And yes, the high-end full-frame DSLR costs are on par with high-end laptops, but IMO you get 90% of the benefit for a fraction of the cost with an entry- or mid-level crop sensor.
As for the UIs, I'll definitely acknowledge they could stand some updates, but the way you describe it sounds like an overstatement. What would you improve, exactly?
In terms of the UI however, it's definitely very out of date.
When I upgraded my camera, one of the advertised features of the new one was that they added an extra digit to the internal intervalometer. Instead of being able to go between 0-999, the new one could go from 0-9999.
The fact that this couldn't be a simple software update still astounds me.
Basically slap a fucking android phone on the back when browsing photos. Make it a separate CPU if necessary.
Embrace the 'casual camera' body style more. The viewfinder should not be a big chunky thing in the center, but on the side and a pop up if necessary. Get rid of grips and make them a uniform rectangle, and add a battery grip in the box to make it slr grippy. People are scared of slr style bodies, while they are not scared of casual camera bodies.
They will continue serving the standard pro market who want the big chunky slr style bodies, this is how they can capture the 'high quality life memory / instagram influencer' market better.
Canon, Nikon, and others have long decided they can’t and won’t compete with smartphone makers and are increasingly moving up-market to the prosumer and professional markets who want “big chunky SLR body styles”, and they use specialized software like Capture One and Photo Mechanic to view/edit/organize photos anyway.
These days when the shot is easy the phone is at least in the ballpark with the big guys. When the shot is hard the phone isn't even in the running.
It ran full Android, you had all your file management, Bluetooth and wifi, could play games if you felt like. Could encrypt the filesystem, too, which I think is super important for journalists.
Basically nobody noticed or cared.
I have a Panasonic and the OS is pretty freaking great. 10 to 20 minutes of poking and around and maybe a few hours of real world usage and I can customize my own buttons and quick menu for what works for me. I don’t want some bloated POS andriod iOS apps on my camera.
As far as the hardware is concerned. Yeah, there is a lot of artificial segmentation in the market. I think this is why the camera market is failing badly.
The menu UI is somewhat clunky, but does enable function discovery. There are no Nikon-specific swipe gestures to learn, for example.
Funnily enough this is a feature of Magic Lantern which is especially useful if you want to use a 3rd party HDMI recorder to record longer than a SD card or the default OS would allow https://wiki.magiclantern.fm/faq#how_do_i_record_for_more_th...
Samsung did this: https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/samsung-nx1 but gave up the market in 2015.
That was likely a good idea from a cost-benefit perspective, as standalone cameras continue to decline in unit volumes: https://www.dpreview.com/news/7719403699/cipa-s-november-num..., but it's a shame from a technological progress perspective. You are totally correct that a camera body really ought to be an Android device, but camera makers have not done that—which likely contributes to their fall in unit sales.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/9/27/17911212/z...
[2] https://www.dpreview.com/news/3430444458/zeiss-announces-ful...
Having a Nikon and being able to shift shutter speed / aperture with a dial is very important.
You can kind of think of this as a remote control. Yes you can have a touchscreen as the only interface for a remote control, but you always have to look down at it to use it.
On my remote I can control volume and channel without looking at it.
A full frame sensor can easily cost $600-$1000 without even considering anything else, yet these cameras are in the $2000 range and include highly sophisticated stabilization systems and professional video features (e.g. 4:2:0/4:2:2 output). Those are typical to low margins for a technology product.
Regarding your complaints. Realize that higher end cameras are meant to be a professional tool. Thus they tend to favor conservative reliability and interface continuity over anything else. The camera app crashing like it might on your Android phone is unacceptable on a camera, so they run more reliable and specialized code. Though speaking of Android, Sony cameras do run a modified version of Android, the previous few generations of cameras had somewhat of an app store, and people even got hacked APKs running on the camera to add missing functionality.
I do agree that camera manufacturers are purposely leaving out software features though. Stuff like an intervalometer and focus stacking should be standard on every camera. Plus, as you mention, some vendors are hobbling features to try to get users to buy more expensive cameras (like a 1.7x crop for 4K video on Canon, because they really want you to buy a C200 @ $7500).
To expand a bit more on interfaces, there is an interesting argument for and against it. It is no surprise that the camera industry is shrinking, and that the people most likely to buy new cameras are going to be those that already own an interchangeable lens camera. Thus manufacturers don't want to upset their customers by changing their interface too much. Companies like Hasselblad that produce more specialized luxury cameras have come up with more modern interfaces for their recent cameras. While I would personally love to see Canon/Nikon/Sony step up here and create a proper, modern touch interface for these cameras, they won't anytime soon. In everyday use, most of the interface with a camera is with physical controls, at most your common interactions with the software is changing options that are part of a quick menu.
You don't need the latest and least supported by third-party tools camera for most things. A $500 body with a $100 prime lens will outperform a $1500 camera with a kit lens.
It functions like an instrument that is designed to be used. Treated with reasonable care, from -30C to 100%-humidity-condensing conditions at the freezing point, it has consistently gotten the job done. It is compatible with a huge range of glass, and it all works. The interface stays out of the way -- when I'm making images, I'm never worried about the camera, just the photography.
When I'm working, the camera is always powered on. The battery lasts for weeks in that mode, yet when I depress the shutter halfway, it begins to lock focus in tens of milliseconds. With gloves on.
When these cameras are released, there are rarely, if ever, hardware revisions. They work that well on the day that they are shipped to the first consumers.
For me, the cost (and the value) is in the R&D and the ecosystem.
I suspect the problem here to be scale.
I suspect that those are above a $300 BOM given the display, sensor, and plethora of mechanical things (buttons, threads, etc.).
Mechanicals are very expensive compared to electronics. And cameras have LOTS of mechanical thingys.
If Canon sacrifices any of that for "extra" features, the pros leave for Nikon. And vice versa. These are still cameras first, everything else second.
The bigger/faster sensors are a big part of the price. The other big factor is all of the buttons and dials to quickly change settings without having to look away from the scene. The fast shutter, mirror, and optical view finder are also big contributors. Look at the assembly animation below [1] of a Canon 10D to see all of the tiny parts packed into a small, ergonomic package, and you'll get a better idea of why they cost so much. Not to mention I've killed 3 phones by drops no higher than 4 feet, while I've dropped my DSLRs many more times and from higher points and they show no signs of damage.
It's not about the software, it's about the build quality (once you get into the professional product lines anyway). I have an old Canon 7D that's damn near indestructible (think old Nokia-phone style). I'd dropped that thing in lakes, had it out shooting during monsoons and snowstorms, rolled it down mountains, buried it in sand, dropped it from serious heights (shattering more than a few lenses along the way) and it just keeps ticking. The body is pretty banged up and I've had to clean/replace a few internal parts from the wear-and-tear but it just keeps on ticking.
I have several replaceable-sensor cameras and the bodies/lenses were made before I was born. They still take great pictures because it turns out that focusing light onto stuff is largely a solved problem. (They don't even use batteries, much less need an up-to-date OS! But I will admit that carrying a separate light meter is a little annoying.)
Yes, there will always be people that need a 1 billion point autofocus system, and that will require some heavy software engineering. That is a niche use case, even more niche than needing a digital camera to begin with.
Zeiss too...
https://www.dpreview.com/news/3430444458/zeiss-announces-ful...
I needed to do some video work last year, so I basically followed Casey Neistat's suggestion for a Canon camera, only to find out it wouldn't allow me to export the video live via an HDMI cable without the camera's overlay on top. Turning all the elements off still left me with a red dot in the corner. Apparently I got the wrong model and the one $800 more expensive would do this. After a while I gave up, went back to the store and got a cheap video camera that could do it, BUT again, I had to get the more expensive version, because the same model in the cheaper option didn't allow this particular use case.
I was really surprised by how backwards this all was! Proprietary OSs, artificially limited functionality, anemic processors, interfaces out of the 1980s. It's crazy!
Has someone slapped Android on a decent camera yet?