Godfrey,
Program shift is a little simpler: you have essentially just locked an EV number and are rolling through the aperture/shutter tuples. Minolta's A2 is the closest: their program shift allows you to lock to either an aperture or shutter speed value.Hyper Program is brilliant and I'm slightly amazed no other manufacturer has copied it. Simply put, hyper Program is "you adjust whichever exposure control you want and the camera will automatically take care of the other one" auto exposure.
isn't there a similar feature from the other manufacturers called "Program Shift"?
I just tried it on the N*kon F75 - if you shift the program using the thumbwheel it locks the aperture value until you change it manually again or you power off the camera. This camera is "one-wheel" design so I suppose a camera with "two-wheel" design will lock either the aperture or the shutter speed depending on the wheel used for shifting. No "green button", though.
Personally, I find all these variations on the theme of Program mode too much to think about. I use Program mode with the EV compensation control for simplicity when I don't really have to watch the focus zone or shutter speed too closely, and switch to Av or Tv modes when I need to hit a specific aperture or shutter speed to get the effect I want.
hmm, I tend to agree, but I can only gracefully choose between full auto (my little digicam) and full manual (MX). :-)
Bedo.
