[rparmar]

BTW, Robin, I disagree with your "exposure compensation considered harmful" position. You state that the photographer is out of control. But he/she really isn't. Selecting Av or Tv should be a concious decision and if one isn't in the right mode than one simply changes it.

I do think exposure compensation, in the way it is implemented, is a compromise we have just become used to over time. If we first have to choose our mode and then choose exposure compensation relative to the automatic baseline the camera chooses then it is indeed difficult to know what the camera is doing when we dial in EV+1. I am sure most SLR users could not tell you. This is what I mean by "out of control" though perhaps the phrase is a bit strong.

In terms of interface this requires an additional rocker switch, or two buttons, or a single button that changes the modality of a dial (Pentax system). All of these I am trying to do away with in my minimalist interface.

You seemed to have forgotten one very important point about exposure compensation: The camera is still in auto mode, compensating for any dynamic change of light in the scene. I just gave it a hint regarding the overall exposure. I'm in full control as I instructed the camera to dynamically adjust exposure exactly the way I want it. I wouldn't want to chase changing light by continuous manual adjustment of one of two dials. Perhaps I missed something.

No, I think I missed something! While I think this over I wonder if anyone else has a suggestion?

[falconeye]

Falk's proposal sounds really nice but I wonder how exposure compensation comes into it.

EV compensation working on more than one dial (where you're right it's useful) would require an EV button if you want to avoid a fourth dial

I would use the ISO dial: press the EV button and turn ISO to change EV compensation. This is natural considering that mechanical film bodies did the same: EV compensation shifted the ISO setting and it was often done mechanically within a single ISO dial.

So, I would display the current compensation value on top of the ISO dial.


Some more remark: soon, when the read-out noise has become neglegible compared to the photon shot noise even at higher ISO levels, setting the ISO level won't alter the raw image at all. The camera would always shoot at base ISO for best dynamic range. But to set a higher ISO would effectively tell the camera to underexpose on purpose. Therefore, setting ISO and EV compensation is the same. On a future 3 dial camera, the 3 dials will be aperture, shutter and "ev shift".

[Class A]

I would use the ISO dial: press the EV button and turn ISO to change EV compensation.

Very good idea!
The ISO/EV dial becomes the "sensitivity" dial.

An ISO change is a sensitivity change which is accompanied by a respective compensation during development (e.g., of the RAW data to a JPG), whereas an EV change receives no such compensation.
Makes perfect sense to distinguish these two behaviours by the press of a button.

And you are right: The sensitivity change with compensation (aka ISO change) might soon be a thing of the past.

[rparmar]

That sounds perfect to me!