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I am also a Sony Alpha user and the interface seems anti-designed. Like, willfully obtuse and user-hostile. I know UI is not easy, but relative to the scope/scale of Sony, how hard would it really be for them to cop even a few best practices in software design?

Agreed. The Alpha software reeks of "design by committee" for the entire mass of camera users to allow anything to be controlled with equal weight. It's a major problem.

And sony typically focuses a lot on design.

But I disagree with this and the article; SLRs is based on historic professional use of manual cameras; to which, much of the manual design is useful for.

They made sense to me. Practically, it would be easy for camera makers to add these features on their pro bodies as they're not intended to be appealing to amateurs/casual shooters.

>Sure, this might not pass the "smack the lens and there shouldn't be a single iota of movement test", but that's a very narrow use-case,

That is a mainstream usecase for pretty much every single professional! A more secure interface between the plate and body would mean the tripod and body are better integrated and would allow for improved vibration reduction IMHO.

>as opposed to not having to spend hundreds of dollars on a more expensive camera whose manufacturer invested hundreds of thousands of man-hours to develop and test.

Okay but the cost of the kit is not a big concern if you're making money with it. I wouldn't think twice about sticking in 32 gigs of RAM or a thousand dollar CPU on my dev box either because I would make that back very quickly.

>I don't like the Bluetooth idea for a few reasons. One, you have to toggle it on and off if you want to conserve camera battery.

Bluetooth LE devices can have upto a year of battery life !

>Two, you have to have a Bluetooth enabled device capable of controlling the camera (read, smartphone) which introduces a potential failure point because now you have to make sure you have two things charged (your phone and your camera) because remote batteries can last for years.

Why does it have to be a smartphone?

>To me, the innovation in the camera market has been phenomenal. The speed at which cameras can autofocus and burst shoot, as well as the battery life have all improved while the prices have continued to drop.

Yes, this has been amazing. Pretty much any basic DSLR can take great pictures. And having a common mount across the basic/pro bodies unlocks this huge library of lenses (which make more of a difference w.r.t IQ anyway).

> Bluetooth LE devices can have upto a year of battery life !

Bluetooth LE is highly unsuitable, if not impossible, to use with high bandwidth applications (like dumping a 40MB+ file to a remote destination potentially dozens of times a minute or more).

It is eminently suitable as a signal for remote shutter release, which was the context of my comment.

Ahh, in that context, which re-reading, I see... definitely.

> this guy's rants sound to me like a super demanding, high-end user.

Yes. He is. He's a respected professional photographer, and most of his readership are also serious photographers, with many pro or semi-pros among them. His site is largely read by people looking to optimise for the best IQ their equipment can deliver, and he doesn't really write all that much that's targeted at more casual photographers.

> First of all, what's wrong with having a standardized mount size? I like knowing that I can fit my camera onto any standard mount I want to buy without issue.

Arca-swiss plates are the de-facto standard. I don't know any serious photographers that don't use arca-swiss plates when they do tripod work - the issue here is that not all photographers actually do that much tripod work (I know several wedding photographers, for example, who rarely if ever mount the cameras on tripods (note: they still have tripods for lighting, but that's a different system with different requirements).

> To me, the innovation in the camera market has been phenomenal. The speed at which cameras can autofocus and burst shoot, as well as the battery life have all improved while the prices have continued to drop.

This is less true at the end of the market he (mostly) writes for. A professional DSLR body has generally risen in price over the years, even taking into account inflation. Battery life has improved, but honestly battery life has never been the problem with pro DSLRs that it has been - and to some extent still is - with mirrorless and consumer cameras. The autofocus in the latest nikon pro DSLRs is a notable improvement over the previous generation, but, again, the nikon pro DSLR focus system has always been really good so again it's a lot less of a significant leap than you see in generations of mirrorless cameras, where technology is evolving more quickly.

To people at this end of the market, using high end canon/nikon DSLRs, the progress of innovation has been far slower, with lots of longstanding problems and frustrations that never get addressed. For example, neither the nikon d5 ($6500) or the nikon d850 ($3300) have a built in GPS (cost of GPS chip is less than $5), and the standalone GPS is bulky, interferes with holding the camera, expensive and is actually discontinued in some regions(!!).

Okay, fine, that's exactly what I said- that I'm sure his points are valid for his use case, which is the upper, upper end of the market.

But surely he must understand that what's good for him and his very particular use cases isn't necessarily good for the other 98% of camera customers out there.

I engineer advanced web applications for a living. There are lots of things about OSX that would make my life easier for my use cases. That doesn't mean I think that all Macs should come preloaded with Atom, Slack, dual Thunderbolt displays, advanced Git integration built into the user interface or a host of other things that would make my use case easier out of the box. Because my use case isn't what moves 99% of laptops. If you want to outfit your setup with high end technology so your camera won't budge in a cat 5 hurricane, go nuts. I don't think it would be the best decision for mainstream camera makers to address it. If it were, then they would be doing it.

The other 98% of camera customers are better served with their smartphones. Making concessions to folks who aren't buying these cameras and have no use for them doesn't make much sense.

> The one thing I think could definitely be improved is the software interface

This is me as well but its because I may go a whole month without using my Canon. There is a a 5-10 minute learning curve to remember how to do everything (ie changing aperture, shutter speed, etc.). I'm sure its not a problem for a professional who uses it regularly.

> super demanding, high-end user

I'd be ranting if he were a mid-range guy being demanding, but the point here is that no amount of money can buy a decently composed camera hardware