What's the most useless feature on your camera(s)??

[Steph]

I recently bought a Canon EOS 50E/Elan II with a 24-85mm to travel light for a trip I am planning at the end of this year (I usually use a Pentax Spotmatic with 4 prime lenses + Bronica SQ with 2 lenses) and realised that the EOS has a lot of features, which won't be really useful to me. The most useless one is probably the eye controlled autofocus. I find it much easier and faster to focus on the main subject and then re-compose. It's no surprise to me that Canon does not offer this gadget on any of its current dSLR.

So, I am curious to hear from you to know what the most useless feature on your camera is...

 

[shingfan]

photo editing function...why on earth would i want to waste all the time editing the photo on my camera when i ultimately need to put it on a computer to do the edit with larger screen....you can aruge that you might want to edit it on the camera and take the memory stick out for a direct print...but how often do you do that....i never would....not with a DSLR body.....ppl with a DSLR would have higher expectation in terms of photo quality

 

[Big Mike]

Canon's eye control focus is a polarizing feature...half the people hate it...and the other half love it. I'm also not surprised that it doesn't show up on the DSLR cameras.

Many digital cameras have a vast array of features...a lot of which are useless to many of the users. One of the most useless, IMO, on my Canon 20D...is the ability to automatically bracket the white balance. If anyone cared enough about WB to bracket it...they should be shooting in RAW anyway...which renders the bracketing completely useless. On top of that...setting the WB bracketing...involves some sort of graph in the menus. Someone put way too much time into developing that feature...and I don't know of anyone who would use it.

Another one is the direct print feature on high end DSLR cameras. I think the 5D has a button, just for the direct print. Most DSLR users, especially 5D users...will probably want to upload & edit their images first. I can see that there would be times when direct print could be useful...but not very often. This is especially frustrating when users would much prefer a different function for any added buttons...like MLU.

 

[Iron Flatline]

DOF preview.

 

[ksmattfish]

Features I never use on my Canon 20D:

Every exposure mode except M, A, S, and P: A-Dep, green square, portrait, landscape, macro, action, night scene, and no-flash. I'd trade them all for a customizable exposure setting or two.

The built in BW and tone modes

Red-eye reduction

The "jump" button

Auto white balance

Auto focus

DOF preview: I can barely see to manual focus, no way I can use DOF preview with that small of a viewfinder.

Jpeg

Pop-up flash

I'm sure there are loads more I don't even know I'm not using.

 

[Steph]

The "jump" button

What is that??????

 

[Big Mike]

The 'Jump' button is for when you are are in the menu of the camera...you can scroll through all of the options...but they are divided into three main colors/section. Pushing the jump button will 'jump' you down to the next section. I never use it either...because it only takes a fraction of a second to scroll down in the menu anyway.

 

[Christie Photo]

Hmmmm.... hard to say. I've purchased two cameras so far, and each time I took the camera from the box, set it on manual, and went to work.

I THOUGHT I was going to like auto-focus, but have been bit in the ass too many times now. The lenses too are set on manual.

Pete

 

[JIP]

Features I never use on my Canon 20D:

Every exposure mode except M, A, S, and P: A-Dep, green square, portrait, landscape, macro, action, night scene, and no-flash. I'd trade them all for a customizable exposure setting or two.

.

That's mine

 

[THORHAMMER]

dof focus for me too !! I just shoot and look at the shot, I can tell if I nailed the dof in half a second.

otherwise I spend 10 seconds squinting and cant really notice the difference...

 

[Don Simon]

Another vote for pointless scene modes for exposure, and for b&w, sepia or other effects that don't belong in the camera.

 

[fmw]

The only one that really bothers me is the array of little focusing spots in the viewfinder. I use focus lock and have no use for the little things and find them distracting in the viewfinder. I wish I could turn them off. They may be useful to someone else but not to me.

My cameras have a number of metering modes that are of no interest to me. I don't even know what they do. I use two of the 8 or so modes available on the camera - P and M. I can't imagine why I would need any others.

 

[molested_cow]

I never use my flash...

 

[usayit]

I for one liked Canon's Eye focus control in the Elan IIe. It only had 3 points and it worked seemlessly. I tried it in the EOS 3 and it did not work very well.

The most useless... creative modes... although my current camera doesn't have them.

 

[Lars Leber]

"Picture Styles" and all the modes except M, AV, and maybe TV.