 |
| Photo courtesy of Digital Photography Review. The yellow arrow points to the badly located front control dial. |
Sony’s latest Mirrorless FE mount full frame cameras have attracted considerable press coverage.
Much of this has been about Sony’s amazing technology which is cutting edge for the camera industry right now.
But cameras are hand held devices for use by humans, not abstract exercises in techno-wizardry.
If the ergonomic design is poor the device will be awkward and unnecessarily difficult to use thus diminishing the user experience.
Unfortunately ergonomics is Sony’s weak point.
I have owned and used several Sony cameras over the years and would sum them up as having good technology and poor ergonomics.
The A7R3 and A9 continue this regrettable trend.
For this post I will just mention the handle and front control dial as shown in the photo above.
Bear in mind these are high end cameras designed to be used by professional and advanced amateur photographers with big heavy lenses mounted.
1. The handle is not tall enough to enable many adult users to get a full five finger grip.
2. The effective height of the handle is further reduced by the location of the front control dial in front of and below the shutter button.
3. Look at the photo.
The middle finger of the operator’s right hand lies immediately below and touching the front control dial.
The problem: how to work that dial ?
The user can try to do this with the middle finger but:
a) the middle finger is the primary gripper and should be devoted to gripper duty full time.
b) if the middle finger is used on the control dial it has to be lifted up which is not a natural action for this finger and doing so forces disruption of grip on the handle.
Or the user can try to operate the dial with the index finger but:
In order to make room for the index finger to get down there the third, fourth and fifth fingers must drop down. This disrupts grip on the handle.
So working the dial requires more actions each more complex than would be the case if the dial was in the optimal location (see photo of the GH5) and grip on the handle is destabilised as well.
 |
| Panasonic GH5 Optimal location of front control dial: 5mm behind and at the same height (relative to the natural movement of the right index finger) as the shutter button. Simple, effective, efficient. The user can move the right index finger from the shutter button to the control dial without moving any part of any other finger. Minimal number of actions, each of low complexity. |
Background
My interest in camera ergonomics was triggered eight years ago by the Panasonic G1.
This was the first mirrorless interchangeable lens camera and as such was something of a technological milestone.
But the G1 had truly awful ergonomics.
One of its problems was exactly the same as that seen on the A9 and A7R3: Front dial in the wrong place.
I find it rather depressing that these basic ergonomic mistakes keep appearing year after year.
Panasonic is learning from its own mistakes to the point that the GH5 has the highest ergonomic score of any camera which I have tested to date and the G80 is not far behind.
But it appears Sony is not learning much.
The second generation A7 cameras are better than the truly awful first generation models but are still burdened, or really the users are burdened, by Sony’s elementary ergonomic mistakes.