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As someone who shoots Canon, Olympus and Panasonic, I would like to make a small addition.

 

The Olympus menus are not really bad at all, IMO. They are just very, very extensive, and occasionally quite deep, which makes it difficult to remember where is what. There certainly is logic to it. The neat thing with Olympus is that there is a Quick Menu for most used menu items, effectively, that it has one of the best if not the best touch screens and touch interfaces wrt cameras, and that virtually every button can be reprogrammed to whatever you like, which can also be mapped to a set controlled by one of the Custum menu options.

 

In short, if you really want to get the most out of an Olympus camera, it takes some time to set up and/or learn, possibly, depending on one's (perceived) shooting needs, but several options for different shooting types and styles can then be easily matched with one of the Custom sets (C1-C3), while it is still possible to easily adjust all the main options with the quick menu, or with the dials and buttons.

 

Generally speaking, I personally find these discussions over the top, as it is always possible to do stuff the old-fashioned and easy way, with most cameras anyway, and I reckon that will suffice 99.8% or more of most shots. Know what you want to do, and set the camera up accordingly, the simple way. You'll rarely need to use the menu in that case, and often not deep at all once the initial set up is done. That is my experience, although YMMV I guess.

 

As to Panasonic: I find the menus often too simple. And with Canon, despite the fact that I have always gelled nicely with their menu system and dials and controls set-up, even there it is hard at times and hidden fairly deep in the menus to set up something very specific.

 

All in all, unless one has become proficient with a camera menu system, take the time to learn and master the menu system, otherwise it seems rather involved, hard to do, whatever. I have heard people complain about the menu system of ANY camera brand, and that includes Fuji, Pentax, Panasonic, Olympus, Canon, Nikon, and Sony especially. My impression is that people often expect things to work immediately the way they want or expect, even though cameras cannot yet read minds, and that people are often very impatient, and not prepared to invest the time to get to know the tools one uses.

 

Kind regards, Wim

 

I agree that one has to get used to the system their are using. It takes some time.

 

However, it's not an excuse to avoid implementing basic features requested by many photographers. I'm particularly thinking of Olympus. Everybody touts how much you can customize/configure the camera but yet some basic features that have been implemented almost a decade ago by other manufacturers are still missing from the system, namely minimum shutter speed and auto ISO implementation.

 

Another example that plagues all systems is when the user sets the aperture and shutter speed while the camera chooses ISO. Most cameras let you do this. However, most of the time, the user will very likely want a minimum shutter speed, not an exact one. Hence, why not treat the shutter speed as the minimum shutter speed? It makes much more sense and would be much less limiting from an exposure point of view.

Stuff like this makes sense. It reminds me of the first days of digital photography when ISO had to be set manually and auto ISO didn't exist. The interface and control of the camera was a carbon copy of film cameras, where ISO was fixed. It made sense with film cameras since ISO was your film, but it doesn't make sense today with a digital sensor where ISO can be changed on the fly (it's just another variable like aperture and shutter speed).

 

So much more can be done now that things can be programmed in clever ways for the benefits of the photographer. It can be much more optimal than fixed setups too, especially in dynamic situations. Yet, camera companies keep mimic-ing the way cameras used to be operated in the film days. They are hardly innovating. In fact, they are stuck in the past while a lot can be improved beyond what's available today. Cell phones (and notably google) is definitely showing the way here.

 

There are many other simple examples, such as :

• Focus bracketing/stacking could be 100% done by the camera (on a tripod obviously) and saved in a RAW file. I think Olympus implements this, but I doubt it saves RAW files.
  
• HDR capture using exposure bracketing and saving to RAW : today, all cameras only produce jpeg. Why not RAW? Totally doable, yet nobody does it! We could have files with huge DR this way without having to use special software to process them.
  
• Face detection letting you pick which face to focus on. Only Sony does this and it's really an obvious feature. Yet, nobody besides Sony does it!
  
• An actual modern interface such as the ones used by smartphones, especially for browsing pictures and deleting them. Take a look at how easy and fast it is on phones. Why not implement the same touchscreen interface? Cameras still use 1990s technology and interfaces.
  
• Same with RAW development from the camera. I'm taking Fuji's example here. Fuji provides great film simulations. The UI is clunky and cumbersome. Make it like a proper application where you can easily preview and convert your images on the fly in a very easy and quick way. Develop an easy to use, streamlined app (desktop and mobile) that can develop the RAW files and produce the same files as the jpeg engine! Sure, Lightroom or other is best, but sometimes you want to do quick edits and share on the spot. The app (in camera, mobile app, desktop app) should make it super easy to share the photos on social medias as well (facebook, flickr, etc.).
  
• etc.