I must be in a mood right now, because I'm just about to launch
into rant mode, but will refrain from ranting, but will try to
place some of our technologies into perspective. Maybe
something here will trigger an "oh duh" among people, get
reposted to every photography related list around the world and
get me an editor position at some photo rag.
Maybe not.
Why digital ISN'T better:
Exposure Readings:
Have you looked through the viewfinder of your modern camera
lately? Really looked through the viewfinder? Sure that camera
is giving you every bit of data known to man, with aperture,
shutterspeed, in-focus led, flash status, exposure
compensations, etc., etc. But is it giving you "relational
data". Are you able to instantly determine the relationship
between one exposure and another?
The basis of our exposures is the EV unit, essentially a
measurement of light at a given ASA/ISO sensitivity. The meters
in our cameras utilize this basic unit of measurement to
indicate recommended apertures and shutter speeds. Old "needle"
style meters measured light with analog technology--light sensor
generates more or less voltage based on level of light. These
meters are nothing more than volt-meters coupled to the light
sensor through a transister or two. Instead of showing
millivolts, the meter will usually be calibrated in EV units.
When the meter is directly coupled to a camera and "knows" the
shutter speed or aperture settings, the meter will indicate
proper exposure through the "bracket" in the middle. It comes
down to calibration of the meter to make this meaningful to the
user.
In the '70s cameras started coming out with auto exposure.
Initially there were two flavors: Aperture priority or shutter
speed priority. Meters were still very much analog devices and
so were the "auto" features. Aperture priority cameras allowed
the user to lock in an aperture and the swinging meter would
indicate what the shutter speed would be. Instead of a
mechanical shutter, the shutter was electronically timed based
on the meter's reading. Still very much an analog device.
Pointing the camera at different parts of the scene would give
you what the indicated exposure of that part is. Without even
looking at the scale you could know what your shutter speed was
just by the general position of the needle.
The Canon A1 changed our comfortable little world. It
indicated, with LEDs, the shutter speed and aperture. This
camera gave the user the additional capabilities of multiple
auto modes, including program mode where both shutter speed and
aperture were set by the camera. Suddenly the relationship
between light and exposure was broken. Now as the light level
changes, numbers will increase, decrease and even go opposite
directions at the same time. Nearly every camera developed
since the A1 has used this new display. There are rare
exceptions, but photographers have been led to believe that
digital readouts are better and provide more accurate
information.
Accurate information it may be. Usable information it may not
necessarily be. Light is analog. The movement of a needle (or
digital scale emulating an analog meter) notes to the
photographer that the light is increasing or decreasing a rate
and a relationship to other readings. Since our measurement
systems of F-Stops and shutter speeds are based on mathematical
equations, we continue to display data in that fashion.
However, if the digital readouts were to be truely intuitive and
not require translation by the photographer, lens openings and
shutter speeds would be shown in Metric. One must KNOW that F8
is twice the aperture of F11.
When I look at the digital readouts and it tells me "500, 8" I
must translate that into the analog world where I know that 8
means F8 (somewhere in the middle of the lens's light passing
capability) instead of glancing at the lens barrel and knowing
the physical relationship with light. In a scale readout, one
can see the doubling and halving relationships between shutter
speeds or apertures. In a digital readout, you must either know
(and translate) or ignore the information and trust the camera.
Cameras with this type of readout encourage use of the auto and
program modes because the meters truely do not represent the
information in an understandable way to the photographer for
manual exposure control.
Olympus, when developing the OM-2S and the OM-4 developed a
digital exposure display that mimicked the analog scale as much
as possible, while giving many more modern capabilities.
Without even looking at the scale I can tell when my exposure
changes by any number of stops. In the other displays you must
read the display and try to translate the 6.72 - 9.38 change.
It only gets worse with the latest offerings showing near
continous sub-speed changes down to 1/1000 of a second
resolutions.
Today's cameras have very accurate exposure meters and highly
advanced program exposure modes. The Nikon F5/F100 has matrix
metering which completely isolates the photographer from
exposure control and interpretation. The camera essentially is
a very advanced point and shoot camera. Only one control is
used: "Push Here Dummy".
Exposure Control:
Changing shutter speeds and apertures on many of today's cameras
is an operation in computer control, menu selection and
multi-function buttons. Older camera designs have aperture
control right on the lens and is a rotate to the right or left.
What a novel idea! Furthermore, the rotating direction matches
the direction of the analog meter. Meter below your brackets or
desired shutter speed? Rotate the lens to the left and
amazingly enough it goes right up. The OM-4's scale is
"backwards" because of this need to visually couple the meter
with the lens' aperature ring. Different manufacturers matched
the rotating direction of aperture ring to match the position of
the meter in the viewfinder.
Pushing buttons to change any settings requires a visual
confirmation of the readouts to verify the setting changes. In
"older style" cameras the clicks and finger movement is usually
more than enough to verify the change.
Focusing:
Don't get me started on focusing. I could write about
auto-focus lenses for days.
Retro Advances:
The new Contax 645AF is an interesting camera. Although it uses
the new "modern" viewfinder exposure display, the controls are
very much "manual" and "analog". You can pick up the camera and
without any training be able to operate every control that a 35
year old medium format camera has. Minolta has also introduced
a retro design that has many of the basic controls of an older
camera with the advanced exposure modes available at a touch of
a button.
Is our beloved OM system "out of date?" In many ways, yes.
Inferior? Hardly. If all camera makers were to follow the
design methodology of the OM system, there wouldn't be the need
for all of the various exposure modes to compensate for the
vastly inferior displays and controls.
I believe that in a few more years we will see more and more
cameras becoming better through mimicking of the older designs.
Once the makers realize that we are dealing with an analog
medium (even digital imaging is just a digital
capture/storage/retreival system of analog information) we will
see cameras better deal with that analog information on the
capture side of the equation.
Even Canon has started the slippery slide back to displaying
analog exposure information with the EOS-3. A long way to go,
but at least it is a start.
The OM series could very well be the prototype of future
cameras.
We can dream, can't we?
Ken N.
AG-Schnozz
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