Ken's point of view today on an issue discussed in this thread:
"on a real camera like a LEICA or Canon AE-1 Program, there are only three controls at most: shutter, aperture, and focus. On a real camera, we set no more than these three, and we're free to spend the rest of our time seeing the photo.
On consumer electronics products like the D800, we now have 845 different options and menu items, which provide a total of over 5,439,486,960,532 different combinations of settings — of which only one is correct.
It takes a lot longer to set-up a D800 for each new shot, and all that time is spent worrying about our camera, staring at its menu LCD, instead of thinking about our picture. On my Nikon F3, I can set everything with my eye on my subject. In fact, I can set shutter, aperture and even focus by feel on my F3 with my eyes closed! (experience shows us that each position of the manual focus ring corresponds to the same distance, so it becomes easy to predict and preset focus even before a subject gets there. DSLRs can't do that; only people can.)
With a real camera, it takes much less time to set it, and those three settings are all at least somewhat related to the final image.
Setting just three manual settings (shutter, aperture and focus) are good, compared to the easy stupor into which we can fall with a totally automatic camera like the Nikon F6.
It's horrible when marketing departments have loaded appliances that parade as "cameras" with so many junk features that few of us can master them well enough to take a picture."
There is some truth here although, of course, Ken over-exaggerates it as is his penchant. I love digital and especially how easily I can manipulate the image in post production and how easily I can obtain a print. But, we have so many features in our menus that we can focus too much on changing those settings that our attention is drawn away from actual photography. Also, digital advancements change so rapidly that we are likely to be lusting after a new body before we have even master the old body (unless we shoot everyday).
I think the answer lies in seeing all the options as preferences and switching preferences only when really needed. I used to shoot manual with slide film and thought about f-stop, shutter speed, what the center-weighted light meter was reading, whether I wanted that particular area medium gray or dark or light and adjusted my f-stop plus or minus accordingly or I moved the camera so as to get a light meter reading on the area I wanted medium gray and then recomposed and shot. I thought more about each photo back then. Now I just shoot on Matrix metering and P, A or S depending upon which factor I want to use as my base factor (or M when using monolights). It should be faster to shoot in matrix metering and P mode with the camera doing the focusing. Modern digital cameras should give us quicker shots with less thought to the mechanics and more thought to the subject. Once we "tune" the camera to our preferences it should be the opposite of what Ken says. I do check my LCD throughout a shoot to see that I am getting good exposure but I find it hard to really tell in broad daylight, easier to see indoors.
