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OK, this might be too long to read... sorry....
OK, this might be too long to read... sorry....
"Destroy" seems to be the key emotion to your post. It seems that you want either simple operation or maximum automation. Camera market analysis from the Sixties to now have had this dilemma to deal with, whether modern buyers want simplified user experience through full automation (which lead to point-and-shoot film cameras that worked really well, but turned off power users), or simplified manual controls, through hidden automation, that left power users the feeling that they're controlling the photographic process by choosing the aperture and shutter speed. However, this being America, there has always been a market for "advanced amateur" cameras that have both automation and lots of manual controls so users can choose to control everything. Those cameras usually sold better if they had lots of "bullet points" of features that were supported.
I have some experience with marketing people and bullet points. I work for an Italian company that makes barcode scanners for many industries. (I test the mobile computers used for inventory and warehousing, route sales, airport luggage handling, etc.) We've had customers choose competitor's devices over ours because they listed more bullet points of features that were supported, even though the customer in particular might never use them all. So, after a couple of large sales that were lost that way, our marketing folks started to specify lots of extra features be added to our products so sales wouldn't be lost. There's a cost to this approach in added engineering and testing time, but we stopped losing out on sales.
I imagine that camera marketing managers have much the same challenges, and have had these challenges for years. The advanced cameras have to do everything that their competitors can do, plus something else too. This leads to problems of feature bloat, and feelings that there are just too many features. For a lot of folks, even technically advanced users like we have in this forum and like you, this complexity is very frustrating. This is made much worse by a poorly designed user interface. I've seen some dreadful UI's on cameras too. I have a Canon EOS Elan where some modes have to programmed by entering in numbers to numbered parameters in a tiny little LCD menu using push-buttons and a rotary encoder! Who thought that this approach would be OK? My Leica M3 offers the same level of control with many simpler analog controls, but they require lots of learning before picking up the camera. It's a different approach entirely, and I'm not entirely sure one is better than the other.
However, cameras aren't the only product with this problem of simplicity versus complexity of control. Cell phones are notorious for this, but so are cars. The best example I know is the problem posed when my mom rented a Prius at an airport a couple of years ago. She was used to her very standardized controls in her Subaru, and she's been driving for more than 60 years, so she isn't a novice with cars... BUT... the differences with the Prius' controls really flummoxed her. The rental company didn't even send someone out with her to tell her where the various controls were. She looked and couldn't find where to put the key to start the car. The shifter was completely alien to her. She couldn't find the speedometer, and even after she put the car into Reverse, and then into Drive, when she got to her destination she wondered how to put it into Park and then turn off the engine. She called me a lot from 3000 miles away that morning. I did a lot of Googling. Another example was Mercedes Benz S-series cars in the late 1990's. They realized that they had something like 110 discrete controls in their most expensive car, and their market research folks found that on average their customers used nine of them regularly. Nine. They asked their customers why they didn't use more of them, and they found out that there were just too many to remember. This was a hard thing for German engineers to understand. Engineers like control, and have good memories for understanding how to use complex systems. The market researchers had to repeatedly remind their engineers that Mercedes Benz customers are not usually engineers. A few liked the tremendous control that the S-series sedans offered, but most just wanted to drive the best car in the world and didn't really care about all the tricks it could do. They just needed to know how to make it do the simple things simply, without a lot of thought when traffic and life were complex.
I can imagine that both customers and engineers were feeling like the other side was destroying something important about using these products, whether they are cameras or luxury cars. I try to remind our engineers at my company about these competing needs, and try to mesh our marketing managers' non-technical outlook with these competing needs. However, with your original feelings of joy being destroyed, it seems like you need to look for a camera that offers the experience you enjoy, with just the right amount of logical and intuitive control over your photographic experience. That's hard. I've been a camera user for more than 30 years, and I still haven't found that ideal balance yet. It's hard to find.
Scott
OK, this might be too long to read... sorry....
"Destroy" seems to be the key emotion to your post. It seems that you want either simple operation or maximum automation. Camera market analysis from the Sixties to now have had this dilemma to deal with, whether modern buyers want simplified user experience through full automation (which lead to point-and-shoot film cameras that worked really well, but turned off power users), or simplified manual controls, through hidden automation, that left power users the feeling that they're controlling the photographic process by choosing the aperture and shutter speed. However, this being America, there has always been a market for "advanced amateur" cameras that have both automation and lots of manual controls so users can choose to control everything. Those cameras usually sold better if they had lots of "bullet points" of features that were supported.
I have some experience with marketing people and bullet points. I work for an Italian company that makes barcode scanners for many industries. (I test the mobile computers used for inventory and warehousing, route sales, airport luggage handling, etc.) We've had customers choose competitor's devices over ours because they listed more bullet points of features that were supported, even though the customer in particular might never use them all. So, after a couple of large sales that were lost that way, our marketing folks started to specify lots of extra features be added to our products so sales wouldn't be lost. There's a cost to this approach in added engineering and testing time, but we stopped losing out on sales.
I imagine that camera marketing managers have much the same challenges, and have had these challenges for years. The advanced cameras have to do everything that their competitors can do, plus something else too. This leads to problems of feature bloat, and feelings that there are just too many features. For a lot of folks, even technically advanced users like we have in this forum and like you, this complexity is very frustrating. This is made much worse by a poorly designed user interface. I've seen some dreadful UI's on cameras too. I have a Canon EOS Elan where some modes have to programmed by entering in numbers to numbered parameters in a tiny little LCD menu using push-buttons and a rotary encoder! Who thought that this approach would be OK? My Leica M3 offers the same level of control with many simpler analog controls, but they require lots of learning before picking up the camera. It's a different approach entirely, and I'm not entirely sure one is better than the other.
However, cameras aren't the only product with this problem of simplicity versus complexity of control. Cell phones are notorious for this, but so are cars. The best example I know is the problem posed when my mom rented a Prius at an airport a couple of years ago. She was used to her very standardized controls in her Subaru, and she's been driving for more than 60 years, so she isn't a novice with cars... BUT... the differences with the Prius' controls really flummoxed her. The rental company didn't even send someone out with her to tell her where the various controls were. She looked and couldn't find where to put the key to start the car. The shifter was completely alien to her. She couldn't find the speedometer, and even after she put the car into Reverse, and then into Drive, when she got to her destination she wondered how to put it into Park and then turn off the engine. She called me a lot from 3000 miles away that morning. I did a lot of Googling. Another example was Mercedes Benz S-series cars in the late 1990's. They realized that they had something like 110 discrete controls in their most expensive car, and their market research folks found that on average their customers used nine of them regularly. Nine. They asked their customers why they didn't use more of them, and they found out that there were just too many to remember. This was a hard thing for German engineers to understand. Engineers like control, and have good memories for understanding how to use complex systems. The market researchers had to repeatedly remind their engineers that Mercedes Benz customers are not usually engineers. A few liked the tremendous control that the S-series sedans offered, but most just wanted to drive the best car in the world and didn't really care about all the tricks it could do. They just needed to know how to make it do the simple things simply, without a lot of thought when traffic and life were complex.
I can imagine that both customers and engineers were feeling like the other side was destroying something important about using these products, whether they are cameras or luxury cars. I try to remind our engineers at my company about these competing needs, and try to mesh our marketing managers' non-technical outlook with these competing needs. However, with your original feelings of joy being destroyed, it seems like you need to look for a camera that offers the experience you enjoy, with just the right amount of logical and intuitive control over your photographic experience. That's hard. I've been a camera user for more than 30 years, and I still haven't found that ideal balance yet. It's hard to find.
Scott
