such big news? Idiot-proof, much of the time.
So, the future for dslr cameras? I suspect that making them too complex will eventually turn people away, because it's not old guys with historical baggage that those companies will have to attract, but fresh young blood not 'tainted' by memory of how it was. Old dogs, new tricks, not often good medicine!
Rob C
