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Digital Cameras 1999
Why Do They All Suck?

All right, all right, I'll admit that I'm as much as a gearhead as the next guy, and I've been checking out some digital cameras.  Unfortunately, I haven't yet found one that has all the features that I want, and it is indicative of the sad state of the digital camera market that I can't find such a camera, because my needs are pretty basic.  All I want to do is:

1. Set the shutter speed
2. Set the aperture
3. Attach a studio flash to a PC terminal
4. Shoot

However, at present, there are precious few cameras on the market that can do all four of these things, despite the fact that none of them present any technical challenges and are well within the capabilities of a $150 Pentax from 1976.

In the 35mm world, there are many market segments, from point-and-shoots all the way up to the most expensive, professional SLRs, but the lines between them are blurred, and it is not uncommon to see people with little professional interest in, or even knowledge of, photography, toting around professional-quality gear.  Not so in the digital market.  A non-professional would have to be pretty well-heeled indeed to be able to afford a top-of-the-line digital camera such as the Kodak DCS560 (yours for $26,944.95 at B&H). Even the cheaper professional digital cameras weigh in at about $5,000.  Since most amateurs such as myself can't afford the professional gear (or at least would rather spend the money on a car, or a down payment on a house), we wind up in what amounts to the digital point-and-shoot market.

And it's not just the digital equivalent of the point-and-shoot market either;  the cameras really are point-and-shoots.  They all have the annoying motorized zooms and lens caps so popular on consumer cameras, non-interchangeable lenses without a screw thread for filters (sometimes available as an extra-cost option), horrible add-on wide-angle and telephoto lenses, teeny-tiny viewfinders with no data display (the real-time LCD displays are nice but eat batteries), and so on.  Some of them do allow you to set the aperture or (less commonly) shutter speed manually, but on the other hand, so do some high-end 35mm point-and-shoots.

Imagine if every 35mm SLR suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth.  Imagine that the camera market consisted solely of 35mm P&S cameras, from the lowliest $50 K-Mart special to the Contax T ix at the high end, plus a handful of large format cameras costing $5,000 and up.  That's the state of the digital camera market today.

Can it really be so hard to take a reasonably advanced 35mm camera body, say a Canon EOS Rebel 2000 (that's the EOS 300 to you Europeans), add the 2-megapixel back and LCD screen from the Kodak DC290, fix the electronics to deal with the digital back, and sell it for a grand?  I'd buy it tomorrow.  Or better yet, why not just build a digital camera with a Canon lens mount?  (Why Canon?  Because it's the only 35mm SLR that doesn't require a mechanical coupling between the lens and the camera body;  the coupling is electronic.  In fact, EOS is an acronym for Electro-Optical System.)

I have yet to try out the DC290 because it isn't out yet.  I'll give it at try as soon as B&H gets a sample, and I may buy one.  But it will be a luxury purchase, something to play with.  Kodak et al have not yet produced a digital camera that compels me to purchase it.