[Leica] designing a reasonable digital camera

[leicaslacker at gmail.com (kyle cassidy on the LUG)]

The "camera for old fogies" has much truth to it. I few months back I 
started thinking about designing a digital camera for my parents - they're 
savvy, but baffled by "midnight sports", "fireworks" and "museum" modes. My 
goal is, I think, for a camera with only six controls and would not require 
that you have a computer:

Manual SS dial with program option
Manual aperture wheel 
select white balance, 
manual or automatic focus
image review, left, right, delete.
shutter release

no size selection, I think the consumer model i'd keep at something like 
1800x1200 jpeg medium. no "sports mode", no self timer, no intervelometer. 
No film speed since digital cameras have only one and the rest is done by 
increasing the gain, you could do that during the printing process (brighten 
this photo by one increment? y/n) It would hold a thousand or more images on 
an SD card and I'd just encourage people to label the SD card ("european 
vacation and beth's birthday party") and keep everything on it rather than 
moving things back and forth to a computer. You could offer cloud backup and 
distribution from the drug-store kiosk "shall i save the photos you're 
printing to your CVS account? from there you can share them over the 
Internet")

I really would like to help design a simple camera that makes life easier 
for people. the goal would be 4x6 scrapbook prints, just like family 
photography's been done since the 19th century.....

Vivitar, call me; better yet, Panasonic, call me, we'll badge it Leica,

kyle