Sony tells DSLR shooters they're idiots

In rec.photo.digital.slr-systems Wolfgang Weisselberg wrote:
["Followup-To:" header set to rec.photo.digital.]
Chris Malcolm wrote:
In rec.photo.digital Wolfgang Weisselberg wrote:
Chris Malcolm wrote:

They [previews] usually show you what you'll get. In certain
circumstances they don't. You're right that learning what those
circumsntaces are, and if an inquisitive person, why, is a good and
useful idea. A brief glimpse of the taken shot flashed up on the
LCD or EVF will immediately show you the difference between preview
prediction and result.

So you need the same time to assess the correctness of the
preview mode as you need to check any other parameters.

Not necessarily. For example if the EVF (or LCD panel) is set to show
the resulting image after the shot there is an instant flick between
pre and post views which highlights small differences rapidly &
effectively. Astronomers use that same process to draw the eye to very
small changes which are otherwise imperceptible.

Blink comparators switch many times between 2 images, not
just once --- for a very good reason. And even then you need
perfect alignment *and* no blanking.

For their purposes, which involve identification of very small changes
of detail. For the purpose I'm describing the instant switch between
the two images works well to draw the eye and attention to
differences. For static subjects alignment is perfect. For moving
skaters it's good enough to be useful. The blanking is very brief, I
guess about the same as an OVF DSKR mirror blank, and while I agree it
would be better with no blanking, there is despite the blank a useful
comparative effect.

Oh, and does your EVF
or LCD show 10x magnification of the whole image at once?

No, neither does my computer monitor no does the optical viewfinders
in my DSLRs and SLR. Despite that handicap I find them useful. I agree
that if they were big enough to show the whole image at pixel level
resolution they'd be even better.

[snip]

[...] It would be nice if our cameras' auto functions were all
infallibly perfect, but none of them are, and it's part of any
inquisitive and careful photographer's work to find out when they
can't be trusted.

Incorrect. There can be an inquisitive and careful photographer
who stays with full manual for his work.

True, but the more restricted is the range of inquisitive
investigation the less it deserves the title.

Why should someone who investigates what's effective in
his photography and doesn't need automatic functions for
his work investigate something so unimportant to his work?

From a purposeful point of view of course they don't. The point is
that a purposeful point of view is based on assumptions which while
usually true sometimes turn out to be false. Especially when there are
changes in the technology. I'm sure you're aware of how many important
changes in science ocurred when changing technology introduced higher
data resolution and new possibilities, and how often the consequent
new ideas and new methods required an unusually open-minded individual
who noticed something intriguing which all the other experts had
either been blind to or "knew" was of no significance.

An optical viewfinder shows the image the lens is presenting to the
image sensor. An EVF shows you what the sensor makes of it. An EVF
in preview mode shows you in addition what your selected jpeg
processing options etc. have on the image.

An EVF in preview mode *sometimes* show you an image
*downsampled to 0.3-0.4 MPix* of what the sensor and JPEG engine
made of the light that arrived through the lens *some time ago*
on an *uncorrected* monitor that's usually much too bright in
low light situations.

Excellent job of describing an EVF is such a way as to make it sound
worse than useless. Shame you couldn't find more credible numbers.

[snip]

It's
also possible that all kinds of variable eye and brain physiology
comes into this and that some people will find the preview facilities
far more annoying than useful.

I would find it plainly impossible to see the difference between
tack sharp and mostly sharp in preview.

Which I expect is why the facility to magnify the preview image up to
image sensor pixel level was provided.

Which again --- with roller skates --- means you need to have
your subject pass the part of whatever 0.3 MPix

There are bigger EVFs than that.

you're currently
seeing at pixel level and judge in 1/60s (or whatever refresh
rate you EVF uses)

If we're talking preview mode then the refresh rate is the chosen
shutter speed plus a small constant.

if the subject was tack sharp or only mostly
sharp --- or reliably follow the subject at that magnification
without camera shake or blur from the camera movement.

You're absolutely right that's what you'd have to do if you were
trying to judge tack sharpness in preview mode while photgraphing
moving skaters. I've already explained to you at least twice why I I
wasn't trying to do anything as silly as that.

Do you find this poor memory a handicap in everyday life, or does it
only happen when you're arguing with people in newsgroups?

[snip]

A nice feature of EVFs is that stopping down the lens doesn't dim the
view unless you want it to. Very handy when doing long tripod
exposures in churches or carefully selecting DoF in interior shots lit
by strobes.

Yes, *please* show me how you evaluate the light, the JPEG
settings and the DoF in a dark interior shot lit by strobes
... in preview mode!

Are you deliberately trying to be stupid? Or does it come quite
naturally to you to have forgotten that *I*'ve already pointed out to
*you* that evaluating strobe lighting was one of the things EVF
preview can't possibly do.

[snip]

Not with any refresh rate that's needed to
even sorta track the subject, and not without a 10x (or more)
loupe, which severely cuts your perception of the scene.

A 10x loupe?? Why on earth would you ever need a loupe on a camera
which can easily magnify any part of the image,

That isn't called a loupe?

No. A loupe is a lens. Do you describe zooming in and panning around
when inspecting a large image on your computer monitor as "using a
loupe"? I suggest you look up "loupe" in a dictionary.

http://www.gregorybraun.com/Loupe.html
http://www.artissoftware.com/screentools/loupe.html
http://www.markus-bader.de/MB-Ruler/help/loupe.htm

Maybe your dictionary is out of date?

That's possible, but pretty unlikely in this case. You're certainly
not going to convince me that it is by citing product advertisements
which only use the word in a specifically qualified phrase. That you
even bother doing that strongly suggests that you know even less about
dictionaries than you know about EVFs.

If you don't want more than sorta-WYSIWYG, preview mode only,
then that's perfectly fine with me, use preview mode, stay
with preview mode.

But you cannot transfer what you learn there to other modes,
not without deliberately and consciously working on it.
In other modes you can't get away ignoring the numbers and
their meanings --- you learn by default.

But underneath the image are displayed the shutter speed, aperture,
ISO, plus a lot more which you can choose whether or not to display.

And on web pages there are ad banners on the top and on each
site. They're habitually ignored.

There you go again. I'm explaining to you what *I* do with certain
bits of photographic technology and why. I don't give a damn what
other people do with it. I want to know those numbers, and they're
conveniently displayed alongside the image. Good. I don't give a hoot
that people who don't want to know the numbers will ignore them.

On Windows, there are many cases where you need to confirm a
detrimental action. But as such pop ups are used for
everything, people are conditioned to ignore the warning that
they destroy their installation and click OK.

So what? I make no claim that my camera or my methods are good
educational tools for forcing the lazy and ignorant to learn. I don't
even give a damn if they're worse than useless at forcing education on
the unwilling. The educational fate of the incurious is not something
that influences my choices of camera technology.

Just having the numbers doesn't mean that they're being seen.

So what? When I let my camera choose aperture, shutter speed, or ISO,
I want to know what it's chosen. I don't give a damn if other people
ignore the information.

That facilitates the learning if learning is what you want to do. You
might be right that it also helps you to avoid learning if that's what
you want to do.

In your skater example, did you look at the numbers, adjusted
them and then checked the effect, or did you turn the dials
till the effect was sorta what you wanted and then looked at
the numbers? (Or did you ignore the numbers completely?)

Haven't I already explained that? I did both of the first two in that
order.

[snip]

I do know about the
reciprocal of the focal length for shutter speed, that you have to
adapt that to digital sensor size and resolution, add in the image
stabilising factor when appropriate, adapt it to the holding method
employed (e.g. elbows on wall, monopod, tripod), factor in wind,
factor in unusual rotational inertias (e.g. long reflective vs
refractive lens), etc etc.

Yep. So how many bodies and lenses do you regularly use?

Depepnding on how you define "regularly" anywhere between five and ten
lenses. I'm not counting lenses I use less than once a year. I usually
carry at least three. I only use my backup camera when I want to
reduce lens changes. It doesn't do anything better than my best camera
so it never goes out alone. That varies between more than once a week
to less than once a month so I wouldn't call my use of two bodies
regular.

Do your know your regular lenses well?

Yes. How about you? How many bodies and lenses do you regularly use?
How well do you know your lenses?

Really? I try a new technique, I see what comes out, I
adjust as necessary to my goal, I remember what works and
what not for next time.

Sounds like you're blessed with a much better memory than I've ever
had. I sometimes solve a problem on the run in a busy shoot and by the
time I get to reviewing the results on the computer I've forgotten how
I did it.

You don't have EXIF in your files? There's everything in
there that you can influence by using the preview mode ...

You really think that? You mean all your lenses are fully automated?
There's an unexpected surprise! Plus even with fully automated lenses
all that's recorded is what's settable. That may be only part of
what's necessary to understanding how the problem was solved.

[snip]

Action shooters generally do not employ preview mode, though:
they don't want the additional *variable* lag between photons
hitting the sensor and dots lighting up on the EVF.

Of course. In that case you'd either avoid using the laggier kinds of
EVF processing or avoid preview mode altogether. The fastest and most
difficult kind of action shooting I do is birds in flight with a 500mm
lens and for that I don't use the camera's viewfinder at all. I use an
adapted gunsight which lets me use both eyes on the whole scene.

Yet wouldn't it be perfect if you used preview mode to have
the body tack sharp but the tips of the wings blurred to
show the dynamic movement?

I don't see the point. If the technology somehow offered that then
human eyes and hands are way too slow to be able to use it.

Much easier to freeze one frame and evaluate it at leisure,
once you have a rough idea (which requires about as much
training as using the preview properly) --- and exactly that
is what happens when you take a shot.

That is indeed much easier, but sometimes there isn't time to do that.

Then there isn't time to play with preview modes either.

Not my experience. I find I still have time to use preview when
there's no time to shoot and review. It's better at that than I
expected before trying it.

That would mean lots of experience with preview, but low on
experience with exposure times and apertures.

You must be making some seriously false assumptions then. My
experience with preview is a few months of elapsed time and a few
hundred photographs.

Whereas I spent fifteen years and thousands of photographs with fully
manual cameras before I started using cameras with either autofocus or
autoexposure. I still regularly use at least two fully manual lenses,
plus all but one of my flashguns are only manual, and I still usually
an exposure meter in my gear bag. So my experience of exposure times
and apertures hugely outweighs my experience of preview mode, and is
still being refreshed and improved by being in regular use.

SURE, if you have NO idea at all, then a preview helps ---

I find it also helps in my case where I have quite a good idea, having
learned my photgraphy back in the old days before there was even
autoexposure let alone autofocus.

You're saying you're still surprised by aperture or exposure
time settings?

Surprised is too strong a word. But where there are conflicting
demands and aesthetic trade offs involved I like to experiment with
different compromises. Anything which shortens the time between
experiment and result is useful, especially when the shortening steps
over the important boundary between experiment and check into
interactive process control.

The best shortening would be knowing pretty well which
combination work.

Of course. Iterative approximation is always greatly helped by being
able to start with a good estimate.

It's sorta like phase AF and contrast AF:
Phase AF knows the direction and (quite exact) the amount
of travel, contrast AF is an interactive control process ...
guess which one is still faster.

As usual it's the one which is least accurate. I'm pleased to see that
my latest camera has two phase based autofocus speeds. The slower one
is a bit more reliably accurate despite being faster than the single
AF speed of my previous camera.

I'm disappointed that it doesn't offer three AF speeds, where the
third and slowest would be a final tuning of the phase based autofocus
by contrast based. A deliberate slight undershoot of the phase-based
AF would solve the contrast based focus direction problem.

[snip]

But if you're referring to learning and experience which is specific
to certain makes and models of camera you're right.

Exactly.
You learn --- and then have to throw away most of it when you
change cameras.

Not my experience at all. I'm beginning to wonder just how much you've
learned about these newfangled technologies you don't like. The
biggest technology shift I've ever made was the shift from film to
digital. But even then I didn't have to throw most of what I'd learned
away. Even some film darkroom technique knowledge carried over into
the digital darkroom of computer post processing.

That lack of
generality is also true of autofocus. That doesn't stop autofocus
being very useful, nor does it stop it being useful to learn exactly
how a specific kind of autofocus technology works and where and why it
fails.

AF is fully automatic.

If you're suggesting that it works so well that you don't need to
understand how it works in order to understand how and why it fails
than you're a much less sophisticated photographer than I took you
for. There's a reason why the top end cameras with the best AF also
have the best aids to rapid and accurate manual focusing, plus the
ability to do lens speciofic microfovus adjustments.

There are also degrees of "fully automatic".

My new camera has a nice AF mode which drops into manual focus mode
once AF has locked. That allows me to check and if necessary adjust
focus manually without having to press any buttons. That's also an
inherent feature of some of the latest in-lens focus drives, but this
camera AF mode applies to all AF lenses of any vintage. So even though
the new camera has got the best AF I've used so far, I'm using manual
focus more often because it's now easier and faster than before.

Full auto mode is fully automatic.

Depends what you mean by full. On my previous camera full auto meant
the camera chose aperture, shutter, and ISO. When using full auto the
user could select various modes, such as sports, which went for action
freezing shutter speeds, or landscape, which went for lowest
ISOs. etc.. Whereas my new camera has two auto modes, the fuller of
which selects the mode based on looking at the image. e.g. it will
select sports mode if there are large fast moving things in view.

Preview is fully manual. And slower than full auto.

There wouldn't be much point to auto modes which were slower than
manual. The point about manual adjustment is being able to make more
sophisticated and accurate choices than auto is capable of. The point
of an optional preview mode is that in some circumstances it lets you
make your manual choices more easily and faster, which can bring the
extra sophistication of manual into faster kinds of photography.

Which means the
knowledge doesn't carry over.

Your arguments are much too black and white. That not all the
knowledge carries over doesn't mean that none of it does. All the
knowledge doesn't carry over. But a useful amount of it does.

Yet with aperture and exposure time almost all carries over,
even switching sensor sizes.

A surprising amount of what I learned in my film shooting days has
turned out to have been oversimplified and overgeneralised. That's
mainly been due to increasing sensor resolution revealing unsuspected
problems in earlier cruder generalisations. Rather like the way
improved detail resolution in scientific measuring instruments reveals
the simplifications and overgeneralisations in earlier mathematical
models.

Naah. You've increased the enlargement (you print larger or
look at 100% with higher resolutions), you needed to factor
that in even back when.

You're ignoring the fact that increased resolution often splits apart
things which were previously confounded because they couldn't be
distinguished. For example with film cameras I never noticed the
differences between mirror shake and shutter shake in image
blurring. I put it all down to mirror. Whereas the increased detail
resolution which digital photography gave me allowed me to see the
differences for the first time. (I know some people measured shutter
shake back in film days. But I couldn't see it my photographs and
considered it to be trivially insignificant.)

What has changed is that you are more variable in your ways.
But luckily all you need is a simple correction factor.

Luckily it's a lot more complex than that. I say luckily, because if
it was just correction factors I'd find it much less interesting.

In fact angle of view is more independent and useful than
"equivalent focal length" which IMHO is a silly fudge of an incomplete
generalisation.

So you'd write an angle of view on a lens --- which is then
attached to a 35mm-sized sensor, a 1.6x crop sensor, a 2x crop
MFT and maybe even to a 2.7x '1"' sensor. For which sensor
would you write the angle of view?

None, for exactly the same reasons I wouldn't write "equivalent focal
length" on a lens either.

Thus the focal length is most useful, and from there you get
trivially to equivalent focal length, but not to angle of view.

I don't see why calculating equivalent focal length is more trivial
than calculating view angle. Nor do I see why it's more useful to me
(obviously YMMV). For example in off-site planning of shots of
building exteriors and interiors I've much more often decided I wanted
a specific view angle, and then had to calculate what focal length I'd
need, than the reverse.

[snip]

I call your
""sufficiently much faster that in five minutes shooting you
can come away with many more good shots of a much greater
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
variety than without preview" bull.
^^^^^^^

Experiment trumps speculation. My experiment, your speculation.

So you did experiment shooting a second five minutes shooting
without preview mode and came off with many less good shots
and with a much smaller variety? I doubt that!

No, I didn't do that experiment. I've already described the experiment
I did. The results were qualitatively similar to the results a number
of others have reported when doing their own comparative assessments.

[snip]

Unfortunately the
market is based on consumer choice.

Really? So where are the cameras many ask for?

In the shops.

So where's the affordable compact camera with a really large
sensor, 8 or less huge MPix, a good *fast* lens, an optical
view finder ...

And plenty of people want Porsche performance at Volkwagen Beetle
prices. I wonder why the car makers aren't making that obvious best
seller? Must be some kind of conspiracy against the customer...

--
Chris Malcolm

Chris Malcolm wrote:
In rec.photo.digital.slr-systems Wolfgang Weisselberg wrote:
["Followup-To:" header set to rec.photo.digital.]
Chris Malcolm wrote:
In rec.photo.digital Wolfgang Weisselberg wrote:
Chris Malcolm wrote:

They [previews] usually show you what you'll get. In certain
circumstances they don't. You're right that learning what those
circumsntaces are, and if an inquisitive person, why, is a good and
useful idea. A brief glimpse of the taken shot flashed up on the
LCD or EVF will immediately show you the difference between preview
prediction and result.

So you need the same time to assess the correctness of the
preview mode as you need to check any other parameters.

Not necessarily. For example if the EVF (or LCD panel) is set to show
the resulting image after the shot there is an instant flick between
pre and post views which highlights small differences rapidly &
effectively. Astronomers use that same process to draw the eye to very
small changes which are otherwise imperceptible.

Blink comparators switch many times between 2 images, not
just once --- for a very good reason. And even then you need
perfect alignment *and* no blanking.

For their purposes, which involve identification of very small changes
of detail.

20 MPix on a 0.3 MPix screen (1MDot): each *single* pixel is
66 pixel in the original. Rather large changes in the original
are there very small changes of detail.

For the purpose I'm describing the instant switch between
the two images works well to draw the eye and attention to
differences.

If the change is well visible and comparatively large.

For static subjects alignment is perfect.

But for static subjects you have all the time in the world
to try settings and chimp and don't need a preview mode.

For moving
skaters it's good enough to be useful. The blanking is very brief, I
guess about the same as an OVF DSKR mirror blank, and while I agree it
would be better with no blanking, there is despite the blank a useful
comparative effect.

Which means you'll only percive large changes ...

Oh, and does your EVF
or LCD show 10x magnification of the whole image at once?

No, neither does my computer monitor no does the optical viewfinders
in my DSLRs and SLR.

Neither of them are 0.3 MPix only ... and in the case of a
computer monitor it's extremely hard to zoom in and view
small details, don't you think so?

Despite that handicap I find them useful. I agree
that if they were big enough to show the whole image at pixel level
resolution they'd be even better.

Optical view finders come closest to that.

[...] It would be nice if our cameras' auto functions were all
infallibly perfect, but none of them are, and it's part of any
inquisitive and careful photographer's work to find out when they
can't be trusted.

Incorrect. There can be an inquisitive and careful photographer
who stays with full manual for his work.

True, but the more restricted is the range of inquisitive
investigation the less it deserves the title.

Why should someone who investigates what's effective in
his photography and doesn't need automatic functions for
his work investigate something so unimportant to his work?

From a purposeful point of view of course they don't. The point is
that a purposeful point of view is based on assumptions which while
usually true sometimes turn out to be false. Especially when there are
changes in the technology. I'm sure you're aware of how many important
changes in science ocurred when changing technology introduced higher
data resolution and new possibilities, and how often the consequent
new ideas and new methods required an unusually open-minded individual
who noticed something intriguing which all the other experts had
either been blind to or "knew" was of no significance.

And what "changes in science" would be analogus to the changes
pertaining to fully manual operation, and wouldn't your answer
be akin to telling all photographs to better learn optics and
electronics and quantum physics since they all are relevant
to digital photography, and to learn computer science and
algorithms since they directly pertain to the digital dark room?

An optical viewfinder shows the image the lens is presenting to the
image sensor. An EVF shows you what the sensor makes of it. An EVF
in preview mode shows you in addition what your selected jpeg
processing options etc. have on the image.

An EVF in preview mode *sometimes* show you an image
*downsampled to 0.3-0.4 MPix* of what the sensor and JPEG engine
made of the light that arrived through the lens *some time ago*
on an *uncorrected* monitor that's usually much too bright in
low light situations.

Excellent job of describing an EVF is such a way as to make it sound
worse than useless.

Well, I can't help if they are near worse than useless.
If you'd manage to reduce the drawbacks *a lot* it may become
viable. Battery eating, but viable.

Shame you couldn't find more credible numbers.

Tell me, how many dots do your EVFs have ... then we have a
credible number!

It's
also possible that all kinds of variable eye and brain physiology
comes into this and that some people will find the preview facilities
far more annoying than useful.

I would find it plainly impossible to see the difference between
tack sharp and mostly sharp in preview.

Which I expect is why the facility to magnify the preview image up to
image sensor pixel level was provided.

Which again --- with roller skates --- means you need to have
your subject pass the part of whatever 0.3 MPix

There are bigger EVFs than that.

Really? How many dots is your's?

you're currently
seeing at pixel level and judge in 1/60s (or whatever refresh
rate you EVF uses)

If we're talking preview mode then the refresh rate is the chosen
shutter speed plus a small constant.

Nope. The EVF can't update at infinite speeds. The sensor
cannot be read at infinite speeds. Even if the light is only
captured for a 1/4000s, that doesn't mean the refresh rate
is in the 1000's per second.

Same with your LCD screen. Your game may do 300 fps, but
your screen does 60Hz ...


if the subject was tack sharp or only mostly
sharp --- or reliably follow the subject at that magnification
without camera shake or blur from the camera movement.

You're absolutely right that's what you'd have to do if you were
trying to judge tack sharpness in preview mode while photgraphing
moving skaters. I've already explained to you at least twice why I I
wasn't trying to do anything as silly as that.

So you never would want a moving skater tack sharp, you say?

Do you find this poor memory a handicap in everyday life, or does it
only happen when you're arguing with people in newsgroups?

It's more likely my writing skill, since you obviously can
divine everything someone else writes.


A nice feature of EVFs is that stopping down the lens doesn't dim the
view unless you want it to. Very handy when doing long tripod
exposures in churches or carefully selecting DoF in interior shots lit
^^^
by strobes.
^^^^^^^^^^^

Yes, *please* show me how you evaluate the light, the JPEG
settings and the DoF in a dark interior shot lit by strobes
... in preview mode!

Are you deliberately trying to be stupid?

No, just reading what you write.

Or does it come quite
naturally to you to have forgotten that *I*'ve already pointed out to
*you* that evaluating strobe lighting was one of the things EVF
preview can't possibly do.

So you do DoF in interior shots by pushing the ISO to so high
the noise precludes you from seeing really sharp --- huh, wait
a moment, you're right! It doesn't matter on VGA resolution!
(Not that you can judge DoF very well there ...)


Not with any refresh rate that's needed to
even sorta track the subject, and not without a 10x (or more)
loupe, which severely cuts your perception of the scene.

A 10x loupe?? Why on earth would you ever need a loupe on a camera
which can easily magnify any part of the image,

That isn't called a loupe?

No. A loupe is a lens. Do you describe zooming in and panning around
when inspecting a large image on your computer monitor as "using a
loupe"? I suggest you look up "loupe" in a dictionary.

http://www.gregorybraun.com/Loupe.html
http://www.artissoftware.com/screentools/loupe.html
http://www.markus-bader.de/MB-Ruler/help/loupe.htm

Maybe your dictionary is out of date?

That's possible, but pretty unlikely in this case. You're certainly
not going to convince me that it is by citing product advertisements
which only use the word in a specifically qualified phrase. That you
even bother doing that strongly suggests that you know even less about
dictionaries than you know about EVFs.

Obviously you know everything and need to tell others they
don't know anything.


If you don't want more than sorta-WYSIWYG, preview mode only,
then that's perfectly fine with me, use preview mode, stay
with preview mode.

But you cannot transfer what you learn there to other modes,
not without deliberately and consciously working on it.
In other modes you can't get away ignoring the numbers and
their meanings --- you learn by default.

But underneath the image are displayed the shutter speed, aperture,
ISO, plus a lot more which you can choose whether or not to display.

And on web pages there are ad banners on the top and on each
site. They're habitually ignored.

There you go again. I'm explaining to you what *I* do with certain
bits of photographic technology and why.

*I* can do without preview mode, make of that what you like.

I don't give a damn what
other people do with it. I want to know those numbers, and they're
conveniently displayed alongside the image. Good. I don't give a hoot
that people who don't want to know the numbers will ignore them.

Oh well, it only takes enough people who don't give a hoot
for what other people do ...


On Windows, there are many cases where you need to confirm a
detrimental action. But as such pop ups are used for
everything, people are conditioned to ignore the warning that
they destroy their installation and click OK.

So what? I make no claim that my camera or my methods are good
educational tools for forcing the lazy and ignorant to learn.

I don't care about forcing anyone. I care about people being
sucked into dead ends.

I don't
even give a damn if they're worse than useless at forcing education on
the unwilling.

Do you have fun misrepresenting my position? If I wanted to
force educatiuon I'd be on the barricades against full auto
modes ...

The educational fate of the incurious is not something
that influences my choices of camera technology.

The idea that all valuable people are naturally curios and
there's no need for directed learning is proven by the fact
that most countries have stopped having schools.


Just having the numbers doesn't mean that they're being seen.

So what? When I let my camera choose aperture, shutter speed, or ISO,
I want to know what it's chosen. I don't give a damn if other people
ignore the information.

Straw man: you don't let the camera choose with preview mode.

I do know about the
reciprocal of the focal length for shutter speed, that you have to
adapt that to digital sensor size and resolution, add in the image
stabilising factor when appropriate, adapt it to the holding method
employed (e.g. elbows on wall, monopod, tripod), factor in wind,
factor in unusual rotational inertias (e.g. long reflective vs
refractive lens), etc etc.

Yep. So how many bodies and lenses do you regularly use?

Depepnding on how you define "regularly" anywhere between five and ten
lenses. I'm not counting lenses I use less than once a year. I usually
carry at least three. I only use my backup camera when I want to
reduce lens changes. It doesn't do anything better than my best camera
so it never goes out alone. That varies between more than once a week
to less than once a month so I wouldn't call my use of two bodies
regular.

Do your know your regular lenses well?

Yes. How about you? How many bodies and lenses do you regularly use?
How well do you know your lenses?

Not as many lenses as you use, but I think I know my lenses
fairly well.

Really? I try a new technique, I see what comes out, I
adjust as necessary to my goal, I remember what works and
what not for next time.

Sounds like you're blessed with a much better memory than I've ever
had. I sometimes solve a problem on the run in a busy shoot and by the
time I get to reviewing the results on the computer I've forgotten how
I did it.

You don't have EXIF in your files? There's everything in
there that you can influence by using the preview mode ...

You really think that? You mean all your lenses are fully automated?

So how come your preview mode shows the aperture on your
manual lenses?

There's an unexpected surprise! Plus even with fully automated lenses
all that's recorded is what's settable. That may be only part of
what's necessary to understanding how the problem was solved.

And what does preview mode do better for directing/adjusting/
adding light? Or for correcting the composition? Or for
using a lens hood? Or using makeup on the models?


Action shooters generally do not employ preview mode, though:
they don't want the additional *variable* lag between photons
hitting the sensor and dots lighting up on the EVF.

Of course. In that case you'd either avoid using the laggier kinds of
EVF processing or avoid preview mode altogether. The fastest and most
difficult kind of action shooting I do is birds in flight with a 500mm
lens and for that I don't use the camera's viewfinder at all. I use an
adapted gunsight which lets me use both eyes on the whole scene.

Yet wouldn't it be perfect if you used preview mode to have
the body tack sharp but the tips of the wings blurred to
show the dynamic movement?

I don't see the point. If the technology somehow offered that then
human eyes and hands are way too slow to be able to use it.

I can think of several easy ways to allow that for people who
can see moving skaters blurred with preview mode, apart from
simply finding out the right combinations.


Much easier to freeze one frame and evaluate it at leisure,
once you have a rough idea (which requires about as much
training as using the preview properly) --- and exactly that
is what happens when you take a shot.

That is indeed much easier, but sometimes there isn't time to do that.

Then there isn't time to play with preview modes either.

Not my experience. I find I still have time to use preview when
there's no time to shoot and review. It's better at that than I
expected before trying it.

That would mean lots of experience with preview, but low on
experience with exposure times and apertures.

You must be making some seriously false assumptions then. My
experience with preview is a few months of elapsed time and a few
hundred photographs.

Which means --- since you are a curious person and make every
shot count --- you have lots of experience.

Whereas I spent fifteen years and thousands of photographs with fully
manual cameras before I started using cameras with either autofocus or
autoexposure. I still regularly use at least two fully manual lenses,
plus all but one of my flashguns are only manual, and I still usually
an exposure meter in my gear bag. So my experience of exposure times
and apertures hugely outweighs my experience of preview mode, and is
still being refreshed and improved by being in regular use.

But you still don't hit the right combinations from experience,
thus you need preview mode to be fast.


SURE, if you have NO idea at all, then a preview helps ---

I find it also helps in my case where I have quite a good idea, having
learned my photgraphy back in the old days before there was even
autoexposure let alone autofocus.

You're saying you're still surprised by aperture or exposure
time settings?

Surprised is too strong a word. But where there are conflicting
demands and aesthetic trade offs involved I like to experiment with
different compromises. Anything which shortens the time between
experiment and result is useful, especially when the shortening steps
over the important boundary between experiment and check into
interactive process control.

The best shortening would be knowing pretty well which
combination work.

Of course. Iterative approximation is always greatly helped by being
able to start with a good estimate.

Getting a good estimate in this case means remembering what
worked and what didn't.


It's sorta like phase AF and contrast AF:
Phase AF knows the direction and (quite exact) the amount
of travel, contrast AF is an interactive control process ...
guess which one is still faster.

As usual it's the one which is least accurate.

Go read
http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012...-canon-cameras
and find out that that and why that isn't true in all cases
anymore ...

I'm pleased to see that
my latest camera has two phase based autofocus speeds. The slower one
is a bit more reliably accurate despite being faster than the single
AF speed of my previous camera.

I'm disappointed that it doesn't offer three AF speeds, where the
third and slowest would be a final tuning of the phase based autofocus
by contrast based. A deliberate slight undershoot of the phase-based
AF would solve the contrast based focus direction problem.

Use an extender and it'll be slower.


But if you're referring to learning and experience which is specific
to certain makes and models of camera you're right.

Exactly.
You learn --- and then have to throw away most of it when you
change cameras.

Not my experience at all.

So you say preview mode carries over?

I'm beginning to wonder just how much you've
learned about these newfangled technologies you don't like.

I'm beginning to wonder if I've stopped being able to write
English. "these newfangled technologies", indeed, probably
everything that's been invented since just after 2982 BCE,
when one reads you.


That lack of
generality is also true of autofocus. That doesn't stop autofocus
being very useful, nor does it stop it being useful to learn exactly
how a specific kind of autofocus technology works and where and why it
fails.

AF is fully automatic.

If you're suggesting that it works so well that you don't need to
understand how it works in order to understand how and why it fails
than you're a much less sophisticated photographer than I took you
for.

As I said, it seems I'm unable to get you to understand what I am
saying. Let's try again:
- AF is a fully automatic system, therefore it has a great
excuse why it's camera exclusive and needs to be learned for
full usage. Additionally, it's now much faster than almost
all human photographers.
- Preview mode is of very little use on fully automatic
settings. Now, if exposure time and aperture behaves
differently between cameras, say one camera being slow and
the other having a wider aperture ....

There's a reason why the top end cameras with the best AF also
have the best aids to rapid and accurate manual focusing,

So which top end cameras have split prismas and microfocus
rings in their focussing screens?

plus the
ability to do lens speciofic microfovus adjustments.

Just like, say, they have manual mode?

There are also degrees of "fully automatic".

My new camera has a nice AF mode which drops into manual focus mode
once AF has locked.

Your old camera was ancient? One-shot AF is a really old hat.


Full auto mode is fully automatic.

Depends what you mean by full.

Well, go look the word up in a dictionary.

On my previous camera full auto meant
the camera chose aperture, shutter, and ISO. When using full auto the
user could select various modes, such as sports, which went for action
freezing shutter speeds, or landscape, which went for lowest
ISOs. etc..

Scene modes are not full auto modes, as the scene type is
selected by the user.


Preview is fully manual. And slower than full auto.

There wouldn't be much point to auto modes which were slower than
manual.

That is a rather limited view.

The point about manual adjustment is being able to make more
sophisticated and accurate choices than auto is capable of.

Wrong. The point is making a choice that isn't the most common
choice given all the camera knows about you and this specific
situation --- which, short of mind reading, is the best bet
the camera can make.

The point
of an optional preview mode is that in some circumstances it lets you
make your manual choices more easily and faster,

The choices are not easier. Choose a change, twirl a knob.
There you are, made your choice.

which can bring the
extra sophistication of manual into faster kinds of photography.

Assuming you can see the change on your low resolution EVF or
screen ... and you cannot see the change without preview mode.

Which means the
knowledge doesn't carry over.

Your arguments are much too black and white. That not all the
knowledge carries over doesn't mean that none of it does. All the
knowledge doesn't carry over. But a useful amount of it does.

Yet with aperture and exposure time almost all carries over,
even switching sensor sizes.

A surprising amount of what I learned in my film shooting days has
turned out to have been oversimplified and overgeneralised. That's
mainly been due to increasing sensor resolution revealing unsuspected
problems in earlier cruder generalisations. Rather like the way
improved detail resolution in scientific measuring instruments reveals
the simplifications and overgeneralisations in earlier mathematical
models.

Naah. You've increased the enlargement (you print larger or
look at 100% with higher resolutions), you needed to factor
that in even back when.

You're ignoring the fact that increased resolution often splits apart
things which were previously confounded because they couldn't be
distinguished.

What part of "increased the enlargement" didn't you get and
how comes that even on film people used tripods with large
format, where the resolution is higher?

For example with film cameras I never noticed the
differences between mirror shake and shutter shake in image
blurring. I put it all down to mirror. Whereas the increased detail
resolution which digital photography gave me allowed me to see the
differences for the first time.

Duh. How comes that you can see the difference? You enlarge
more. You could have seen it with film, if your film had had
high enough resolution to support that kind of enlargement.

And if you only enlarge as much as you can sensibly with
film ... can you still see the difference?


What has changed is that you are more variable in your ways.
But luckily all you need is a simple correction factor.

Luckily it's a lot more complex than that. I say luckily, because if
it was just correction factors I'd find it much less interesting.

The thing that's complex is how to archive the tighter
tolerances allowed for the enlargements.


In fact angle of view is more independent and useful than
"equivalent focal length" which IMHO is a silly fudge of an incomplete
generalisation.

So you'd write an angle of view on a lens --- which is then
attached to a 35mm-sized sensor, a 1.6x crop sensor, a 2x crop
MFT and maybe even to a 2.7x '1"' sensor. For which sensor
would you write the angle of view?

None, for exactly the same reasons I wouldn't write "equivalent focal
length" on a lens either.

Thus the focal length is most useful, and from there you get
trivially to equivalent focal length, but not to angle of view.

I don't see why calculating equivalent focal length is more trivial
than calculating view angle.

Quick: Crop factor 1.5. Focal lengths are 34mm, 62mm, 93mm.
What are the equivalent focal lengths?
What are the view angles?

Which one did you get faster?

Nor do I see why it's more useful to me
(obviously YMMV). For example in off-site planning of shots of
building exteriors and interiors I've much more often decided I wanted
a specific view angle, and then had to calculate what focal length I'd
need, than the reverse.

OK, that is a special case.


I call your
""sufficiently much faster that in five minutes shooting you
can come away with many more good shots of a much greater
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
variety than without preview" bull.
^^^^^^^

Experiment trumps speculation. My experiment, your speculation.

So you did experiment shooting a second five minutes shooting
without preview mode and came off with many less good shots
and with a much smaller variety? I doubt that!

No, I didn't do that experiment. I've already described the experiment
I did.

Yep, you did. It does in no way support your conclusion.

The results were qualitatively similar to the results a number
of others have reported when doing their own comparative assessments.

You didn't do a comparative assessment.


Unfortunately the
market is based on consumer choice.

Really? So where are the cameras many ask for?

In the shops.

So where's the affordable compact camera with a really large
sensor, 8 or less huge MPix, a good *fast* lens, an optical
view finder ...

And plenty of people want Porsche performance at Volkwagen Beetle
prices.

Well, were are the cameras for Porsche prices?


I wonder why the car makers aren't making that obvious best
seller? Must be some kind of conspiracy against the customer...

Blah blah.

Let's ask another one: Where is the fully programmable DSLR?

-Wolfgang