This is why manual controls on cameras matter, and it’s not about clinging to the past

Cameras are tools, right? They are there to do our bidding. But while a modern digital camera will do just that, just as old-school analog cameras did, something has changed. A new layer of context-dependent electronic interfacing has inserted itself between the physical controls at our fingertips and what the camera actually does. There is no longer an obvious, direct, mechanical connection between the camera and us.

People complain that photography is complicated and the automated systems that have become universal today have been a necessary response to make photography accessible to a wider audience. 

Perhaps. But on a manual camera, all you need to learn is the relationship between shutter speed and aperture, and to remember to focus. It’s easy to make mistakes if you’re in a hurry or not paying attention, but it’s not rocket science.

However, for a beginner to fully grasp the complexities of metering patterns, EV compensation, Auto ISO, AF modes, AF point selection and AI subject recognition… now that really does start to look like rocket science. 

It’s the classic marketing technique. Invent or exaggerate a problem (how to operate a camera) and then sell an expensive, complex and half understood solution to all those people you’ve successfully scared half to death.

On all but a few cameras, the shutter speed dial has been replaced by an unmarked, multi-purpose, context-dependent control dial. To change the shutter speed you have to turn the dial while observing a digital display on the rear screen or in the viewfinder. What used to be a direct physical dial is now one step removed. The old control also indicated the setting you had chosen. That’s rare today.

It’s the same with lens apertures. A few lenses have physical aperture rings but most are controlled via the camera body, again using a context-dependent control dial and a digital display. The obvious physical (and visual) connection between a ring on the lens and the thing it adjusts has been lost.

Focusing has become even more distanced from a simple physical action. It now depends on how the camera picks the focus point and what it thinks is the ‘subject’, not the physical act of turning a focus ring until your subject appears sharp.

It’s true that modern digital cameras make many things possible that weren’t before, like high-speed shooting and advanced AI subject tracking. But they’ve also taken something away – the direct, physical control of what is essentially a very simple mechanism. 

I took these shots of my old Pentax SP500 using a very modern Canon EOS R8, and it did the job brilliantly – once I’d applied EV compensation to handle the silver and black trim and told the camera where it needed to focus to get the depth of field right.

Shutter speed, aperture, focus. That’s all that photography is. Or at least that’s all it was until we allowed ourselves to be convinced it was much more complicated than that.