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Love it. I really wish classical mirrorless camera makers would get their head out of their collective asses, and make a camera that is not stuck in the 80-s me

Love it. I really wish classical mirrorless camera makers would get their head out of their collective asses, and make a camera that is not stuck in the 80-s mentality. Give me a large sunlight-readable touchscreen, with multitouch. Also GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 5G/LTE for connectivity and geotagging. Add automatic uploads to Google Photos, iPhoto, WebDAV, etc. Put in a small editor for on-device photo touchups. Also, ditch the old-timey film-camera look. I don't need 15 physical switches, most of which should be automatic anyway. A physical button for the shutter and an analog knob for fine tuning are fine, but I don't need a manual switch for AF/MF. Or a "shutter delay" selector that is too easy to accidentally bump.

porphyra 2y ago
The Zeiss ZX1 was an interesting foray into this direction: * nice big multitouch screen * on-device Lightroom for retouching * it's an android device But it didn't do very well despite its really outstanding image quality. (Maybe it was the $6000 price tag, maybe it was just the lag)
akho 2y ago
Plenty of companies already make phones with cameras. “Cameraphones”, as young people call them. Why do you want camera makers — who are obviously serving a market you are not interested in — to stop serving their market?
quuxly 2y ago
This is called a smartphone.
- cyberax 2y ago
  Yes, exactly. But with a better sensor and optics.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    And without all the things that make it useful as a regular smartphone. So why bother with it? Just use a real smartphone.
  - necovek 2y ago
    Have you actually put money where your mouth is by purchasing one of the 1" sensor phones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_sensor_camera_phones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_sensor_camera_ph... Obviously, we are seeing movement in that direction, but it's still being balanced with size — you can't fill in the entire large sensor with a "short" lens easily, yet avoid all the problems cameras experience. It would be great if any of the phones came with an interchangeable lens mount for an existing system, but that alone would add 4-5mm of thickness (30-50% of a modern phone).
    - cge 2y ago
      It appears that availability in some parts of the world may be difficult for many of those phones: many seem to be sold only to Chinese, Japanese, or Asian markets, and others seems specifically unavailable in the US. It's also worth noting that, from a camera rather than phone perspective, "1-inch type" sensors, which have no dimension approaching 1", are very small, half the image area of micro 4/3, and less than a seventh of 35mm; they are around 16mm by 13mm.
      - necovek 2y ago
        Oh, certainly: but if people do spend money on phones with "1-inch" sensors, manufacturers will see it as a signal that people are willing to pay for ever larger sensors. How does one fit optics to illuminate the sensor is a different topic though.
      - numpad0 2y ago
        "1-inch" is "1-inch vacuum tube equivalent". Micro Four Thirds is likewise 4/3 inch equivalent. Both are smaller than the nameplate size because tubes had rims. Most of those phone are available online through grey imports at around MSRP(...of ~$2.5k). The reality is that there are no real demands to capture in phones with ginormous cameras, cameras without inherent obnoxiousness, and possibly cars without turn signal stalks, too, for that matter.
progbits 2y ago
I'm not sure I want any of that in my camera. Maybe fast wifi for photo sync at home but still faster to plug in the cable/card. You know what I want and have? A sub half second power on time. Probably sub one second from turning on to first photo. I don't want any "smart" crap slowing that down.
- cyberax 2y ago
  > I'm not sure I want any of that in my camera. Maybe fast wifi for photo sync at home but still faster to plug in the cable/card. Well, that's a reason why camera makers are struggling. You don't want these features, but a lot of people do. So they vote with their smartphones instead: https://petapixel.com/2024/08/22/the-rise-and-crash-of-the-camera-industry-in-one-chart/ https://petapixel.com/2024/08/22/the-rise-and-crash-of-the-c... > You know what I want and have? A sub half second power on time. Probably sub one second from turning on to first photo. I don't want any "smart" crap slowing that down. You can do that while still retaining smart features. For example, use a small OS to control the camera while the full OS boots up. Or use suspend-to-disk to speed up loading, with suspend-to-RAM for instant startup. This is a solvable problem.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    Case in point: My phone can go from "off" (sleep) to taking pictures in less than a second with basically no effort. Why not do the same on a dedicated camera? You'll get better battery from sleep if it has zero wakeups or radios on in sleep, which is fine for this use.
    - nucleardog 2y ago
      Dedicated cameras that can do this are widely available. My (cheap, 15 year old) DSLR goes from “off” to capturing a photo in under 300ms. The battery essentially lasts indefinitely if you’re not actively fiddling with it. It will take about a thousand photos per charge, and changing the battery takes about 5 seconds.
    - girvo 2y ago
dghlsakjg 2y ago
There have been a few different attempts that look like this. Samsung Nx, Samsung Galaxy Camera, Sony has tried phone add on accessories. Basically they all sort of flop in the market. People that don’t want to think about their photos use a smartphone. People that want to think about their photos still want a camera that they can control. I use a mirrorless Nikon camera and to take a single picture I normally want physical controls that can handle exposure, focus, zoom level and shutter release independently, but simultaneously without having to remove my attention from the image. The ability to do all that with physical, not menu controls, is a tremendous asset for most people that want to spend the money on a camera. If you slapped the latest technology inside a camera that didn’t have all the physical controls, photographers wouldn’t want anything to do with it. I wouldn’t say that camera design is stuck in the 80s, either. The form factor is necessarily constrained by needing a tubular lens projecting in front of a flat imaging plane. The photographer is going to want to view the image from the opposite side as the lens. There’s only so much you can change the form factor with those constraints. Camera companies do have a few retro models, but even stodgy old Leica is making modern designs these days. If you take tens of thousands of photos per year, you sort of realize that all cameras have more or less the same interface and form factor as they have for a while because it is what works best.
- _0xdd 2y ago
  I would add that Zeiss (ZX1) and Leica (T typ 701, TL2) tried this modern touch-first approach at a premium and both products weren't exactly hits. The Zeiss was even running Android with Lightroom preinstalled.
  - cyberax 2y ago
    I mean... It's a camera that was retailing for $6k without lenses. It's already a niche market, and a pretty conservative one.
- m463 2y ago
  I agree. Maybe the breakdown is between: 1) taking a picture 2) doing something with the picture People coming to photography from smartphones want the priorities reversed. But the deeper you get into it, the more you want #1 and the more control you want over #1. The worst is #2 getting in the way of the shot. And actually, lots of people into photography think it is about the camera, but it is really about the lenses. You buy lenses, then buy/upgrade bodies around them.
orbital-decay 2y ago
Half of the point of having a dedicated camera is better ergonomics. I'm finding current smartphones good enough for most uses, but they are simply awkward to use and very slow to control without an external grip.
- prmoustache 2y ago
  Then use an external grip? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - orbital-decay 2y ago
    Which defies the point of a smartphone. Might as well carry a camera, which I occasionally do.
    - prmoustache 2y ago
      Depends of the context. Might use the smartphone as it is on a day to day basis but decide to mount the grip when visiting a specific place, travelling, taking picture in a specific event.
girvo 2y ago
https://petapixel.com/2021/07/10/yongnuo-yn455-a-new-android-powered-m43-mirrorless-camera/ https://petapixel.com/2021/07/10/yongnuo-yn455-a-new-android... A few have tried, and they all fail. Most people are just going to use their phone, and the ones that won't _want_ the old-timey looks and hardware dials. https://newatlas.com/photography/switchlens-m43-smartphone-camera/ https://newatlas.com/photography/switchlens-m43-smartphone-c... This one I think has promise though
- cyberax 2y ago
  I don't think Switchlens is going to work. It needs to be a separate integrated device. Unless they glue a phone permanently to it.
  - girvo 2y ago
    I disagree; I think your overall point is correct, that people want high quality photos beyond what phone sensors and lenses can achieve, and they want the power of their phones software. Thing is though, most camera makers are kind of crap at software in general, and their UX teams are nonexistent. So being able to delegate to your phone makes a fair bit of sense to the people who'd like that, even if you're not one of them. It makes so much sense that there's even a second team taking a crack at it that I wasn't aware of: https://www.alice.camera/ https://www.alice.camera/ That said, this is still a niche within a niche: I don't think either will be some mass market product. But being able to take my phone and a Alice or a SwitchLens to a concert in both pockets is pretty neat. These will more replace the things like the Fujifilm X70, or a lot of what people use the X100(roman numeral) for, while getting the workflow benefits you're rightfully after. I don't trust a camera manufacturer to keep their Android deployment up to date, or even to really fix that many bugs in it, and a whole Android OS is a lot more complex for them to manage than SwitchLens/Alice's apps and internal RTOS + comms layers. Other alternative would be for one of the big players in the mirrorless space to open up their operating systems, but Fujifilm's X series communication app is bad that I simply don't see it as feasible: they really are terrible at software.
    - 2y ago
chillfox 2y ago
Samsung did make a camera with most of those features (it was before 5G, so 3G I think). I had it, it sucked a lot. Turns out physical buttons for most things is very important if you want to be able to rapidly change settings as required for capturing a moment. Whenever I tried using that camera I lost so many shots due to the delay of fiddling with menus or the startup time.
- nucleardog 2y ago
  > Turns out physical buttons for most things is very important if you want to be able to rapidly change settings as required for capturing a moment. Yeah, this really feels like the “cars should have physical controls not giant tablets” argument argued from the opposite stance. If your focus is elsewhere (driving, trying to capture a photo) the last thing you want is a giant touchscreen that’s modal and has no tactile feedback. The only way you can operate it is to take your attention away from what you’re actually trying to do to fiddle with the touchscreen. Personally, I prefer being able to turn on my defroster or blinker from muscle memory and without taking my focus off the road just as I prefer being able to adjust the aperture or ISO from muscle memory without taking my focus off the scene I’m trying to capture.
  - mavhc 2y ago
    Why not both? Touchscreen to select focus position, view images. A touchscreen doesn't mean you have to remove buttons.
    - dghlsakjg 2y ago
      That does exist in most modern interchangeable lens cameras. You can adjust almost all settings through the touchscreen that are available. Hell, on a lot of cameras you can control most settings remotely via Wifi using your smarthpone. The only function I can think of that isn't available is zoom, since photography lenses almost never include a zoom motor. The GP is asking for touchscreen ONLY, with no buttons for some reason.
nucleardog 2y ago
So in summary: - Power draining giant screen - Touchscreen and minimal physical controls - Multiple radios, including cellular - Cloud integration - Apps for photo editing - Slim form factor You want a smartphone with a better lens.
- cyberax 2y ago
  Yes, exactly. A smartphone with a good optical system.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  Yep, this is me. I like just capturing memories with my smartphone, and only wish it had a better lens. It's convenient that I can just carry it in my pocket and not have to carry a separate device. If someone made this smartphone-like camera, I wouldn't buy one. What purpose would it serve? I already have a phone, and if I want to spend more money to get better-quality photos than it can provide, I can just go buy a higher-end phone that's aimed at people like me, with a bigger and better lens. Why would I want to carry a separate camera around and then worry about stuff like syncing photos? If, however, I got back into doing more serious amateur photography, like I was into 15+ years ago, the last thing I would want is a smartphone-like camera with an annoying touchscreen. I'd want a "prosumer" DSLR, with lots of physical switches. And these already exist.
mananaysiempre 2y ago
> Also, ditch the old-timey film-camera look. I don't need 15 physical switches [...]. You really, really do. This may sound contradictory at first, but cameras are operated blind. Even when you’re looking at the camera, you’re not seeing the camera, you’re seeing the subject. Touchscreens suck at blind controls. (That’s not to say touchscreens aren’t useful: choosing the focus point doesn’t exhibit this conflict, even if some prefer a joystick; or if you’re already digging into menus to do something very particular and non-time-sensitive—astrophotography, focus stacking, live compositing—a touchscreen can be better than a D-pad.) Cameras also weigh quite a bit and are supported with the fingers you’re using to operate them, so significantly shifting anything except maybe your right thumb usually means a real risk of dropping the camera. The weight also mounts a two-pronged attack on the size of your touchscreen (I’m assuming a walkaround camera, not weddings or sports): the camera needs to be smaller in order to be lighter, and a large part of its surface area needs to be available for you to grip. So, realistically, you don’t want a camera with a 6-inch touchscreen. In conclusion, please please please don’t take away my physical controls. I know a touchscreen is cheaper, but please don’t. I’ll pay. (Side note: it’s been almost fifteen years, and I still type slower on my Android phone than I used to on the QWERTY keyboard of my Nokia.)
- atoav 2y ago
  IMO the way black magic does it with their cinema cameras is a great middle ground. Big bright touchscreen that can do all + some physical buttons and dials for often used things. In their early series I had one of those touchsrcreens die on set, but those reliability issues seem to have gone since.
- PetitPrince 2y ago
  > You really, really do. This may sound contradictory at first, but cameras are operated blind. Even when you’re looking at the camera, you’re not seeing the camera, you’re seeing the subject. I completely agree. Touchscreen interface and touch button are terrible UI in a car for the very same reason: you're looking at the subject/the road, not at your camera/your dashboard.
  - 2y ago
joshvm 2y ago
I’ve been doing a lot of extreme low temp (-70C ambient) photography with a Sigma FP. It’s basically a full-frame box hybrid movie camera. The addon EVF works well long after the LCD freezes. I really don’t want multi touch. I do want at least two physical dials with chunky detents. I don’t want auto-everything. USB charging is nice but I use a cabled external battery most of the time. The battery will die in minutes outside and for whatever reason Sigma decided not to add USB power pass through in the EVF. A week outside in the cold on AC power? No problem because there are no moving parts. The power solution I came up with is a modified battery charger with a removable base (Wasabi Power). I added teflon coated cables and a connector to go to the (also butchered) dummy battery. Real battery gets stuffed into a pocket or up a sleeve. The camera doesn’t care how cold it gets, from experimenting. It’s also small and the display is most of the back. If you make the display bigger, the camera gets bigger. At some point you aren’t serving pro photgraphers or people who would just use an iPad. Really you want a good OLED display or a high-res viewfinder. The FP has a weird loupe accessory back. An on device editor? I don’t understand the need, if you can sync to a phone or computer. The same goes for wifi - a lot of new cameras have 2.4Ghz in them (my OM-D EM5ii from almost a decade ago can sync to an app). This project looks super cool though.
- cyberax 2y ago
  > A week outside in the cold on AC power? No problem because there are no moving parts. Yeah, cameras also need to be vacuum-proof with a passive heat spreader (1 square meter should be enough), support depths up to 3 kilometers (what if you want to visit Titanic?), and be rad-hardened (everybody loves taking photos inside the Fukushima reactor). These are really must-have features that 99% of the population needs during their vacations.
  - joshvm 2y ago
    You can ignore the Antarctica side of things, but the features that are useful here are useful everywhere. More cameras are moving to OLED rear displays (sunlight visible), full-frame mirrorless with electronic shutter (mechanical reliability), USB-C charging (took ages for this to become widespread), out-of-the-box UVC support for webcam mode, etc. These sorts of features have led to cameras that are not skeuomorphic representations of cameras from the 80s. They don't need a hump for a penta-prism and they can drop bulky mirror and shutter assemblies. I can fit my fp and the kit lens into a coat pocket. > These are really must-have features that 99% of the population needs during their vacations. > Give me a large sunlight-readable touchscreen, with multitouch. Also GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 5G/LTE for connectivity and geotagging. Add automatic uploads to Google Photos, iPhoto, WebDAV, etc. Put in a small editor for on-device photo touchups. I think having WiFi+GPS alone is sufficient for this (irritatingly few pro cameras have GPS receivers). Then you can do the editing on a device which is actually suitable for it, and you reduce the risk of obsolescence in the camera. TV manufacturers have shown they're unwilling to support changing APIs long-term. The interim solution is probably a smartphone with an add-on lens system like Moment's, and better RAW support.
thunfisch 2y ago
The only thing that I wish that camera-makers would finally agree on is a common mount. I'd love to try out camera bodies from different manufacturers, but that almost always means switching your entire lens collection as well. No, thanks. I agree on built-in GPS (currently need to pair with a smartphone - which I'd rather love to leave at home), but everything else seems like a non-feature to me. I have zero interest for that on my Camera, because the experience would just be insanely annoying. Touchscreens are awful for camera operation - the feature is turned off permanently on my camera. Camera needs to be operatable blind, touchscreens are awful for this. Please give me more buttons and dials.
- yunohn 2y ago
  > but that almost always means switching your entire lens collection as well Sadly, this is entirely by design. Like other industries, camera manufacturers want to ensure lock-in. At least we can usually keep lenses across body changes within the same brand.
  - dghlsakjg 2y ago
    There are some more or less standard mounts from early days of film: LTM, 42mm, even Pentax K has been shared by numerous manufacturers. There is the m4/3 mount for digital which is shared across several manufacturers. The problem is that the mount is always a design constraint. The LTM mount means your lenses cannot have AF. The M4/3 mount means that your sensor size is maxed out at 1/4 the size of a full frame camera. Using the Pentax K mount means that you can't ever have a piece of glass closer than 45mm to the imaging surface. The most interesting manuever might be Nikon's new Z mount which has the closest flange distance of any full frame mount as well as the widest diameter. This makes it so that it is compatible with the largest amount of lenses of any mount when using adapters. Bizarrely, I can use old Canon EF mount lenses with new Nikon cameras with more features than I can using old Nikon lenses from the same era!
    - account42 2y ago
      > The problem is that the mount is always a design constraint. Yeah but this argument is the same as saying that it makes no sense to standardize on USB-C for chargers because requirements can change.
a2800276 2y ago
What you're describing is basically a modern phone. Just get an iPhone pro, done.
ImHereToVote 2y ago
I just need something that can feed RAW data to various ML tasks.
MarioMan 2y ago
I've been using a professional camera (Sony A7C) for a bit over two years now, and my wishlist looks very different than yours. - Modern computational photography: Imagine having access to a high-end sensor combined modern computational photography tooling. Smartphones do incredible things with computational photography, including HDR, low light stacking, noise reduction, upscaling, and picking out smiling faces from multiple photos. Most of these things can be done in post on a professional camera with tools like Photoshop, but often they are inferior, using a single image to worse affect, requiring a lot of manual work, or just having less mature tooling. I'd love to have access to the raw data and computational pipelines to selectively apply different processing and tweak computational settings in post. - Better UI: Sony notoriously has a terrible UI in their camera menu systems. Working with it feels like something I would've used on a flip-phone from 20 years ago, with things buried multiple levels down in obscure menus and vague, sometimes poorly translated descriptions. The hardware is great, but the GUI feels like something built by engineers rather than for end-users.
- atoav 2y ago
  Sony is the manufacturer who had me search for the battery release camrra for a solid minute - it was on the opposite side of the camera. If I didn't have to use those cameras they would be engineering marbels, but their professional video segment really could use a new generation of designers.
- dannyw 2y ago
  Most computational photography inherently breaks giving the photographer direct manual control over how a picture is taken (shutter speed, aperture, ISO). For example, HDR or low light staking means taking multiple photos. This requires a fast shutter speed to minimise change in the scene or subject. However, photographers sometimes intentionally want a slower shutter speed for motion blur, or to shoot at lower ISO for less noise and more resolution. Actions like noise reduction, upscaling, etc are post-processing actions. They are best done on a large, high-resolution, color-calibrated screen; instead of a portable device with a small battery where you want to maximise the number of shots you can take before swapping or recharging batteries. Bear in mind that modern cameras easily shoot in 40, 60+ MP. To truly perform noise reduction, or upscaling on those images require a lot more processing power, even with fixed-function hardware. Your "48MP" quad-bayer smartphone is generally processing a "pixel-binned" 12MP image straight out of the sensor, that might be resampled to 24MP (iOS) after post-processing; but was never anything more than 12MP. The hardware was never more than 12MP, except they sub-divided each bayer pixel into 4 quad (or 12 for some Samsung chips) to claim 4x/12x the spec sheet w/o real world benefits. Your smartphone's SoC, is usually manufactured on the latest, bleeding edge 3nm or 4nm processes. They are also the most expensive; made practical because tens of millions of each chip are shipped each year. There are ~1m dedicated cameras shipped each year; from many different manufactures using different chips; usually built on N16, N12, or N7 for the bleeding edge ones. No, they cannot just use a smartphone SoC. Smartphone image signal processors simply can't process 61MP at 20FPS or 30FPS or whatever the burst rate sports photographers demand. Your smartphone uses an electronic shutter. Your proper camera probably has a mechanical shutter, which is generally superior but also requires more force to move. The battery in your smartphone is probably ~2x bigger than a professional mirrorless or DSLR. Pro photographers buy cameras, in a significant part based on how many shots they can take. > the GUI feels like something built by engineers rather than for end-users. Think of the GUI as being built for professional photographers who's been using an UI for the past 20 years of their livelihood. You would probably be really upset if your OS decided to change established keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl+C or Ctrl+V. You probably wouldn't choose that OS, and if professional photographers won't buy a camera because the UI is "weird to them", you've wasted your R&D costs because the dedicated camera market for the past decade is essentially only professionals; with some amateurs and hobbyists.
ngcc_hk 2y ago
You need physical buttons. It is about communicating with the machine what you really want and control it. If you want auto just have an option for auto. A good example is auto focus. Many has a button on the back to activate on an area with focus size and point control by a joystick. And if it is good, fix it so the machine does not decide to autofocus another area, subject, …
mihaaly 2y ago
How about buying a smartphone then?! ; )
whoiscroberts 2y ago
Hasselblad x2d meets some of these wants.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  This does look excellent indeed, as you'd expect from Hasselblad. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1725356-REG/hasselblad_cp_hb_00000723_01_x2d_100c_medium_format.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1725356-REG/hasselbla...
entropie 2y ago
Something like this? There is one that was very recently released, but could not find it, but this is the idea: https://petapixel.com/2021/07/10/yongnuo-yn455-a-new-android-powered-m43-mirrorless-camera/ https://petapixel.com/2021/07/10/yongnuo-yn455-a-new-android...
vladvasiliu 2y ago
> Also, ditch the old-timey film-camera look. I don't need 15 physical switches, most of which should be automatic anyway. Yeah, you do. For the reasons others have given (adjusting the exposure compensation on my iPhone is a PITA. On my Olympus I just spin a dial). But also: if you're "out shooting", this may happen when it's freezing outside. If you've found a pair of warm gloves that allows you to comfortably use an iPhone, I'd love to hear about them. My Olympus' dials are usable with my winter motorcycle gloves. My iPhone's screen is also a pain to use if it's wet. Sure, it won't brick the phone, but dragging things around the screen? Good luck.
- cyberax 2y ago
  > Yeah, you do. For the reasons others have given (adjusting the exposure compensation on my iPhone is a PITA. On my Olympus I just spin a dial). No, I don't. I haven't touched most of controls on my camera, and I don't have a desire to do that. > But also: if you're "out shooting", this may happen when it's freezing outside. Yeah, so every feature must be designed to work under water, at night, at -60C, on Jupiter. Here's a newsflash: people typically don't take pictures when it's super-cold.
  - vladvasiliu 2y ago
    Indeed. It's almost as if there were multiple uses for a given piece of technology. > Here's a newsflash: people typically don't take pictures when it's super-cold. Here's a newsflash: most of these people don't care for "real cameras" and are buying phones instead. The no-dial fully-automatic cameras are pretty much extinct because people find phones good enough for their needs. I don't follow the camera news that closely, but I'm pretty sure at least Olympus and Panasonic have some models with few buttons. I don't know if they have integrated GPS (probably not), but apart from that, they sound like what you want. Those are smaller sensor cameras (but still big enough to be in a totally different league than phones). I think Panasonic recently came out with a "full-frame" compact with close to no dials. Sony has a compact full-frame, but it does have dials and buttons. Either way, if you're willing to put up with lugging around a big-ass camera and a heavy lens, it's not clear to me what's the issue of there being 2-3 more buttons and dials. Just don't use them. Aside from the on-off button on my camera which is a braindead design, I never unintentionally bump dials or switches and there are a bunch of them on a tiny camera.
franga2000 2y ago
For the sake of every professional (and semi-professional such as myself) photographer out there, I wish, to use your terminology, that the manufacturer's heads remain firmly up their asses. The only thing touching the LCD on my camera is my nose while I look through the viewfinder and when I am looking at the screen it's because I'm holding the camera in a strange position that doesn't allow me to use a touchscreen either. Give me an open API so I can offload all the smarts to my infinitely more capable phone that already has a SIM card with a huge data plan and keep the camera a camera.
ekianjo 2y ago
> Also, ditch the old-timey film-camera look. I don't need 15 physical switches, most of which should be automatic anyway. No thank you. The whole point of a good camera is to have manual controls IF you want them. Nope that you can already use DSLRs and mirrorless cameras as fully automatic point and shoot cameras of you want to use them this way.
egorfine 2y ago
I am a photographer with decades of experience, the vast majority of which is studio works. My wishlist is the exact opposite of your's. I don't need multitouch, couldn't care less for anything wireless, much less automatic uploads and on-device editing. I need physical buttons for everything. The more the better. And I need a manual AF/MF switch badly.
verandaguy 2y ago
It sounds like what you want is a smartphone. > Give me a large sunlight-readable touchscreen, with multitouch. Also GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 5G/LTE for connectivity and geotagging. Add automatic uploads to Google Photos, iPhoto, WebDAV, etc. Put in a small editor for on-device photo touchups. Most newer cameras have _many_ of these, minus integration with Google Photos, iPhoto, or WebDAV, and cellular connectivity since many areas of photography just wouldn't benefit from it enough to justify the extra cost, complexity, and battery life hit. Many newer cameras also have smartphone control, with varying levels of actual usability, but that's a separate issue. > Put in a small editor for on-device photo touchups An editor with any amount of value-add for the kind of person who still buys a standalone camera would be pretty big in storage and would likely be painfully slow; for me, on a 2019 Macbook Pro, Lightroom is consistently a pretty heavy app to run (to say nothing of Photoshop proper). > Also, ditch the old-timey film-camera look. I don't need 15 physical switches, most of which should be automatic anyway. As others have said: a good haptic interface is essential for most shooting styles, and many of the settings do have automatic modes, but a big selling point of standalone cameras is that they allow you to express yourself creatively by exposing these manual controls to you. Wanna take a picture of a waterfall at dawn? Throw your master mode and ISO into auto and you'll probably get a really nice shot of a waterfall. But what if you want to blur the water so it looks like white streaks? There's not an auto setting that can just infer that for you. With a good haptic interface you'll be able to set that up in the dark, or in the cold while wearing gloves, or in the wind or on rough terrain where it might be tricky to keep your hands steady over a touchscreen. If you're shooting at an airshow, what balance do you want between shutter speed and ISO to balance crispness with the appearance of motion? With a good haptic interface you'll be able to configure that while following a jet through a long lens. > A physical button for the shutter and an analog knob for fine tuning are fine, but I don't need a manual switch for AF/MF. Or a "shutter delay" selector that is too easy to accidentally bump. Fortunately, there's a class of devices where these needs and gripes are served well: smartphones. The default camera apps and even some higher-end camera apps loaded onto modern smartphones are immensely powerful at making good shots with minimal effort. Having said all that: smartphones are usually excellent cameras, and arguably _much more than enough_ for the average person, but if you want to break out of using the bog-standard auto settings, interfaces get tricky, annoying, and even in the best case can be difficult to work with. Halide, for example, is great in general, but struggles with short focus (much more than the stock iOS camera app) for some reason; it provides a manual focus slider to work around that, but for nearby scenes with a shallow FOV, you'd usually want a hold-to-keep-in-focus or even an AF-C setting. Dedicated cameras -- and especially ILCs -- target a different audience with different goals. What you get is, relatively speaking, uncompromising flexibility and an ability to support a wide range of artistic visions, though often with a learning curve tied to it. So, I'll ask you a followup: what do you want out of a camera that a phone can't get you?
nunoonun 2y ago
You just described a camera from hell (minus the connectivity part). Muscle memory is very important in photography, half presses, AEL/AFL lock buttons, exposure compensation. There's so many things that have to have physical buttons, you will not be looking at the screen to do these things. This is exactly the same problem Tesla created with the touch buttons for turn signals, not everyone is a BMW driver, we use turn signals.
nakedrobot2 2y ago
You are not a photographer are you.

porphyra 2y ago

The Zeiss ZX1 was an interesting foray into this direction: * nice big multitouch screen * on-device Lightroom for retouching * it's an android device But it didn't do very well despite its really outstanding image quality. (Maybe it was the $6000 price tag, maybe it was just the lag)

akho 2y ago

Plenty of companies already make phones with cameras. “Cameraphones”, as young people call them. Why do you want camera makers — who are obviously serving a market you are not interested in — to stop serving their market?

quuxly 2y ago

This is called a smartphone.

cyberax 2y ago
Yes, exactly. But with a better sensor and optics.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  And without all the things that make it useful as a regular smartphone. So why bother with it? Just use a real smartphone.
- necovek 2y ago
  Have you actually put money where your mouth is by purchasing one of the 1" sensor phones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_sensor_camera_phones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_sensor_camera_ph... Obviously, we are seeing movement in that direction, but it's still being balanced with size — you can't fill in the entire large sensor with a "short" lens easily, yet avoid all the problems cameras experience. It would be great if any of the phones came with an interchangeable lens mount for an existing system, but that alone would add 4-5mm of thickness (30-50% of a modern phone).
  - cge 2y ago
    It appears that availability in some parts of the world may be difficult for many of those phones: many seem to be sold only to Chinese, Japanese, or Asian markets, and others seems specifically unavailable in the US. It's also worth noting that, from a camera rather than phone perspective, "1-inch type" sensors, which have no dimension approaching 1", are very small, half the image area of micro 4/3, and less than a seventh of 35mm; they are around 16mm by 13mm.
    - necovek 2y ago
      Oh, certainly: but if people do spend money on phones with "1-inch" sensors, manufacturers will see it as a signal that people are willing to pay for ever larger sensors. How does one fit optics to illuminate the sensor is a different topic though.
    - numpad0 2y ago
      "1-inch" is "1-inch vacuum tube equivalent". Micro Four Thirds is likewise 4/3 inch equivalent. Both are smaller than the nameplate size because tubes had rims. Most of those phone are available online through grey imports at around MSRP(...of ~$2.5k). The reality is that there are no real demands to capture in phones with ginormous cameras, cameras without inherent obnoxiousness, and possibly cars without turn signal stalks, too, for that matter.

progbits 2y ago

I'm not sure I want any of that in my camera. Maybe fast wifi for photo sync at home but still faster to plug in the cable/card. You know what I want and have? A sub half second power on time. Probably sub one second from turning on to first photo. I don't want any "smart" crap slowing that down.

cyberax 2y ago
> I'm not sure I want any of that in my camera. Maybe fast wifi for photo sync at home but still faster to plug in the cable/card. Well, that's a reason why camera makers are struggling. You don't want these features, but a lot of people do. So they vote with their smartphones instead: https://petapixel.com/2024/08/22/the-rise-and-crash-of-the-camera-industry-in-one-chart/ https://petapixel.com/2024/08/22/the-rise-and-crash-of-the-c... > You know what I want and have? A sub half second power on time. Probably sub one second from turning on to first photo. I don't want any "smart" crap slowing that down. You can do that while still retaining smart features. For example, use a small OS to control the camera while the full OS boots up. Or use suspend-to-disk to speed up loading, with suspend-to-RAM for instant startup. This is a solvable problem.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  Case in point: My phone can go from "off" (sleep) to taking pictures in less than a second with basically no effort. Why not do the same on a dedicated camera? You'll get better battery from sleep if it has zero wakeups or radios on in sleep, which is fine for this use.
  - nucleardog 2y ago
    Dedicated cameras that can do this are widely available. My (cheap, 15 year old) DSLR goes from “off” to capturing a photo in under 300ms. The battery essentially lasts indefinitely if you’re not actively fiddling with it. It will take about a thousand photos per charge, and changing the battery takes about 5 seconds.
  - girvo 2y ago

dghlsakjg 2y ago

There have been a few different attempts that look like this. Samsung Nx, Samsung Galaxy Camera, Sony has tried phone add on accessories. Basically they all sort of flop in the market. People that don’t want to think about their photos use a smartphone. People that want to think about their photos still want a camera that they can control. I use a mirrorless Nikon camera and to take a single picture I normally want physical controls that can handle exposure, focus, zoom level and shutter release independently, but simultaneously without having to remove my attention from the image. The ability to do all that with physical, not menu controls, is a tremendous asset for most people that want to spend the money on a camera. If you slapped the latest technology inside a camera that didn’t have all the physical controls, photographers wouldn’t want anything to do with it. I wouldn’t say that camera design is stuck in the 80s, either. The form factor is necessarily constrained by needing a tubular lens projecting in front of a flat imaging plane. The photographer is going to want to view the image from the opposite side as the lens. There’s only so much you can change the form factor with those constraints. Camera companies do have a few retro models, but even stodgy old Leica is making modern designs these days. If you take tens of thousands of photos per year, you sort of realize that all cameras have more or less the same interface and form factor as they have for a while because it is what works best.

_0xdd 2y ago
I would add that Zeiss (ZX1) and Leica (T typ 701, TL2) tried this modern touch-first approach at a premium and both products weren't exactly hits. The Zeiss was even running Android with Lightroom preinstalled.
- cyberax 2y ago
  I mean... It's a camera that was retailing for $6k without lenses. It's already a niche market, and a pretty conservative one.
m463 2y ago
I agree. Maybe the breakdown is between: 1) taking a picture 2) doing something with the picture People coming to photography from smartphones want the priorities reversed. But the deeper you get into it, the more you want #1 and the more control you want over #1. The worst is #2 getting in the way of the shot. And actually, lots of people into photography think it is about the camera, but it is really about the lenses. You buy lenses, then buy/upgrade bodies around them.

orbital-decay 2y ago

Half of the point of having a dedicated camera is better ergonomics. I'm finding current smartphones good enough for most uses, but they are simply awkward to use and very slow to control without an external grip.

prmoustache 2y ago
Then use an external grip? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- orbital-decay 2y ago
  Which defies the point of a smartphone. Might as well carry a camera, which I occasionally do.
  - prmoustache 2y ago
    Depends of the context. Might use the smartphone as it is on a day to day basis but decide to mount the grip when visiting a specific place, travelling, taking picture in a specific event.

girvo 2y ago

https://petapixel.com/2021/07/10/yongnuo-yn455-a-new-android-powered-m43-mirrorless-camera/ https://petapixel.com/2021/07/10/yongnuo-yn455-a-new-android... A few have tried, and they all fail. Most people are just going to use their phone, and the ones that won't _want_ the old-timey looks and hardware dials. https://newatlas.com/photography/switchlens-m43-smartphone-camera/ https://newatlas.com/photography/switchlens-m43-smartphone-c... This one I think has promise though

cyberax 2y ago
I don't think Switchlens is going to work. It needs to be a separate integrated device. Unless they glue a phone permanently to it.
- girvo 2y ago
  I disagree; I think your overall point is correct, that people want high quality photos beyond what phone sensors and lenses can achieve, and they want the power of their phones software. Thing is though, most camera makers are kind of crap at software in general, and their UX teams are nonexistent. So being able to delegate to your phone makes a fair bit of sense to the people who'd like that, even if you're not one of them. It makes so much sense that there's even a second team taking a crack at it that I wasn't aware of: https://www.alice.camera/ https://www.alice.camera/ That said, this is still a niche within a niche: I don't think either will be some mass market product. But being able to take my phone and a Alice or a SwitchLens to a concert in both pockets is pretty neat. These will more replace the things like the Fujifilm X70, or a lot of what people use the X100(roman numeral) for, while getting the workflow benefits you're rightfully after. I don't trust a camera manufacturer to keep their Android deployment up to date, or even to really fix that many bugs in it, and a whole Android OS is a lot more complex for them to manage than SwitchLens/Alice's apps and internal RTOS + comms layers. Other alternative would be for one of the big players in the mirrorless space to open up their operating systems, but Fujifilm's X series communication app is bad that I simply don't see it as feasible: they really are terrible at software.
  - 2y ago

chillfox 2y ago

Samsung did make a camera with most of those features (it was before 5G, so 3G I think). I had it, it sucked a lot. Turns out physical buttons for most things is very important if you want to be able to rapidly change settings as required for capturing a moment. Whenever I tried using that camera I lost so many shots due to the delay of fiddling with menus or the startup time.

nucleardog 2y ago
> Turns out physical buttons for most things is very important if you want to be able to rapidly change settings as required for capturing a moment. Yeah, this really feels like the “cars should have physical controls not giant tablets” argument argued from the opposite stance. If your focus is elsewhere (driving, trying to capture a photo) the last thing you want is a giant touchscreen that’s modal and has no tactile feedback. The only way you can operate it is to take your attention away from what you’re actually trying to do to fiddle with the touchscreen. Personally, I prefer being able to turn on my defroster or blinker from muscle memory and without taking my focus off the road just as I prefer being able to adjust the aperture or ISO from muscle memory without taking my focus off the scene I’m trying to capture.
- mavhc 2y ago
  Why not both? Touchscreen to select focus position, view images. A touchscreen doesn't mean you have to remove buttons.
  - dghlsakjg 2y ago
    That does exist in most modern interchangeable lens cameras. You can adjust almost all settings through the touchscreen that are available. Hell, on a lot of cameras you can control most settings remotely via Wifi using your smarthpone. The only function I can think of that isn't available is zoom, since photography lenses almost never include a zoom motor. The GP is asking for touchscreen ONLY, with no buttons for some reason.

nucleardog 2y ago

So in summary: - Power draining giant screen - Touchscreen and minimal physical controls - Multiple radios, including cellular - Cloud integration - Apps for photo editing - Slim form factor You want a smartphone with a better lens.

cyberax 2y ago
Yes, exactly. A smartphone with a good optical system.
shiroiushi 2y ago
Yep, this is me. I like just capturing memories with my smartphone, and only wish it had a better lens. It's convenient that I can just carry it in my pocket and not have to carry a separate device. If someone made this smartphone-like camera, I wouldn't buy one. What purpose would it serve? I already have a phone, and if I want to spend more money to get better-quality photos than it can provide, I can just go buy a higher-end phone that's aimed at people like me, with a bigger and better lens. Why would I want to carry a separate camera around and then worry about stuff like syncing photos? If, however, I got back into doing more serious amateur photography, like I was into 15+ years ago, the last thing I would want is a smartphone-like camera with an annoying touchscreen. I'd want a "prosumer" DSLR, with lots of physical switches. And these already exist.

mananaysiempre 2y ago

> Also, ditch the old-timey film-camera look. I don't need 15 physical switches [...]. You really, really do. This may sound contradictory at first, but cameras are operated blind. Even when you’re looking at the camera, you’re not seeing the camera, you’re seeing the subject. Touchscreens suck at blind controls. (That’s not to say touchscreens aren’t useful: choosing the focus point doesn’t exhibit this conflict, even if some prefer a joystick; or if you’re already digging into menus to do something very particular and non-time-sensitive—astrophotography, focus stacking, live compositing—a touchscreen can be better than a D-pad.) Cameras also weigh quite a bit and are supported with the fingers you’re using to operate them, so significantly shifting anything except maybe your right thumb usually means a real risk of dropping the camera. The weight also mounts a two-pronged attack on the size of your touchscreen (I’m assuming a walkaround camera, not weddings or sports): the camera needs to be smaller in order to be lighter, and a large part of its surface area needs to be available for you to grip. So, realistically, you don’t want a camera with a 6-inch touchscreen. In conclusion, please please please don’t take away my physical controls. I know a touchscreen is cheaper, but please don’t. I’ll pay. (Side note: it’s been almost fifteen years, and I still type slower on my Android phone than I used to on the QWERTY keyboard of my Nokia.)

atoav 2y ago
IMO the way black magic does it with their cinema cameras is a great middle ground. Big bright touchscreen that can do all + some physical buttons and dials for often used things. In their early series I had one of those touchsrcreens die on set, but those reliability issues seem to have gone since.
PetitPrince 2y ago
> You really, really do. This may sound contradictory at first, but cameras are operated blind. Even when you’re looking at the camera, you’re not seeing the camera, you’re seeing the subject. I completely agree. Touchscreen interface and touch button are terrible UI in a car for the very same reason: you're looking at the subject/the road, not at your camera/your dashboard.
- 2y ago

joshvm 2y ago

I’ve been doing a lot of extreme low temp (-70C ambient) photography with a Sigma FP. It’s basically a full-frame box hybrid movie camera. The addon EVF works well long after the LCD freezes. I really don’t want multi touch. I do want at least two physical dials with chunky detents. I don’t want auto-everything. USB charging is nice but I use a cabled external battery most of the time. The battery will die in minutes outside and for whatever reason Sigma decided not to add USB power pass through in the EVF. A week outside in the cold on AC power? No problem because there are no moving parts. The power solution I came up with is a modified battery charger with a removable base (Wasabi Power). I added teflon coated cables and a connector to go to the (also butchered) dummy battery. Real battery gets stuffed into a pocket or up a sleeve. The camera doesn’t care how cold it gets, from experimenting. It’s also small and the display is most of the back. If you make the display bigger, the camera gets bigger. At some point you aren’t serving pro photgraphers or people who would just use an iPad. Really you want a good OLED display or a high-res viewfinder. The FP has a weird loupe accessory back. An on device editor? I don’t understand the need, if you can sync to a phone or computer. The same goes for wifi - a lot of new cameras have 2.4Ghz in them (my OM-D EM5ii from almost a decade ago can sync to an app). This project looks super cool though.

cyberax 2y ago
> A week outside in the cold on AC power? No problem because there are no moving parts. Yeah, cameras also need to be vacuum-proof with a passive heat spreader (1 square meter should be enough), support depths up to 3 kilometers (what if you want to visit Titanic?), and be rad-hardened (everybody loves taking photos inside the Fukushima reactor). These are really must-have features that 99% of the population needs during their vacations.
- joshvm 2y ago
  You can ignore the Antarctica side of things, but the features that are useful here are useful everywhere. More cameras are moving to OLED rear displays (sunlight visible), full-frame mirrorless with electronic shutter (mechanical reliability), USB-C charging (took ages for this to become widespread), out-of-the-box UVC support for webcam mode, etc. These sorts of features have led to cameras that are not skeuomorphic representations of cameras from the 80s. They don't need a hump for a penta-prism and they can drop bulky mirror and shutter assemblies. I can fit my fp and the kit lens into a coat pocket. > These are really must-have features that 99% of the population needs during their vacations. > Give me a large sunlight-readable touchscreen, with multitouch. Also GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 5G/LTE for connectivity and geotagging. Add automatic uploads to Google Photos, iPhoto, WebDAV, etc. Put in a small editor for on-device photo touchups. I think having WiFi+GPS alone is sufficient for this (irritatingly few pro cameras have GPS receivers). Then you can do the editing on a device which is actually suitable for it, and you reduce the risk of obsolescence in the camera. TV manufacturers have shown they're unwilling to support changing APIs long-term. The interim solution is probably a smartphone with an add-on lens system like Moment's, and better RAW support.

thunfisch 2y ago

The only thing that I wish that camera-makers would finally agree on is a common mount. I'd love to try out camera bodies from different manufacturers, but that almost always means switching your entire lens collection as well. No, thanks. I agree on built-in GPS (currently need to pair with a smartphone - which I'd rather love to leave at home), but everything else seems like a non-feature to me. I have zero interest for that on my Camera, because the experience would just be insanely annoying. Touchscreens are awful for camera operation - the feature is turned off permanently on my camera. Camera needs to be operatable blind, touchscreens are awful for this. Please give me more buttons and dials.

yunohn 2y ago
> but that almost always means switching your entire lens collection as well Sadly, this is entirely by design. Like other industries, camera manufacturers want to ensure lock-in. At least we can usually keep lenses across body changes within the same brand.
- dghlsakjg 2y ago
  There are some more or less standard mounts from early days of film: LTM, 42mm, even Pentax K has been shared by numerous manufacturers. There is the m4/3 mount for digital which is shared across several manufacturers. The problem is that the mount is always a design constraint. The LTM mount means your lenses cannot have AF. The M4/3 mount means that your sensor size is maxed out at 1/4 the size of a full frame camera. Using the Pentax K mount means that you can't ever have a piece of glass closer than 45mm to the imaging surface. The most interesting manuever might be Nikon's new Z mount which has the closest flange distance of any full frame mount as well as the widest diameter. This makes it so that it is compatible with the largest amount of lenses of any mount when using adapters. Bizarrely, I can use old Canon EF mount lenses with new Nikon cameras with more features than I can using old Nikon lenses from the same era!
  - account42 2y ago
    > The problem is that the mount is always a design constraint. Yeah but this argument is the same as saying that it makes no sense to standardize on USB-C for chargers because requirements can change.

a2800276 2y ago

What you're describing is basically a modern phone. Just get an iPhone pro, done.

ImHereToVote 2y ago

I just need something that can feed RAW data to various ML tasks.

MarioMan 2y ago

I've been using a professional camera (Sony A7C) for a bit over two years now, and my wishlist looks very different than yours. - Modern computational photography: Imagine having access to a high-end sensor combined modern computational photography tooling. Smartphones do incredible things with computational photography, including HDR, low light stacking, noise reduction, upscaling, and picking out smiling faces from multiple photos. Most of these things can be done in post on a professional camera with tools like Photoshop, but often they are inferior, using a single image to worse affect, requiring a lot of manual work, or just having less mature tooling. I'd love to have access to the raw data and computational pipelines to selectively apply different processing and tweak computational settings in post. - Better UI: Sony notoriously has a terrible UI in their camera menu systems. Working with it feels like something I would've used on a flip-phone from 20 years ago, with things buried multiple levels down in obscure menus and vague, sometimes poorly translated descriptions. The hardware is great, but the GUI feels like something built by engineers rather than for end-users.

atoav 2y ago
Sony is the manufacturer who had me search for the battery release camrra for a solid minute - it was on the opposite side of the camera. If I didn't have to use those cameras they would be engineering marbels, but their professional video segment really could use a new generation of designers.
dannyw 2y ago
Most computational photography inherently breaks giving the photographer direct manual control over how a picture is taken (shutter speed, aperture, ISO). For example, HDR or low light staking means taking multiple photos. This requires a fast shutter speed to minimise change in the scene or subject. However, photographers sometimes intentionally want a slower shutter speed for motion blur, or to shoot at lower ISO for less noise and more resolution. Actions like noise reduction, upscaling, etc are post-processing actions. They are best done on a large, high-resolution, color-calibrated screen; instead of a portable device with a small battery where you want to maximise the number of shots you can take before swapping or recharging batteries. Bear in mind that modern cameras easily shoot in 40, 60+ MP. To truly perform noise reduction, or upscaling on those images require a lot more processing power, even with fixed-function hardware. Your "48MP" quad-bayer smartphone is generally processing a "pixel-binned" 12MP image straight out of the sensor, that might be resampled to 24MP (iOS) after post-processing; but was never anything more than 12MP. The hardware was never more than 12MP, except they sub-divided each bayer pixel into 4 quad (or 12 for some Samsung chips) to claim 4x/12x the spec sheet w/o real world benefits. Your smartphone's SoC, is usually manufactured on the latest, bleeding edge 3nm or 4nm processes. They are also the most expensive; made practical because tens of millions of each chip are shipped each year. There are ~1m dedicated cameras shipped each year; from many different manufactures using different chips; usually built on N16, N12, or N7 for the bleeding edge ones. No, they cannot just use a smartphone SoC. Smartphone image signal processors simply can't process 61MP at 20FPS or 30FPS or whatever the burst rate sports photographers demand. Your smartphone uses an electronic shutter. Your proper camera probably has a mechanical shutter, which is generally superior but also requires more force to move. The battery in your smartphone is probably ~2x bigger than a professional mirrorless or DSLR. Pro photographers buy cameras, in a significant part based on how many shots they can take. > the GUI feels like something built by engineers rather than for end-users. Think of the GUI as being built for professional photographers who's been using an UI for the past 20 years of their livelihood. You would probably be really upset if your OS decided to change established keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl+C or Ctrl+V. You probably wouldn't choose that OS, and if professional photographers won't buy a camera because the UI is "weird to them", you've wasted your R&D costs because the dedicated camera market for the past decade is essentially only professionals; with some amateurs and hobbyists.

ngcc_hk 2y ago

You need physical buttons. It is about communicating with the machine what you really want and control it. If you want auto just have an option for auto. A good example is auto focus. Many has a button on the back to activate on an area with focus size and point control by a joystick. And if it is good, fix it so the machine does not decide to autofocus another area, subject, …

mihaaly 2y ago

How about buying a smartphone then?! ; )

whoiscroberts 2y ago

Hasselblad x2d meets some of these wants.

qingcharles 2y ago
This does look excellent indeed, as you'd expect from Hasselblad. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1725356-REG/hasselblad_cp_hb_00000723_01_x2d_100c_medium_format.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1725356-REG/hasselbla...

entropie 2y ago

Something like this? There is one that was very recently released, but could not find it, but this is the idea: https://petapixel.com/2021/07/10/yongnuo-yn455-a-new-android-powered-m43-mirrorless-camera/ https://petapixel.com/2021/07/10/yongnuo-yn455-a-new-android...

vladvasiliu 2y ago

> Also, ditch the old-timey film-camera look. I don't need 15 physical switches, most of which should be automatic anyway. Yeah, you do. For the reasons others have given (adjusting the exposure compensation on my iPhone is a PITA. On my Olympus I just spin a dial). But also: if you're "out shooting", this may happen when it's freezing outside. If you've found a pair of warm gloves that allows you to comfortably use an iPhone, I'd love to hear about them. My Olympus' dials are usable with my winter motorcycle gloves. My iPhone's screen is also a pain to use if it's wet. Sure, it won't brick the phone, but dragging things around the screen? Good luck.

cyberax 2y ago
> Yeah, you do. For the reasons others have given (adjusting the exposure compensation on my iPhone is a PITA. On my Olympus I just spin a dial). No, I don't. I haven't touched most of controls on my camera, and I don't have a desire to do that. > But also: if you're "out shooting", this may happen when it's freezing outside. Yeah, so every feature must be designed to work under water, at night, at -60C, on Jupiter. Here's a newsflash: people typically don't take pictures when it's super-cold.
- vladvasiliu 2y ago
  Indeed. It's almost as if there were multiple uses for a given piece of technology. > Here's a newsflash: people typically don't take pictures when it's super-cold. Here's a newsflash: most of these people don't care for "real cameras" and are buying phones instead. The no-dial fully-automatic cameras are pretty much extinct because people find phones good enough for their needs. I don't follow the camera news that closely, but I'm pretty sure at least Olympus and Panasonic have some models with few buttons. I don't know if they have integrated GPS (probably not), but apart from that, they sound like what you want. Those are smaller sensor cameras (but still big enough to be in a totally different league than phones). I think Panasonic recently came out with a "full-frame" compact with close to no dials. Sony has a compact full-frame, but it does have dials and buttons. Either way, if you're willing to put up with lugging around a big-ass camera and a heavy lens, it's not clear to me what's the issue of there being 2-3 more buttons and dials. Just don't use them. Aside from the on-off button on my camera which is a braindead design, I never unintentionally bump dials or switches and there are a bunch of them on a tiny camera.

franga2000 2y ago

For the sake of every professional (and semi-professional such as myself) photographer out there, I wish, to use your terminology, that the manufacturer's heads remain firmly up their asses. The only thing touching the LCD on my camera is my nose while I look through the viewfinder and when I am looking at the screen it's because I'm holding the camera in a strange position that doesn't allow me to use a touchscreen either. Give me an open API so I can offload all the smarts to my infinitely more capable phone that already has a SIM card with a huge data plan and keep the camera a camera.

ekianjo 2y ago

> Also, ditch the old-timey film-camera look. I don't need 15 physical switches, most of which should be automatic anyway. No thank you. The whole point of a good camera is to have manual controls IF you want them. Nope that you can already use DSLRs and mirrorless cameras as fully automatic point and shoot cameras of you want to use them this way.

egorfine 2y ago

I am a photographer with decades of experience, the vast majority of which is studio works. My wishlist is the exact opposite of your's. I don't need multitouch, couldn't care less for anything wireless, much less automatic uploads and on-device editing. I need physical buttons for everything. The more the better. And I need a manual AF/MF switch badly.

verandaguy 2y ago

It sounds like what you want is a smartphone. > Give me a large sunlight-readable touchscreen, with multitouch. Also GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 5G/LTE for connectivity and geotagging. Add automatic uploads to Google Photos, iPhoto, WebDAV, etc. Put in a small editor for on-device photo touchups. Most newer cameras have _many_ of these, minus integration with Google Photos, iPhoto, or WebDAV, and cellular connectivity since many areas of photography just wouldn't benefit from it enough to justify the extra cost, complexity, and battery life hit. Many newer cameras also have smartphone control, with varying levels of actual usability, but that's a separate issue. > Put in a small editor for on-device photo touchups An editor with any amount of value-add for the kind of person who still buys a standalone camera would be pretty big in storage and would likely be painfully slow; for me, on a 2019 Macbook Pro, Lightroom is consistently a pretty heavy app to run (to say nothing of Photoshop proper). > Also, ditch the old-timey film-camera look. I don't need 15 physical switches, most of which should be automatic anyway. As others have said: a good haptic interface is essential for most shooting styles, and many of the settings do have automatic modes, but a big selling point of standalone cameras is that they allow you to express yourself creatively by exposing these manual controls to you. Wanna take a picture of a waterfall at dawn? Throw your master mode and ISO into auto and you'll probably get a really nice shot of a waterfall. But what if you want to blur the water so it looks like white streaks? There's not an auto setting that can just infer that for you. With a good haptic interface you'll be able to set that up in the dark, or in the cold while wearing gloves, or in the wind or on rough terrain where it might be tricky to keep your hands steady over a touchscreen. If you're shooting at an airshow, what balance do you want between shutter speed and ISO to balance crispness with the appearance of motion? With a good haptic interface you'll be able to configure that while following a jet through a long lens. > A physical button for the shutter and an analog knob for fine tuning are fine, but I don't need a manual switch for AF/MF. Or a "shutter delay" selector that is too easy to accidentally bump. Fortunately, there's a class of devices where these needs and gripes are served well: smartphones. The default camera apps and even some higher-end camera apps loaded onto modern smartphones are immensely powerful at making good shots with minimal effort. Having said all that: smartphones are usually excellent cameras, and arguably _much more than enough_ for the average person, but if you want to break out of using the bog-standard auto settings, interfaces get tricky, annoying, and even in the best case can be difficult to work with. Halide, for example, is great in general, but struggles with short focus (much more than the stock iOS camera app) for some reason; it provides a manual focus slider to work around that, but for nearby scenes with a shallow FOV, you'd usually want a hold-to-keep-in-focus or even an AF-C setting. Dedicated cameras -- and especially ILCs -- target a different audience with different goals. What you get is, relatively speaking, uncompromising flexibility and an ability to support a wide range of artistic visions, though often with a learning curve tied to it. So, I'll ask you a followup: what do you want out of a camera that a phone can't get you?

nunoonun 2y ago

You just described a camera from hell (minus the connectivity part). Muscle memory is very important in photography, half presses, AEL/AFL lock buttons, exposure compensation. There's so many things that have to have physical buttons, you will not be looking at the screen to do these things. This is exactly the same problem Tesla created with the touch buttons for turn signals, not everyone is a BMW driver, we use turn signals.

nakedrobot2 2y ago

You are not a photographer are you.