I have been a mirrorless user since 2008 when I got the Panasonic G1. I fell in love with mirrorless and saw a great future.
Most of the talk about mirrorless centers around the cameras capabilities: size, focus speed, image quality, etc. I want to consider what mirrorless can do for post image taking and camera handling. It can facilitate the handling of images after they have been taken, speeding up post processing. To give an idea of what I mean here are a couple of ideas that I would like to see implemented.
For HDR and Focus Stacking where you have a series of photos that need to be grouped. When these functions are used, place a marker on the photos that software can read and then group the photos automatically. Lightroom has an auto grouping function based on time between images but in my experience it does not work well. Too many variables and I sometimes end up with a mess. What I usually do is to take a blank frame before and after the series. This works well in separating the groups in Lightroom. Problem is, I often forget to do it. And it requires turning the series function on and off which is sometimes inconvenient. If I forget, then I have a mess on my hands for focus stacking where there are many images varying so little that you can not distinguish among them in the thumbnails. You must check them in zoomed view which is time consuming and difficult if you do not have dual monitors.
As an example here is a situation that I encountered recently. I was photographing a worker in a large field of pumpkins. The worker was relatively small in the frame. I wanted the foreground to background to be in focus, not possible with aperture. The workers position would be determined by what he was doing when the focus reached him determined by stacking software: he may be positioned OK or have his back to me. I had no control. Therefore I had to take many series and hope that luck would yield one good set. Since the worker was not going to stand there all day, I had to work fast. No time to set blank markers. When I looked at the thumbnails in Lightroom I had a huge series of images that all looked the same. I had to separate them into groups in order to work on them. In HDR, I would go by image count: count five and group, count five more and group, and so on. In focus stacking this does not work, at least with my camera, because the image count is variable. I had a large rats nest to straighten out. With my suggestion, the images would come into Lightroom already grouped and all I would have to do is check the relevant image in each group.
On the subject of focus stacking. Why does it have to be so convoluted? Why can't I just set the start point, end point (option infinity), and number of frames. Done. With the way it is now, I still don't understand everything and settings are by guess work and prayer.
Another thing I would like to see implemented is voice notes. A microphone is built into the camera, press a button, say a few words, and the words are recorded in the image file. In Lightroom there is a facility to play back the notes attached to that file. For example in this image "Aunt Jane and friend Ida at Lockmoore" or this image "function X enabled" and this image "function X disabled".
Smart function buttons. In Panasonic G9, if you press the function button and hold for two seconds, the function assigned to that button is displayed. This is great somewhat hidden feature as I use multiple cameras and often forget how the function buttons are assigned. But less take this idea a little bit further. In current implementation all that is given is the function, you can not change anything. Suppose there was an option to change the assigned function to one of five or so user selected options. This would be my utility button, a Swiss Army Knife of buttons. Depending on what I am doing I sometimes need a particular function handy for that situation but rarely need it otherwise. With my suggestion you could program the function button on the fly to adjust for varying conditions.
These are just a couple of ideas. Some of them probably could be implemented in DSLR's. Mirrorless has opened peoples eyes to new possibilities that might never have been thought of without the seed of mirrorless. Eye focus is an example. Very useful. A pipe dream if you only considered DSLR's.
Do you have any ideas that you would like to see implemented.
Larry
