Camera Design

Someone sent me a joke the other day - one of those, "how come" type - one line of which was "how come they put a man on the moon before they put wheels on luggage?"

Kind'a makes you think about some of the other obvious in hind sight inventions which could have been making our lives easier for years.

Sometimes the invention is already out there, its just that manufacturers don't think the feature is sexy enough to sell well.

For example:

How long has Michael Reichmann been begging for a mirror lockup button on Canon cameras? Years - to no avail.

How come consumer cameras costing 1/10 at much have tilting LCD's but dSLR's don't - I can tell you I'd kill to have one on my $8,000 1DsII and that's problably going to prevent me from upgrading to the III, in the hope that within a couple of years they will add that. I know I could add that clip on viewfinder LCD screen that tilts - but I'd want to see one before buying one.

As I mentioned around fragile electronic cable releases, the consumer cameras have infrared remotes. Radio remote built in would be even better.

It took till the Canon G9 to have an ISO dial on the camera, how come I don't have one on my camera? The 1Ds3 finally has the ISO in the viewfinder, that should have been there all along.

How come I can't have an exposure mode that lets me set the maximum number of pixels which can go pure white and be ignored (the specular highlights) while setting the exposure to the rest of the image just approches pure white at most - Michael Reichmann's expose to the right automated. What if there were a way for the camera to automatically display images exposed this way on the LCD screen as not being too light?

Instead of having cameras with a depth of field mode, what about focussing on the near then the far and the camera tells me what f stop is needed - then I can decide to accept or not.

Why can't anti aliasing filters be hinged so they can swing out of the way - would also make the camera great for infrared?

We have sensors that respond to pressure, point north, detect light, even smell for us - why can't someone invent a sensor which responds to the frequency and wavelength of the light - without coloured filters and Bayer algorithms. Now wouldn't that be cool.

What if instead of shooting a whole pile of images and importing them to your computer to be blended in Helicon focus, the camera did it in a single step, continuously adjusting the focus - have processors in cameras become powerful enough to do something like this? You'd think that any camera that can shoot 6.5 frames a second with 10 MP should be able to do so.

Photo acute tries to give higher resolution by blending multiple shots. What about having the sensor move half a pixel left then half a pixel right, half a pixel up and half down all within one second, result to be blended in-camera.

How about the same thing for low noise shadows or for HDR.

Does anyone else wonder what it would be like to have an IS lens combined with an IS sensor (a la pentax and sony)?. They would work together to provide the absolute best stabilization.

When is Epson going to catch on that having both gloss and matte inks in the printer at the same time is not a luxury, it's essential? And how come the others are leaps ahead in non clogging and in speed of printing?

My Berlebach tripod had a levelling device built into the tripod top which allowed the centre column to be angled about 15 degrees each way for considerable versatility while still being able to raise and lower the centre column. The methods devised by Manfrotto in their lates tripods are crude in comparison.

Can you think of the equivalent of luggage wheels?