Camera control - a new direction?

danbroad

danbroad

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Maybe I'm alone in thinking this, but at least I'll feel better having opened this to discussion...

I've been looking around at cameras of late [long story, but I may be heading over to Canon in the near future] and as such I've been handling all the bodies I can get my hands on... [without getting arrested, that is....]

I've come to the conclusion that I'd like to see a body which fuses all the best bits of the cameras I've seen and tested. For example.. the canon G11; dedicated, simple exposure compensation dials and ISO dials. What a great idea! There are only three variables to control in realtime; ISO, aperture and shutter. Why not give the ISO its own dedicated dial, like the G11 and the Leica X1 - and, for that matter, nearly every rangefinder camera built in the 1970's etc etc..? Leave the ergonomic buttons for the set-up stuff like metering mode, drive mode and focus points/AE lock etc as is done now.

Surely, the biggest sea changes in digital photography are the ability to see the shot immediately after taking it, and to change the film speed on the fly without wasting whole rolls of film. I have little interest in the Leica X1 or even the Canon G11 for that matter, but there's no denying that the camera controls are very ergonomic.

Here's what I was thinking:

A camera which embraced these two ideas and gave me dedicated, ergonomic, analogue control for shutter, ISO and aperture would be excellent. Imagine combining those three dials [?on the top plate? front-back-top?] with an in-viewfinder HUD display on three axes - a spiderweb diagram which displayed metered exposure, where the central point is 'perfect' metered exposure.

Imagine it like this:
radar_graph_02-updated.jpg


rather than this
images


With digital photography, we've an extra dimension in exposure that was unavailable to us before. Why don't we make the jump from 2-axis to 3-axis thinking? Are we too staid and obstinate? Or am I just being too maverick here?

I'd like to know what you think.
 
This sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Don't most bodies have dedicated ISO, shutter and aperture controls?
 
I like it. The drawback tht immediately springs to mind with the new 'Danbroad Display' as I think we shall call it is that it would take up too much room possibly in the viewfinder? Or were you thinking of making it more like a HUD where it is translucent? Or possibly press a thumb button to bring it up?
Anyway, the DD is a good idea imho.
 
My D80, for example, has two dials - but what I'd like to see is the jump to three dedicated control sets. I can set the front dial to aperture, and the rear to shutter, but ISO requires me to lift my eye from the viewfinder. In-viewfinder displays of ISO are available, but that's just the start.

I'd like to see ergonomic, analogue dial ISO control and a three-axis 2D heads-up display that allows me to 'move' my exposure through the available axes as I watch them. I envisage a similar thing to that which fighter pilots may see on their screens as they fly. It's about even more realtime control than now, combined with realtime display options. Nikon and Canon higher-end bodies touch on this - tantalisingly close.
 
No thanks!

It's just not the way I work. Correct exposure is a given, and if it's not spot on I'll tweak it a bit, but basically I assume it's sorted.

I am much more interested in adjusting f/number and shutter speed, not often ISO. If anything, I would like big, clear and separate analogue dials for that, not another combined multi-function widget fiddly thing.
 
Pippy_Neville said:
Would take up too much room possibly in the viewfinder? Or were you thinking of making it more like a HUD where it is translucent? Or possibly press a thumb button to bring it up?
Click to expand...

Both are great ideas. I had thought of a semi-translucent display - no more irritating than the black lines already on our viewfinder screens - but a button which cycled the display from -on-image- to -on-black- would be helpful in some exposure situations.
 
I can already adjust ISO, Aperture & Shutter speed on my D200 and D300s without having to take my eye away from the viewfinder.

It's a neat idea, but I think it'd be a little too gimmicky to have a spider web type display like that, with very little practical use or advantage over what's currently there.

danbroad said:
no more irritating than the black lines already on our viewfinder screens
Click to expand...
That I disabled ;)
 
Oh and auto ISO on the Nikon sorts this out anyway ie. In aperture mode you select f5.6 and the shutter speed is set via the amount of light BUT if the shutter speed is too low the camera will automatically up the ISO within the range that you have set and whilst this option is on SO if you are shooting at ISO200 and f11 for example and the shutter speed would be 0.5 of a second then if you have auto ISO on and have it set with MAXISO to 2000 and MINSS to 0.1 seconds then the camera will change the ISO to about ISO1200 ish to get the speed as dictated. (explanation from memory without camera sat here!).
 
I can see that this is polarising opinion - I like this! Whichever camp you fall into, surely it beats discussing the Tamron 17-50 again - doesn't it?

Anyway, my basic point is that digital does give us ISO speed as a continously variable parameter, and as such it has the same potential for useful tweakability as shutterspeed or aperture. Is it just that we're applying our older-fashioned ideas of exposure, and resisting change?

Imagine if we'd never seen or heard of a film camera, and we saw the specs for digital photography for the first time. Then we might approach this from a very different angle; one where we see three parameters, rather than two.

Cowa - I have Auto ISO turned on by default; I'm already a convert. Still, I'd like to be able to take that camera-dynamics, and do the same thing myself, in the same way that the camera is quite capable of automatically ascertaining shutter speed once aperture is fixed, but I like to override it.

I'm just provoking debate here - just wondering [and looking at this as though from my scientific background] why we should choose to operate only two out of three dynamic parameters, when three are available.
 
I don't know about that. Personally, ISO is something I very rarely change, and if I do change it, I change it once and it stays that way for the entire shoot.
 
danbroad said:
I can see that this is polarising opinion - I like this! Whichever camp you fall into, surely it beats discussing the Tamron 17-50 again - doesn't it?

Anyway, my basic point is that digital does give us ISO speed as a continously variable parameter, and as such it has the same potential for useful tweakability as shutterspeed or aperture. Is it just that we're applying our older-fashioned ideas of exposure, and resisting change?

Imagine if we'd never seen or heard of a film camera, and we saw the specs for digital photography for the first time. Then we might approach this from a very different angle; one where we see three parameters, rather than two.
Click to expand...

But we are creatures of habit, and don't like change, even if is sometimes better, which I'm far from convinced your idea is.

Look at the number of compact bridge cameras that have a faux pentaprism to make them look like SLRs. The new Samsung NX10, quite a revolutionary camera as these things go - in the new Olympus E-P1 and Pano GF1 mould. They even stuck a pretend prism on that too :eek:

Never mind how this widget might be implemented. What will it do for me? I have no trouble adjusting anything as it is, though a separate ISO dial would be a nice convenience. That's all.
 
On the 40D I can adjust aperture with my thumb (rear control dial), Shutter speed with index finger (main top dial) and ISO with top dial.

All three variables are visible in the viewfinder, the rear lcd and the top lcd panel.
 
you get better control over all three on the higher up cameras. for now on your D80 you could set it up like i have mine, with the front programmable button to display the iso in the viewfinder, changing it is as before but its handy to able to view it.

I would love an iso dial like on the g11. one thing is now there are so many iso options to fit on i would be tricky, but if the dial could spin all the way like the thumbwheels and it had a display on the dial its self that would win (aswell as the iso in the viewfinder as per newer & better specced cameras)
 
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