7 Changes Camera Companies Should Consider

Camera technology is evolving at a breakneck pace, and manufacturers are getting a lot right these days. But of course, no company is perfect, and there is always room for improvement. This great video features a photographer discussing seven things he wishes all camera companies would improve on. 

Coming to you from Wes Perry, this excellent video discusses seven things he would like to see companies improve on. In addition to Perry's great points, one thing I would love to see is more cameras using internal storage. The new Leica M11 gets this right by including 64 GB of internal storage. This could be useful for a lot of reasons. The first and most obvious is simply that if you forget a memory card for whatever reason, you are still covered. But beyond that, cameras are shooting faster and at higher resolutions than ever before, and that produces a ton of data, which can often stress buffers and memory cards. A fast solid-state drive, even if a small one meant as an extended buffer, would be a great addition, and given how storage prices have come down, such an addition would not be significant compared to the price of a professional camera. Check out the video above for Perry's full thoughts. 

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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10 Comments

Hmmm. It's easy enough to ask for improvements. It's a lot more difficult to implement them. I'm sure the camera companies would love to build the "perfect" camera at a reasonable cost to dominate their market.

This is addressed a few times to some degree in the video. Most of the suggestions I made involve Very small hardware cost, and even very limited R&D cost (compared to what they’re already spending). There were other items I struck from the list because it would indeed be asking for much more expensive components (such as a TB of fast internal storage) or much more expensive R&D (such as actually writing a Much better OS on their own that has consistent low friction wireless and smartphone integration).

Cool. I only read the above and didn't watch the video.

1 Change Fstoppers Should Consider: posting written articles so we can read them, rather than just linking to YouTube videos. If i wanted to watch YouTube videos, i'd just go to YouTube.

Then just go to youtube then and quite bitching.

You'll see somewhat below the top, next to "latest", Originals. Those are the written articles for Fstoppers.

Yeah, because Charles is the person you would contact to address your grievances. LOL! You unhinged whiny folks crack me up sometimes.

One thing that really bugs me is that so many manufacturers refuse to use a single storage media type on any given camera body. In a "perfect world", one might buy a Lumix G9 or Canon R6 or Sony A7R IV stills camera that has two UHS-II card slots. At the same time, there are four Lumix full-frame cameras that combine one UHS-II slot with either a CFexp (B) slot or confoundingly, one UHS-I slot (say WHAT?). If it's going to be primarily a stills camera, use two UHS-II slots and be done with it. Accordingly, if it's going to be used as a video camera, use two CFexp (B) slots and be done with it. It just doesn't make a lick of good sense to mix media types on a single body when one might be better served by carrying only one type of storage media, based on the intended usage paradigm, especially when the differing media types have vastly disparate read-write speeds, inviting write errors.

On another note, how hard would it be for manufacturers to build in an Arca Swiss-standard baseplate?

On yet another topic, how hard is it to build in a night mode that kills the blue and green guns to the monitor and/or eyepiece for low-light work? Near as I can tell, only Panasonic has gotten this one right.

Just sayin'...

All great points!

About the on Camera Apps, In '14 the new A7 models and then A7ii '15 models had and still have Playmemories apps on the camera BUT disappeared with mark iii's. Why I even ask. One reason I bought my first A7s and then the A7Rii was the on camera apps. I figure the reason is they did not require the buying and carrying of say "filters" - the filters app improved from the first to three areas to adjust camera settings to be filter like, great for even for Astro Milky Way over a lit town/city. I used it on a lit runway when the lights came on while getting a vertical MW centered on the runway. It took a few times BUT with in camera review I was able to correct settings, then when things were good it was processed in camera to the SD card. Both images done at 12mm using the E 1018 f/4 in '15 and '16 BEFORE any 12mm was available. But what filter combo would you need to do it with filters? Also a Intervalometer to do longer than 30s capture to star trails. Lens corrections also for the terrible Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 when no PP program had a LC for a couple of years. The reason I believe they went away is Filter and Intervalometer makers saw a loss of buyers, I mean why carry a bag of filters or even have to buy an Intervalometer. These apps are one reason those cameras getting older by the year stay valuable like the A7Sii will never die. Oh and images are in raw or jpeg so you can PP also. Just for info there is a built in Intervalometer in current models. Look how long ago that was and still other makes still do not have!! The runway lights come on when someone keys the mike on a frequency for all 3 airports, just have to listen for a landing plane!!!!