I suspect if we were discussing face to face we'd probably have a lot of points of agreement. But since this is the internet, we are I guess to some extent shouting past each other. Happy to stop, but if you're interested in some back-and-forth, then I'll respond to some of your points. If you've had enough then just let me know!
No problem.
I think you're into semantic over-analysis trying to differentiate between a "feature" and a "capability". They sound the same to me. What can you point to that separates their meaning?
It's not semantics, it's something really simple about purpose.
A camera isn't a box to hang features on. It's a box
designed for shooting pictures. 'Capability' is
how well does it shoot pictures? A list of features are, at most, tools to assist with this purpose, and
they aren't the only tools. Control ergonomics, UI, grip and handling - even the subjective pleasure of using the camera - are additional tools, and a true measure of capability has to take all of them into account.
An EVF is a tool, and one I find essential for taking pictures; others disagree. IBIS is a tool, and I find it a useful one - but not so important that it's a deal-breaker if the rest of the package is good enough. Hi-res modes... I've tried them on several cameras that had them, and none of them worked well enough to be worthwhile for me. Battery life is good, but it's not like carrying around a couple of extra batteries is a big hassle - and I've had to do that with just about
every single camera I've owned, so it's not exactly unique one way or the other...
And so on, and so forth. Features off a checklist aren't a reason for being, they're just tools to help you take pictures. For me, having a camera that feels good in the hand, is easy to aim and handle, with controls I like, is something more important than all but a small handful of features - and has a greater effect on the quality of my pictures.
For example:
Yes, but if a feature/capability adds significant value then it can't be glossed over. For example, try shooting a shot at ground level with a camera that has only a fixed rear screen. You'll find yourself either laying on the ground or guessing the composition. Similar arguments apply for shooting skywards, or over your head, or even a selfie. A flip screen demonstrably makes a camera more versatile.
I've owned many cameras with flip/tilt/swivel screens. I think I can count the number of times I've used it on the fingers of one hand - maybe two. I can see the point in principle, and it's a nice-to-have, but I rarely use one in practice and it's not even remotely close to a dealbreaker; other parts of the package are far more important.
I can go into more point-by-point rebuttals if you want, but I think that's missing the forest for the trees.
It seems to me that the camera is such a well evolved piece of machinery that there is little room, or need, to go rethinking it. But I haven't used the BF so I really don't know what's different and why it might be better.
I was around when GUIs first hit the mainstream in the 80s. Lots and lots of contemporary computer users dismissed them as toys, in much the same terms - command line interfaces were long-established and well evolved, why change? Why waste so many cycles drawing pretty pictures? Gah, pointing and clicking was so
inefficient compared to typing 'ls -la'! Heck, if you're not willing to learn the command line, you have no business being around a computer! And so on, and so forth.
I'm not saying the interface on the bf is a breakthrough on the level of the GUI. Or the smartphone switch from Blackberry-style physical keyboards to touchscreens, for that matter. And certainly radical rethinking of the interface isn't without perils, as Microsoft Bob (among others) demonstrated. But claiming that the current interface paradigm is as good as it'll ever get - and there's no need to look at anything else - is even worse! I'm sure when the current two-dial paradigm was introduced, many people who were used to the then-traditional shutter dial/aperture ring were just as dismissive; after all, that was
also a well-evolved UI paradigm, and it's still popular enough that Fuji caters to it on most of its cameras.
I'm also withholding final judgement on the bf's interface until I get an extended time to shoot with one; most of the reviews I've watched say it takes at least a half-hour or more to get comfortable with the paradigm. (Which honestly sounds fairly short to me, from what I've seen of the UI.) But from the videos I've seen, it looks very interesting to me - everything important is accessed by clicking left-or-right and spinning the dial, so it's all right there under your thumb and no need to track eleventy-seven different buttons and modifier modes and having to track different buttons for your thumb, index finger by the shutter, middle finger by the lens mount, more buttons for your left thumb...
(Click-spin to set EV, click right once more and spin to set shutter speed or f-stop depending on PASM, another click for ISO, another click for WB - sounds like it'd get in my way much less than trying to shuffle my fingers around the S5's buttons for WB/ISO/EV.)
But if we're talking about a streamlined interface, the lack of a second dial is a big "feature gap" to my mind. I mostly shoot in A mode and use one dial for exp comp and the other for f-stop since I vary them a lot in everyday shooting. My muscle memory is now such that I consider my index finger to be the f-stop control and my thumb to be the exp comp. So, I'd need a lot of persuasion to convince me that one of them could be replaced by a UI widget or such like without making the camera slower and more cumbersome to operate. No amount of UX new-think would fix the lack of that dial. In fact, I'd go as far to say that two dials should be the norm for a serious camera - just like for most cars having two stalks on the steering column should be the norm (Tesla, are you listening???).
As I said, since I shoot mostly with manual lenses, I use the lens aperture ring for f-stop and the dial for EV. But even before I started using manual lenses, a common setup on one-dial cameras was make the dial clickable; press in on the dial to toggle between parameters, very fast and easy.
But the truth is that even then, it didn't matter much, because I rarely switch the aperture. I typically set the f-stop when I enter a setting, and shoot like that for at least 5 minutes - sometimes as much as an hour - without messing with it.
No argument on the Teslas. ^^;; That's more on the Microsoft Bob end of the scale for me.
I think you're setting up a false comparison fallacy here. The differences between the S9 and the BF will not be anything like the scenario you're painting with Palm Pilot vs iPod etc.
True, I don't think the S9 is buggy the way the Palm Pre was (and it's the
Pre, not the Palm Pilot; the Pilot was a very successful PDA line, the Pre was a failed attempt at a successor in 2009 that hurt Palm the company so badly they had to be bought out by HP in 2010... and HP itself dumped the line not even a year and a half later). The overall point I was trying to make is the advantage of a small, polished set of features wrapped in a UI that encourages their use.
(It's hard to judge what-if's, but I think if Palm had done that instead of trying to do everything at once, they might have survived; it certainly would have done better for them than the kitchen sink approach they did use.)
