What camera type to start photography with? (Interface design aspect)

This writing is inspired by a story of a friend. He was not happy with the camera on his phone (iPhone 7), and he was searching for a camera that would give better “quality” (If you don’t get what quality that he refers to, you may want to consult this article that I wrote). Like many others, he wasn’t sure what particular photo quality that he really means whenever he speaks of quality, “better quality” simply means “like ones I usually see on the internet [normally taken by professional photographers]”, neatly framed, good exposed and always sharp.

After questioning, I understood that he wasn’t satisfied with night photos that are too often blur, dark and noisy. Realizing that his problems mostly come from photographing techniques (and camera’s limits) rather than camera function itself, I observed and noticed his bad practice in taking photos. Photos are usually blur due to hand shaking and lack of tripod. Funny enough, there were times when the lens got so dirty (dust and fingerprints) and therefore blurred out most parts of the photo. The night photos he took are also dark and noisy due to under-exposure and high ISO that push the camera setting (in auto mode) to the limit working in a tough condition. The image was still finally taken and displayed but its appearance wasn’t as good as he saw with his bare eyes (or expectations).

To go further in photography and meet his future needs, I also recommended him to look for stand-alone cameras like compact or reflex/mirrorless type. It turned out that it was an occasion also for me to go deeper with camera ranges on the market, not just about hardware specifications but also interface designs (button placements) for different levels of control. Take Canon PowerShot S120, Canon DSLR 700D and Nikon D90 for a comparison. The following paragraphs will point out how we control camera exposure (through 3 parameters: shutter speed, aperture and ISO) on these 3 models.

S120 is a professional camera in its compact range thanks to the availability of RAW support and manual mode together with other two creation modes (Shutter speed and Aperture priority). In manual mode, S120 allows users to change aperture by turning a rotating bezel around the lens, and shutter speed by turning a quick control dial around cross keys and set buttons (Fig. 1 and 2). For ISO, it’s not as convenient as the previous two params when you have to access the side menu by pushing the function set button (Fig. 3)

Figure 1: Bezel and mode dial locations on S120.

Figure 2: Screen interface and quick control dial locations on S120.

Figure 3: Function set button to access ISO setting on S120.

700D is an entry level in the professional range. In manual mode, you turn the dial ring next to the shoot button to change shutter speed (Fig. 4), [Q button + turning the ring] to change aperture (Fig. 5) and [ISO button + turning the ring] to change ISO. Note that there are always other ways to achieve the same results, e.g. screen menu + selection buttons or with touch screen, but the approach mentioned above is the quickest operation.

Figure 4: Dial ring and ISO button on 700D.

Figure 5: Q button to change aperture.

D90 has 2 rings to control shutter speed and aperture separately (Fig. 6), and a key combination [ISO button + secondary ring] to change ISO (Fig. 7).

Figure 6: 2 dial rings on D90.

Figure 7: ISO button on D90.

As you can see much more clearly now, the operation related to finger movement is more simple and direct from S120, 700D to D90. This aspect becomes more important for professionals who operate very often the camera settings during shooting and to whom moments to capture are too precious to be missed due to time-consuming setup. With cameras on smartphones, you can now imagine how much time it takes touching and swiping on the phone screen to change these settings in manual mode (if the camera app supports, which is not the common case for built-in/OS apps).

That's it. Through this article, I hope that you, especially to those who are being confused with choosing the very first new camera to start their photography journey with, have another perspective on camera choice based on interface designs to meet their needs, neither too under-ranged to get bored nor too complicated to lose the interests. The 3 mentioned camera models are here just for reference to illustrate what I want to say. I have no recommendation at this writing point because it still depends on other models available on the market to compare, prices, your budgets, your goals, your actual knowledge and passion for photography, and so on.

Back to the story of my friend, beside his inappropriate practice for night shooting, I would like to stress that 'good quality' photos comprise more than just one particular factor. Here, from my point of view, I list all the factors in the order of publication workflow :

• Good hardware (larger sensors, good lenses, etc.)

• Good techniques (lighting, stabilization, framing, etc.)

• Good post processing (retouching on RAW image format for color and fine details adjustments.)

• Export and sharing: avoid compression upon saving, transferring, uploading, and/or displaying image files (in trade-off for large storage size)

Happy shooting!