On an old Sony a65 I never use the exposure compensation or ISO or aperture preview physical-controls. There's a control wheel for shutter speed and aperture depending on PASM mode, which I use all the time.

But then I never use out-of-camera JPG, just raw at lowest ISO — to me, that seems to provide more possibilities.

(For example, converting a single raw file multiple times into an exposure series and then using the old Enfuse software to combine the "best" exposed pixels.)

They essentially can. The A7RIII and RX100M6 can both shoot RAW to their buffers at 24fps then write it out. A full bracket usually takes less than a second and works just fine handheld.

> Shooting HDR quickly has the benefit that while you want something to reduce rotational shake, you don't need to be much longer in the position than the exposure time itself dictates. You can use the time you need to move to a new angle/direction to compress and store the RAWs, as barely anyone has hardware capable of yanking the camera to a new angle in a few milliseconds, just alone due to the power density needed to have something able to do this compact enough for casual handling. Imagine it like a much, much faster clockwork, with the purpose to deliver dozens of kilowatts for a few milliseconds to accelerate the camera and slow it right back down. Almost no one has such a thing that would keep the device steady during the exposure, but permit very short spacing between exposures that change the direction it is pointing by more than 20% FOV. If you were to rotate the camera that fast at over 50fps, good luck with the light you need (hint: your lens can't provide DOF at the aperture you need to do this even in full sunlight (sunny 16 rule)).

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. It sounds like maybe you're after some kind of automtaed panorama bracketing or something?

Author is knowledgeable enough about filters but can't figure out manual mode on his camera?

This. My 2016 Olympyus Pen-F does this (a small m43 mirrorless body). It takes 4 captures at different exposures and combines them in-camera. I don't usually use this mode, but the results aren't bad at all for snapshots.

It can also take up to 7 different exposures, but the user needs to combine those manually. This is the mode I use most often, since it allows me to tweak the result how I want.

Amen. I've been casually shooting with a Nikon D70 and now a D7000 for around 15 years now. Here's an illustrated guide to every single physical control on the D7000, which isn't even a high-end camera:

http://kenrockwell.com/nikon/d7000/users-guide/controls.htm

...and for many of those I'd need to read the manual to find out what they even do (Fn? Lv?) and I struggle to find any reason I'd need to twiddle with, say, the image compression (QUAL) so urgently that it needs a dedicated shortcut button.

Buried at the bottom of the article. This is interesting for especially video and sports photography. Some cameras with slower sensors suffer from the rolling shutter effect where fast moving subjects get distorted because the subject or the camera is moving. Think e.g. lampposts looking diagonal when shot from a fast moving car. Capturing all the pixels in one go solves that.

Cropping the sensor is a common way to counter rolling shutter with current cameras. Basically, that means you are not using all of the pixels on the sensor and capture a smaller area. Aside from the quality, this also means that you don't use everything the lens captured; it's cropped away. So, it looks like you are using a larger focal length than you actually are and you can't capture at the full width of the lens.

Lots of cameras use cropping to support higher resolutions and frame rates because they can't read out the sensor fast enough. This new sensor can use the full resolution and doesn't have to crop.

And like with photography, you use shutter speed and aperture to control what the video looks like. 1/30th of a second is actually a relatively long exposure for a photo. And that's also potentially a lot of rolling shutter to deal with. An instant and fast readout means you have more wiggle room to play with this creatively or shoot in very bright or low light.

    I always take a few shots & similar
    compositions of the same thing to
    make sure that at least one shot is
    super in focus.

The OVF lag on the high end models is significantly faster than the time it take the mirror to retract (a D5 SLR has about 40ms of shutter lag). This means that while you might have a very minimal lag on the EVF, you make up for it in shorter shutter lag.

Just a note: I used to do Photojournalism for a living. This kind of precision timing is irrelevant for action shooting. Once AF and motor drive happened, the technique shifted from trying to hit the decisive moment, to just mashing the shutter and picking the best shot from the series.

For these people, this kind of simulator could be really helpful. It might be a little better if there was more explanatory text after you press the shutter. For example, I saw "overexposed" once; maybe that message could be more along the lines of "Your image is overexposed. Try decreasing your aperture, decreasing your shutterspeed, or adjusting exposure compensation."

I don't shoot rapid-fire except when I'm shooting motion.

The most skilled photographers generally don't shoot that many frames. An example is when I'm using my 4x5; it takes 15 minutes to get the framing and focus exactly right, and it costs a couple of dollars to get each $2 sheet of film processed. You can bet that I'm very careful with my shots!

The brains I want on the camera are for things that actually involve taking the shot. Give me intelligent capture of images for stacking. That entails two things:

1) HDR exposure. Point the camera at something, select HDR. It takes the exposure and examines the frame for any pixels near the extremes of the sensor. If there are any pixels near the top it reshoots exactly the same shot but with a shorter exposure time. Repeat until there are no really bright pixels. On the other end, if there are any really dim pixels reshoot with a slower exposure, repeat as needed.

2) Focus stacking. Manual focus, pick a point. Pick another point. The camera shoots a sequence of exposures moving the focus between the two points.

Imagine yourself working as a photographer using non-digital cameras. While you know exactly what you want a picture to look like, you can't tell how it actually looks without some major work (i.e. process your film). So, you have to a) take many pictures of the same motive and b) try again later if you're not statisfied.

Of course, you can get very proficent using analog cameras (a trained eye could e.g. certainly tell the proper aperture adjustments for a scene), but you'll have to train that rather inefficently, too. And sure, digital cameras have their drawbacks, but they have a very net positive effect on most photographer's work, that's why you almost find no one using the old methods anymore.

Now, you - as the "analogist" don't recognize all the factors that slow you down in your work. It has been that way for decades, right? It must be the proper way to do things. Now imagine I'm coming along, being used to use digital cameras and forced to use analog ones in your working environment. Can you imagine the frustration I'm going through?

I just want to make a picture of what I need and tell if it worked, if my last two seconds of activity will do. But the old thing has no screen I can use to see if the picture was to bright, to dark or even blurred. That's what the mouse-based workflow feels like after a while: It's unnecessairily slowing you down, constantly standing in your way. No matter if it's not the activity you spend most of your time with - it prevents you from going back to your real work as soon as possible. And if you're used to do the same things without it, you'll very likely get frustrated some time.

Edit: I just realized another good metaphor would be to compare old FORTRAN punch cards (punching them out, giving them to an operator and waiting until the next day for the results) vs. debugging a modern C# application. That'sessentially what you're doing with proper hotkeys: Tightening your feedback loop.

... for practice, learning, or stationary, long-lasting subjects.

Of course you want to get a good feel for the aperture, shutter speed and sensitivity so that when you see a beautiful bird about to take off for flight, or a butterfly touch down ever so momentarily, you aren't fumbling with settings, and you've already got a good sense of what settings will work.

Definitely agree though - many cameras have "priority" modes where you're really only changing the shutter speed or aperture, and it's still doing the rest automatically for you, so you can focus on whatever that one setting does, while also seeing what the smart camera tells you the other settings should be in those situations.