Most compact cameras aimed at the enthusiast have a multitude of not so useful settings like fireworks, museum, underwater, sports and portrait etc. Does the average photographer spend that much time taking photos of fireworks or underwater to deserve its own setting? I don’t think so but then again if you want it, it’s there.

For the prosumer i.e. a digital SLR, those options are generally restricted to landscape, macro, sports and portrait mode. Useful? Maybe but if you are going to spend in excess of 2 weeks salary on a camera and then buy lenses on top of that then maybe it’s a good idea to learn the basics.

Now whilst all of these settings may be useful, even if it is only rarely i.e. the museum setting. None are difficult to learn and remember and none are difficult to set up using basic shutter speed, aperture and iso setting combinations. What’s more you get more control over the final image by doing it yourself.

What I’m suggesting is that if predetermined settings are to be included in the firmware, they should be ones that are time consuming and sometimes difficult to work settings, for example hyperfocal distance to achieve front to back sharpness (and I don’t mean that random A-DEP mode found on some Canon cameras)

So how about these settings instead?
Hyperfocal Distance

I’ll start with this one because in terms of usefulness it would rank very highly in my opinion. Some cameras have a variation on this already called A-DEP on Canon cameras. But the way it works is a bit hit and miss because it estimates the distance of all objects in the scene and then chooses an aperture and a focus distance to give the maximum depth of field. Unfortunately it doesn’t always work, in fact in my experience it works less often than it does because there generally aren’t enough AF points in the camera to cover the entire scene.

A much simpler and more effective way would be for the camera to calculate an actual hyperfocal distance setting based on the focal length of the lens and the current aperture. The only other bit of information required is the circle of confusion (CoC), which is a constant for any given camera dependent on sensor size.

So it would work like this. Put the camera in Hyperfocal distance mode, choose an aperture, the camera knows the CoC and it knows the focal length. It then works out a focus distance and sets the lens to that. Simple and effective.

Depth of Field Mode

In practice, estimating depth of field is at best just that, an estimate. A useful addition to the automatic modes would be to allow the user to set the depth of field in distance. Let’s say I wanted a depth of field of 3 cm, I switch to Depth of Field mode and set my distance to 3 cm. In use it would be no more difficult than setting a shutter speed. Once you focus on your subject, the camera sets an aperture that would achieve the required depth of field. Simple!

Angle of View

One of my bugbears is the way in which manufacturers assume that photographers don’t have the intelligence to understand angles of view. Because of the relationship between different sensor sizes and the focal length of a lens, the view you get is different. So in order to simplify this for us poor dumb photographers, they come up with crop factors stated as x1.3, 1.5, x1.6 etc. This tells us the difference in sensor size as a ratio compared to the size of a 35mm film frame. Fair enough!

But to help us understand (???). They tell us on a camera with a x 1.3 crop factor we should multiply the actual focal length of the lens to get an equivalent focal length. For a x1.6 crop factor we have to multiply the actual focal length by 1.6. Now surely this is just confusing because now they would have you believe that your 17mm lens is a 17mm lens only if you use it on a 35mm or full sized sensor camera. Use it on your Nikon with a x1.3 crop factor and magically it becomes a lens with a focal length of 22mm. Use it on your Canon with a x1.6 crop factor and it magically becomes a lens with a focal length of 27mm.

IT DOESN’T!

It is a 17mm lens whatever you attach it to. All that has changed is the angle of view due the smaller sensor size. In other words, it’s the same as cropping the edges off a 35mm frame until it’s the same size as the smaller sensor.

So it wouldn’t be too much of a problem to standardise things by using angle of view instead of focal length. I’m not suggesting to get rid of focal length as a piece of information but it is less useful than the angle of view. There is no reason why it couldn’t be displayed in the viewfinder. Pretty soon people would realise the relationship between what they see through the viewfinder and the angle of view as a number and at least it is constant.

Whatever the camera with whatever sized sensor and whatever focal length, a particular angle of view on one camera gives exactly the same field of view as it does on another camera.