Why do Camera Makers Ignore a Deep Well of Knowledge and Experience?

2019-12-05 • SEND FEEDBACK •
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Why do camera makers apparently design without serious input? Not-invented-here syndrome?

I have a deep well of ideas in my head from decades of camera usage. No one at any of the camera companies has ever contacted me for input. Asking around, I find it’s the same for other talented people, like Ming Thein. This is not about me or Ming, but about proactively contacting skilled photographers out there, and using that to drive the development process.

Why camera companies ignore such a rich resource is puzzling, because asking and listening are an inexpensive way to prioritize R&D efforts—all it would take is tasking one person at the company to make it their mission to reach out and listen. A person with a personality that can push hard against the corporate inertia problems.

Addressing these issues would make cameras more competitive and useful—much more in some cases yet without adding any complexity for those that don’t use the features (at least if designed right).

Going forward, any camera make that makes no effort to address these issues in new cameras and firmware is going to get called out here at diglloyd.com on a regular basis with some kind of Clown Award. There is no defensible reason for not getting much of this stuff right.

After all these years, anyone who understands programming and computers* or just convenience and reliability can only throw up their hands in disbelief at the scattershot approach camera makers take to their feature set. It makes no sense either technically or for marketing, given how trivial some of these things are to add or fix.

* I majored in mathematics and computational science at Stanford and have a long and varied professional software engineering history in the professional world. I see what is going on, and find it stunning that it is done so badly—but software is software and most engineers have blinders on, happy with square wheels all too often.