man & nature # 97 ~ stop the world, I want to get off
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 10:05AM 
Rain and fog at midnight • click to embiggenYou'll notice that my "click to embiggen" prompt is the same as it ever was. However, you will also notice that if you actually click to embiggen what you get is an empty popup window. The software geniuses from SquareSpace are at it again - this nonsense corresponds with their newest "new and improved" software update which I encountered for the first time this AM.
The beauty of this f**k up is that every pop up window on The Landscapist from day one - going back to 01/07 - is blank. That's 2 years worth of work that is essentially unavailable to my audience at this time. How the hell does this crap happen? Am I just "lucky" or is the modern "miracle" of communication known as the www as messed up as it appears to be?
It appears that the software world MO/adage of, "don't worry, be crappy", is still alive and well - just be the first to roll out the stuff and let the end-user find the bugs and glitches. Add to that the arrogance of developers of all kinds of www stuff - we''ll just keep updating and adding stuff that pushes the operational/system limits of the end-user's hardware and software and make them responsible for an endless series of upgrades and updates whether or not they want/need them - and I'm about ready to say screw it all.
I think part of my angst and aggravation about all of this comes in large part from my experience with the current (and endlessly evolving) state of digital cameras.
I fully understand why camera makers put a dizzying array of "user-friendly" features on those cameras which are intended for the P&S crowd. Those users are most often not very knowledgeable when it comes the idea of camera operation and the technical basics of picture making. That said, I think that camera makers fail miserably when it comes to making all of those features/settings/choices easy for the average user to understand and access.
But that is not what gets to me. Rather, it is the apparent and total lack of understanding that camera makers exhibit regarding the professional and advanced photo-enthusiast crowd. Am I alone in my desire for a "simple" digital camera that has an aperture ring, a shutter speed dial, an ISO and WB selector, and nothing else when it comes to the operational aspects of the camera?
The obvious indicator that something has gone horribly wrong in this area is the dictionary-sized instruction manual that comes with most dslr cameras - 150 pgs for my Olympus E-3, 266 pgs for my Pentax K20. In a word, that is simply absurd.
Over my entire 60+ years on the planet, I have never once owned or operated anything that required an instruction manual that even began to approach that length. Not a thing.
FYI, I think the solution to this problem is simple - if it takes more 25-30 pages to explain how to use a camera, just take everyone connected to its development, to include the marketing department, out and shoot them. Then, start again. Repeat as many times as necessary until they get it right.
The other obvious indicator is the number of f**king buttons, dials, and knobs that adorn nearly every surface on a dslr. All of which create ample opportunity for what the cell phone industry has "humorously" begun calling a "butt call" - that's an unintended phone call placed by sitting on one's cell phone which is essentially the (ass) kissing cousin of the "pocket call".
How many times have one of you inadvertently and unknowingly changed one setting or another on your camera by utilizing some variation of the "butt calling" technique?
I don't know about you, but I'm just flat-out sick and tired of all it - software, computers, cameras, and on and on. I am growing ever more weary with the effort, time, expense, and aggravation - and the diminishing returns relative to all of that - of chasing (or more accurately, being forced to chase) the chimera of the promise of better living through technology.
What seems to have been lost on all of our modern geniuses is the time-tested idea that the best solution to a problem is most often the simplest one - a concept known as elegance.
Me? I'm sitting here waiting on some elegance.
gravitas et nugalis
from SquareSpace:
Hi there,
The development team currently has this as an open issue, and is working on a fix.
Let me know if this helps.
my response: How elegant.
gravitas et nugalis
Featured Comment I received this email yesterday re: the above entry. How appropriate.
Mark,
I so badly wanted to post the comment below, but the software wonks have struck back and my comment will not post in either Safari, or Firefox.
What I wanted to say was:
Mark,
We are almost contemporaries, so I can say this with some authority. Age makes it OK to be a curmudgeon; and, the older you get the worse it becomes. When you are too overcome, head off to wherever you get TV content and find the BBC's series "Grumpy Old Men". Won't make you less of a curmudgeon, but I feel certain that you will find life a little less irking, knowing you are in such good (and famous) company ;-)
Reader Comments (17)
Speaking of elegance and simplicity, do we have a toilet?
FYI, I can "embiggen" the pic just fine - as well as past ones. Using Firefox. Maybe they fixed it already? That doesn't negate your analysis though.
Dan - yep, it seems to be fixed - at least until the next time.
the wife - yep, the toilet has landed.
My most recent run-in with a complete dearth of elegance arose when I took delivery of a Canon 5D MkII and a couple of vastly overpriced L lenses. $5000 gets you this??!? You have to be kidding.... Unfortunately not.
hey, sony just unveiled their "new useless piece of shit that doesn't f*@king work" just in time...
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/sony_releases_new_stupid_piece_of
Suggestion: Break out your old manual 35mm film camera. Remember them? They were "full-frame" and simple. It's what I've done, and am enjoying immensely, having rediscovered the simplicity of film. And the results are better, too, provided you have a good film scanner.
BTW, your 'embiggen' works just fine in Safari on my Mac.
"Am I alone in my desire for a "simple" digital camera that has an aperture ring, a shutter speed dial, an ISO and WB selector, and nothing else when it comes to the operational aspects of the camera?"
Throw in a MLU button and I'm right there with you.
I've made plenty of "butt calls" myself, and I've certainly borked-up plenty of shots by an inadvertent press or rotation of some sort of camera control. The thing that really ticks me off are the buttons on the back-left of the camera. Camera designers seem to forget humans do not have flat faces :-)
Wow, nice rant!
I like how it started out on a web site system upgrade and segued into a rant about digital cameras. Somehow it all got connected ok.
I'm in agreement. However, it seems the "wheel of progress" was ever thus, with a few noticeable exceptions. Rose-colored glasses make it all so clear.
I'm waiting to see what they come up with next, since the last thing I saw go by was "auto smile detection". No kidding.
I had a similar rant months ago.
And if I've got to have a mega-button set-up, why can't each button have a unique function (like a shutter speed button, a focus button, aperture etc) - why does the shutter release have to have about 4 or 5 functions at once?
If it works, don't fix it. Ignore the upgrades & updates and all that unless you really need them - and be picky about what you deem to need. Stick with formats that you hope will be around in a year or two (jpg, tiff). Use PCs. They're cheap and work fine. Keep the film camera cleaned, lubed, and ready to go. Get away from Photoshop and similar over-ripe and bloated software. Go for freeware whenever possible.
I work in technology but I'm old school meaning that I remember the days when we had all kinds of testing prior to release and it was a HUGE deal when a bug got through. These days we only budget for the most basic testing and the users are left with the task of identifying the bugs. It's called "user pays".
As a user I agree with your sentiments that technology has not simplified our lives and in that sense I would go as far as to say that technology has failed humanity. Technology is designed and built by geeks for geeks. The manuals are for everyone else and good luck making sense of them.
I think that technology will have succeeded in simplifying our lives the day there is a television that my 85-year-old in-laws can use without needing to call me each time they want to watch a DVD.
As for a basic dslr with minimal buttons, yes please. And the money saved on not having all the crapware could go towards a 35mm sensor. Sweet.
As much as I understand your annoyance (and I agree especially regarding that software stuff, because I am a developer myself), there are some things to consider
* digital cameras now are not only cameras but also reviewing/checking instruments, and especially for the sake of the histogram I do not want to miss this. With more functions inevitably come more controls. I'd only like to see how the Cupertino guys would design a camera interface - they have a much better feeling for human needs than the whole rest of the bunch together.
* cameras sell by numbers, and the guessed market preferences direct development. If there would be no mass market for cameras, at least I would probably not be able to buy. So I forgive them the inclusion of unnecessary things, I simply never used for example the scene modes of my camera
* the market gives us options. I chose my first DSLR, a Minolta 7D, mainly because of the viewfinder quality (wearing glasses this is crucial) and the user interface with a lot of dedicated controls: two wheels and a top control for exposure compensation, iso and white balance buttons. I am more than pleased that Sony basically continued the outline of controls in their A700, and so I never felt the pressure to consult the manual just to operate the camera.
As consumers we are not completely out of control of the market, we still have the possibility to vote with our purses. At least I do.
Albert Einstein once said:
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction."
Everyone should think about these issues next time you're thinking about purchasing a product. Put more emphasis on long-term usability and not so much on features.
This was confirmed by a study called "Feature Fatigue", published by Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, which was featured in the February 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review. The study found that "consumers give more weight to a product's capability benefits and less weight to a product's usability before they use the product than after they use the product-despite the fact that a product's usability strongly influences their satisfaction with the product."
While "people prefer to purchase products with more features ... when people actually had a chance to use the product, they were more satisfied with the simpler version," the study stated. "Even though people want more features, companies need to balance initial purchases against long-term satisfaction and repurchases. They could eventually lose market share if people are consistently and systematically unhappy with their product."
I never thought i would see the day when certain people quoted the Harvard Business Review!
I can't disagree. Unfortunately the consumers are as much to blame as the manufacturers when it comes to feature-creepitis. Too many consumers buy based on the length of the feature list rather than how good a camera the camera is.
I'd love to see a reasonably priced minimalist DSLR. I don't need canned modes, 8fps, 51 AF points, auto-bracketing, 4 AF tracking modes, etc.
All I really want in a DSLR is control-wise Aperture Priority AE and Metered Manual, Centre-weighted and spot metering, AE lock, exposure compensation, DoF preview, ISO and WB settings (preferably with WB preview of some sort), image review with plain and RGB histograms and Live View with 5x and 10x magnification (and the last only for tripod work). For the rest of it, give me a good viewfinder, well located controls and preferably not a massive body.
Exactly...., simplicity is king.
A point and shoot camera should be just that.
For the more complex cameras, if it ain't intuitive, then keep on designing until it is.
Unfortunately most consumers seem to like to see reams of features offered.