"J. Clarke" wrote in message
...
Neil Harrington wrote:


"Alan Browne" wrote in message
...
[ . . . ]

That is what the "pictograms" on the metering mode dial are for: non
thinking photographers with a camera. Glorified P&S' in other words.
The
A100 has 6 such modes on the exposure mode dial. P&S.

Any camera with that dial on it cannot be "point and shoot" in anything
remotely like the original, and still current, meaning of that term. Real
point-and-shoot cameras don't offer different exposure modes. As soon as
you add any sort of user controls over exposure, etc., you have taken the
instrument out of the point-and-shoot category.

Take a look at a Konica Big Mini, for example. There's a point-and-shoot
for you. Icons? A couple, self timer and infinity focus. Exposure mode
dial? No. Metering mode dial or switch? No. Any user controls at all over
details of exposure or focus? No. Even something with a flower pictogram?
No. That's what P&S means, Alan. Something you just point and shoot, no
controls at all.

There's a reason for the pictograms by the way, which incidentally are not
normally called "pictograms" but "icons".

Yes. Alan prefers "pictograms," and while non-standard in this usage I don't
think it's incorrect. I've used both terms interchangeably here.


The alternative is to make
dozens of different shells with writing in Arabic, Hebrew, English,
German,
Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Sanskrit, Swahili, and every other language
on Earth. A picture of a flower is universal. Now, one could put the
word
"macro" in its place with the assumption that anybody who cares about
photography could learn the English word as well as he could learn the
icon, but in the real world it's not quite that simple--someone whose
written language uses a Roman-derived character set could probably deal
with it easily, but someone who doesn't would have as much trouble with it
as a typical American would have with, say, Hebrew.

That's a good point, although those people do have to cope with our language
and character set to some extent anyway, since there are words and
abbreviations in English on the cameras too.

Neil