Just what features do you really need in your new camera? One of the reasons I like Leica’s products (especially the M) is that features are kept to a minimum or effectively hidden. For sure, cameras such as the SL and Q are well capable of matching the opposition feature for feature. But Leica has a knack of hiding all the stuff you don’t need and you can convert any Leica camera into a simple device that mirrors your personal preference. For instance, I much prefer menu Leica’s approach to to the efforts of, say, Sony or (worst of all for complexity), Olympus. Oddly enough, it is Panasonic that comes closest to Leica in its menu presentation and I suspect some of this is down to the company’s close cooperation with Wetzlar.
Sadly, many of the multitude of options on modern cameras are there just to keep up with the Joneses. Even Leica isn’t entirely immune to the pressures of the box-ticking set. The prime example, always, is the amount of menu space and button functioning devoted to JPG production. In effect, you have a mini laboratory in your hands and you can twiddle to your heart’s content. If you like that, all well and good. If, however, you prefer to shoot RAW and do your processing in the quiet of the evening, much of the feature bloat on a modern camera is superfluous. Many photographers go out of their way to pare the options down to the basic exposure triangle: Speed, aperture, sensitivity. Each to his own.
Ming Thein has written an excellent essay on this very theme. As he says:
“It’s nearly impossible to buy a camera without a feature list as long as an encyclopaedia so the marketing people can ensure it wins every Top Trumps style comparison with the competition; and secondly, how many of us ever buy the camera with fewer features? Do we even know what we really need – as opposed to what we think we want? The analogy of bitter medicine being good for you keeps coming to mind. The last year-plus running a medium format primary system with a considerably smaller feature set than I’d previously been used to, in parallel with the Olympus E-M1.2 with perhaps the longest and most feature-rich menu system I’ve encountered – has prompted me to reconsider what I really need in a camera for my shooting needs.”
I agree with everything Ming says in his article, which you can read here. What do you think? Do you prefer a minimalist control and menu setup or do you really enjoy fiddling with little buttons and complex setup?
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My favourite digital camera is the ultra-minimalist Leica DMR coupled to a Leica R9. The DMR is now 12 years ‘young’ … its film-like 10 MP image results are superb … and I’ve not used a camera with easier menus.
Megapixels are not that important … as also proved by the Sony A7S / A7SII … but navigation of their menus can be a nightmare compared to the simple and intuitive Leica DMR.
Best wishes
dunk sargent
Ivor Cooper has one of these stashed away in the back of the shop and keeps threatening to lend it to me. Perhaps I will take up the offer!
I own and use the Leica M-D 262 as my primary camera, and a Nikon Df as a secondary system for when TTL viewing is important. On the former no controls exist other than the exposure triangle and focus, while on the latter, set to A mode, RAW only, aftermarket split-image focusing screen installed (shaved K3 from FM3a), image review turned off and the fact that I don’t own a single autofocus lens it is essentially the same as that digital F3 I’ve been wanting.
On the M-D there is no menu, whether I want one or not. On the Df the menu is there, but I really only use it for formatting SD cards, and even that not often as I’m in the habit of using a utility on my computer as the M-D lacks even that basic function.
Ah…the M-D. That’s all you really need everything else is superfluous.
Blimey.. how I wish for a digital FM3a.
Unfortunately the camera manufacturers firmware department newer heard the term "user friendly".
An ideal firmware should be user configurable on a PC or Mac and uploadable to camera. Hawk!
Oddly enough this is a point made often enough by our Fuji X expert, Bill Palmer. Why can we not set up camera parameters from a computer application? It makes sense in any case, but especially if you happen to have two identical bodies and wish to have exactly the same settings on both. Computer and smartphone companies do better at this. Buy a new iPhone, load in your credentials and the new device is set up to mirror your old one. It makes a lot of sense.
I agree that I have not so far had a reason to criticise the M-P menu system apart from the slight confusion that could creep in between the two settings buttons, and as I understand things, the M10 has got even better., well one of the settings buttons has gone anyway!
But to not be able to stop the T doing whatever it likes is either me making a massive boo-boo or it is the manufacturer. Note that I have mentioned this at least three times here and nobody has put me right, so either I am not explaining my issue properly, or I am doing something really silly that doesn’t bear explaining.
So if anyone knows how to lock the T camera so that it remembers settings between power cycles I will be most grateful.
I suppose that the compression options in all cameras, are there so that the camera can be operated and produce usable results without needing a computer or expensive softwares. I remember when out on that London walk, there was one of the attendees that indeed did not have a PC and did not want one. When he felt the urge, he ran round to Jessops and printed his camera out, which seems very close to our mutual tradition.
On reading Ming’s piece, I have to say that I personally prefer the camera that does nothing, even though I am not a natural photographer. The Hasselblad that I have just bought, has one fixed lens and therefore one body, the viewfinder is an (horror upon horror) accessory finder, and it is horribly distorted, it has no meter. So to take a picture, it needs to be pointed the right way, hyper-focussed, the light needs to accounted for as well as the film speed, before making aperture and shutter settings.
But setting this up is fun, whereas setting up the T camera is becoming a chore, simply because it seems to have a mind of its own, or more accurately no mind at all, not even the sense to wait for instructions, it prefers assumptions.