Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

Another thing I hate about a lot of recent camera hardware is the move toward cheap plastic, everywhere.

I shoot pretty much only with old manual-focus lenses from days of yore. Most of my lenses are older than I am. They're all made of metal, built like a tank, and way easier to use. No fidgety UIs or menus to manipulate, perfectly calibrated infinity focus (slap the focus ring to the end until it stops and landscapes are perfectly sharp 100% of the time), rock-solid, don't break under pressure inside my bag, and they just work, no questions asked.

Totally agree about the lack of Arca-Swiss adoption by camera manufacturers. Camera bodies and heavy lenses could easily have a built-in Arca-Swiss shape at the bottom and still have a 1/4-20" screw hole for people who need it.

Perhaps Apertus° could be convinced this way to build a digital still[-focused] camera. Mirrorless is getting quite good these days too, so it might not be much different from a digital cinema camera.

https://www.apertus.org/

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.

My pet-peeve with modern DSLR's is that none of these manufacturers seem to care about motion-cadence with their video offering. There's been amazing leaps with 4k video and now 10 bit image depth with the Panasonic GH5, but the footage looks so damn robotic and souless compared to cinema cameras from Arri and Red.

I obviously don't expect a $2000 dslr to match a $50k Alexa in image quality, but surely they must be able to make the motion of the images smoother and less CCTV looking.

Blackmagic put out an amazing little pocket camera a few years ago with gorgeous colours and buttery smooth motion, why can't the big guys follow suit?

1/4" tripod socket is the best common option. I use it. No point there because the user don't use it. Don't undertand why remove a standard?

Optical remotes? I don't take selfie. I press the button.

Wifi? lol, no thanks. I want a camera not a phone and I don't want 1 hour of battery.

Battery problem? where? just buy battery pack...