The Jobs Effect

This photograph has nothing to do with this post. I simply liked the image.

Maybe it's just that I am reading the biography of Steve Jobs or maybe it's a review of a high-end DLSR that I've recently read. I find my self asking, "what kind of a camera would Steve Jobs design?"

I sort of think we have lost sight of what a camera is supposed to do, that is take a picture and do it well. For the most part, what else it can do is secondary. Higher-end cameras today seem to be designed to do all things for all people.

Based on the review I read recently, you would not know that the camera was to take a still picture until about 3/4 of the way through the review. I heard about the terrific video capability, low noise at ISO 100,000+, etc. It wasn't until much later in the article that I found out it could actually take a good picture. A good picture is inevitably demonstrated by someones jpeg. Trust me, you can make a jpeg from a cheap point-and-shoot look good on a monitor.

I want to be able to download a raw file and process it myself! What's more, I want a variety of raw files showing a number of different subjects so that I can evaluate the camera myself.

I want to say to those doing reviews, first take a picture, at a low ISO, on a tripod with a prime lens at optimum aperture. In other words, show me an example of the best image the camera is capable of producing. If you want to show me it's performance under varying ISO and lighting, fine. However, do this AFTER you have shown me the best of which the camera is capable.

This gets me back to Jobs. He might have been obsessive about design and function being tightly integrated but he would have designed a camera that performed its primary function first. He would have them made sure that whatever else it did contributed to it's primary function, did not get in the way, and make its operation more complex.

Whatever happened to the digital equivalent of the Pentax K1000 or the Nikon FM?

Thanks for letting me rant. I feel better.