What I wish for

Jeff Biscuits wrote:

RobRoy22 wrote:

Jeff Biscuits wrote:

A phone app would be ideal. With the ability to set up all sorts of profiles and then just push them to the slots in the camera via Bluetooth as and when needed. Can’t be hard to do.

It sounds appealing. I have no idea how easy it would be. Do you have knowledge of this kind of technology or are you just guessing?

Not camera firmware specifically, but I’ve been designing and building user interfaces for many years.

Technically it’s straightforward. The bigger issue as I see it is more of a product management one: if you’re going to introduce camera configuration via an app then instantly you’ll get demand for it to go further and questions about whether it should go so far as a camera which has no configuration UI but instead has just the basic physical controls and all configuration is done via the app. Taking the philosophy of the X-Pro3 to a whole new level: “das Wesentliche”, yet with access to all the technological chops that modern digital cameras can provide.

In a way it’s an extension of what Ricoh do, although they don’t do it via an app either: the GR has always been a paradox of being tremendously configurable, yet designed to perform in a point-and-shoot manner when in use. It’s that recognition of the separation of things that are configuration—which can be done in slow time—from things that are relevant to capturing a moment and need to be used in that moment. Moving the former to an app further allows the camera to be physically, and philosophically, optimised for the latter.

This is interesting stuff to me. Thanks for sharing.