rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

Tomorrow we will go to the Madrigal Dinner put on by the college where my wife works. The dinner two years ago is an excellent example of why I believe your answer doesn't really address the OP's desires.

I took my Canon Elph to that dinner two years ago. Partway through that dinner, my wife learned over and whispered "Those pictures aren't right!". Further whispering during the remainder of the dinner got to the heart of her issues; the producers of the dinner had gone to certain lengths to turn a student lounge into something with the look-and-feel of a medieval banquet hall, and my Elph, which is essentially a tiny point-and-shoot camera, had heroically "fixed" the WB, eliminating the candle-light ambiance created by those producers - the Elph had no way of producing anything other than JPEG files, and no built-in WB setting that would preserve what we were seeing. The Elph also has no way for me to take direct control of the camera, for me to manually set aperture and shutter speed. I hear the OP saying those are the desired mode of operation - give me control of shutter speed and aperture, and don't mess with things such as WB!

Incidentally, the small camera I will take tomorrow is my Pentax Q-7, which I bought a few days after that Madrigal Dinner. It does have automatic modes, but it has a fully manual mode to give me control of shutter speed and aperture, can create DNG {raw} files, and incidentally does have a "candle-light" WB.

jim quist Loc: Missouri

Buy a film camera and have the negatives scanned to a disk.

tdekany Loc: Oregon

If you want no video, the Nikon Df is for you. You can shoot it in manual mode and most importantly shoots raw so no image manipulation until you do it in post.

tdekany Loc: Oregon

I see that you have a D7000 - what is wrong with that camera?

SS is correct - practice, practice, practice before you spend $$$ on a "better" camera. You need to get better first.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

That's an interesting observation. My digital Elphs died a while ago so I cannot check easily, although I might be able to resurrect one sufficiently to check the WB thing, but it probably isn't worth the effort. I do have a fully working Canon Powershot A710 IS (circa 2006) that has white balance settings and with the CHDK software can deliver raw files in DNG format. From what I have found the Canon PowerShot S400 Digital Elph (that I also had, maybe still have somewhere) had a certain amount of white balance control: https://www.manualslib.com/manual/24784/Canon-Powershot-S400-Digital-Elph.html?page=75

Are we talking at cross purposes here? Is this an equipment problem or possible pilot error?

It is an interesting question, and clearly modern cameras have far superior capabilities, but from my imperfect recollection, my digital Elph had the controls to deal with those situations. An iPhone can also do excellent work.

Digital Elph S400, Christmas 2004

(Download)

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

I never found the "Custom White Balance" to work very well, especially if you're out in the field and need to preserve something right now.

The disconnect in the OP's question is that back in the day, a simple camera did simple things; today, modern electronics allows a simple digital camera to do routinely-wanted things, so everyone gets them, but you have to pay more to get other things, or sometimes even less things.

MW

I don't think that what you want exists. I wish it did. Maybe you can approach your ideal by looking at a Nikon Df. Externally the Fuji X series uses controls reminiscent of film cameras - internally they have the usual bells and whistles of any digital camera but you can ignore those 80-90% of them since once the camera is set up there is little need for the menus.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

That may be true, although I have seldom found that to be the case. Usually the basics are there if you know how to get to them, they just may be buried under some supposedly clever user interface designed to make things 'easier'.

One of the reasons that I like Canon is that the UI has stayed relatively consistent while evolving in sophistication. From my AE-1 in 1976 to the T90 in 1986, to Digital Elphs, Powershots to the EOS DSLRs, the UI has evolved and developed but the controls still seemed to be there, at least from my perspective.

Perhaps that is just my personal experience, but I haven't found it to be a limitation.

rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

With pliers, forcefully rip out the video record button, then fill the cavity with quick-drying silicon compound. Next, super-glue the mode selector wheel to the "M" position; take utmost care not to drip glue anywhere else on your camera. Not sure what can be done about all those pesky, frivolous special effect features listed in the camera's menu. Perhaps with the aid of meditation you can learn to just ignore them.

Or as mentioned by several posters, simply get an all-manual film camera... plenty of models to choose from, and most are quite affordable.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

Not all cameras have a mode selector wheel, or any way to put it into a true "manual" mode which allows you to quickly set aperture and shutter speed.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Very basic, just expensive.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

That is true, certainly not all cameras, but I found that my Canon's have. It was quite a surprise to me when I got the Digital Elph S400 that it had most ( not all) of the sophistication of the T90. Didn't have multi-spot metering, but most of the rest was there. My A710 has pretty much all the modes, Auto, P, Tv, Av, M, and a few scene modes in addition to image stabilization. It's only ten years old or so. Also different metering modes, evaluative, center weighted, spot and so on. A range of white balance modes. A menu system and controls that were easy to navigate? What am I missing for an inexpensive P&S camera?

rmorrison1116 Loc: Near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania

What about an EOS 1Ds II set to manual; no video, excellent images, 16.7 megapixels, 24 bit TIFF image files.

whitewolfowner

Digital cameras don't work in that manner. I suggest you study up on how they work and what the models do and the files, what they produce for you to work on in post processing, etc...

bull drink water Loc: pontiac mi.

since i'm a sony man, i'll go with a used sony a-100/ and a 18-55mm kit lens. the other makers have similar models