Hey I’m a pro sports photographer of 25 years and we share a lot of common ground with aviation photography so I thought I’d make a few notes on the photo mode.
Please offer the mode with the following options..
Instead of just a bind for “exposure”..
Exposure should be a result of the combined setting of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO.
Shutter speed is important, for example it’s the difference between prop planes or helicopters freezing rotors/propellers in place, or having a nice pleasant motion blur effect. It’s the difference between a plane zooming by with a motion blurred background or a still image. It also darkens or brightens the exposure.
In short, implement rendered motion blur and call it shutter speed.
Aperture is basically what you’re calling focus. Let us set from like f/1.2 out to f/22 - a tiny bit in focus vs. everything in focus. That’s a realistic range. Again, brighten or darken the image appropriately. Let us also select a focal point (a distance of where to focus on).
ISO will compensate for the various aperture/shutter settings we select and brighten/darken the image. You can add or remove grain if you want to make it more realistic, but honestly.. whatever. Modern cameras have practically no grain anyway, and AI fixes the rest.
Of course, add an auto mode for people who can’t be bothered.
Finally, focal length/compression. Focal length does a few things - it compresses the image (google it, I don’t have time to explain) and it increases background blur the longer you get. e.g. a 400mm 2.8 will have more apparent ‘blur’ than a 24mm 2.8. It also has a relation to shutter speed in that you will need a higher shutter to freeze motion.
If you want to get really crazy, add in white balance and color options.
The photo mode doesn’t need a ton of work, it just needs a few tweaks, terminology changes, maybe some UI work to mimic an actual camera (instead of a game user interface.)