On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 3:45 PM, Bob W <p...@web-options.com> wrote: >> > >> >> Bob, Are you telling me the M7's got menu hell? >> >> Yes, the software side is part of the camera UI and is where much of >> the unavoidable part of the complexity sets in with digital. >> > > M7? > > The M8 has a very good menu system. It's simple and very easy to use. > > The complexity sets in not because it's digital - a digital camera could be > just as simple as any film camera. > > It sets in because they're trying to make the camera do everything, and they > don't design the menus very well at all. Bad user interface design is bad > user interface design - doesn't matter what the object is. Although, having > said that I only have experience of the Oly E500, E1 and the Leica M8 menus. > The Oly menus are much more complicated than they need to be. > > Bob >
There's a certain level of complexity inherent to digital which isn't inherently in film cameras. Requirements like White Balance, ISO and card formatting. It's the wages of having the capture medium integral to the camera. The M8's menu is a poor design rescued solely by the fact that there are so few settings. 1 page? 22 scrollable settings? Bad UI design. At least they put the set & forget settings mostly near the bottom. And certain aspects of the M8's physical UI are very poor. Most notably the drive mode selector which is so easily shifted that people have resorted to all sorts off odd methods to keep it in Single frame advance reliably. Try a Sony A700 or A900 sometime if you want to see good fast-acess UI design. Or any of the Pentax's other than the *istD. -- M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
