Elements of camera design 7 July 2019 The good, the bad and the just plain silly

Many camera historians  identify the UR-Leica of 1914 as the fore-runner of the modern hand held camera. With over a hundred years evolution you might expect that modern cameras would have gotten their user interface to a point that most people can pick one up and work it right away.

Motor cars have a similar historical timeline. The Ford model T automobile started mass production on an assembly line in 1913.

Automobiles have evolved to the point that I can hire one anywhere in the world and expect to be able to drive it using a set of controls which with a few minor exceptions (like the windscreen wipers) are universal everywhere. If this were not so all pedestrians and most vehicle users would be dead by now.

Cameras are a totally different story. The people who design and make cameras continue to bequeath their products with a bewildering muddle of different types and designs of controls. Even within any one make of camera various models have completely different control sets.

Camera makers appear to lack any effective map and compass by which they might determine whether they have gotten their designs to the point that any user can pick up a camera and be able to operate it without the need for a 500 page Owners Manual.

This capriciously louche* attitude to the fundamentals of design is I believe the main thing which will bring camera makers undone. The process is well under way. Most children can pick up a smartphone and figure out how to work it without the need for any kind of instruction manual at all.

But some cameras (I have some of them) require you to wade through an incomprehensible 500 page PDF just to figure out how the thing works and even then there are often many unanswered questions, like what the heck does Sony [Focus Standard] mean ? They don’t explain this and many other things besides.

In this post I will highlight some bad design features which continue to blight modern cameras and in the process explain why they are bad and what is better.

Just for fun, let us begin with the bad design feature which I regard as the silliest of all.

Way back in the not-so-good days of 35mm film cameras we needed some way to tell the camera’s exposure system what film speed was to be used. This was expressed as ASA (American Standards Association) or DIN (Deutsches Institut für Normung). The shutter speed dial had a pull-up-and-turn outer ring for this purpose.

This system for setting film speed was awkward, clumsy and fiddly but we tolerated it for years because

a) it was the only type of adjustment available and

b) it did not need to be changed very often and never in the middle of a roll of film.

Then came digital sensors and electronic operation and with these inventions the ability to set sensor sensitivity at will or even have the camera do it automatically. This was wonderfully liberating and camera users embraced the new technology with enthusiasm. Changing ISO sensitivity became a simple operation involving either a one-step dial turn or two step press-button-and-turn-dial. Easy-peasy.

But then in 2017 someone at Fujifilm decided to grace the X-100F with the antiquated old lift-up-and-jiggle-and-jiggle-a-bit-more-and-turn-and-drop ISO control presumably liberated from an archaeological rummage through the 1960’s parts bin. Why they would do that is entirely beyond my comprehension.  Presumably people who actually use this camera to make photos find a way to set Auto ISO and leave it there.

As Alice might have said……curiouser and curiouser…………..

Next up we have the closely related and almost equally dysfunctional  dedicated shutter speed dial with shutter speed numbers engraved right there on the dial. This is another throwback to the 1960s or earlier when this was the most practical way to translate the photographer’s intentions to the all mechanical shutter speed mechanism.

But this arrangement is hopelessly inadequate in the electronic era which enables cameras to set any shutter speed from 60 seconds or longer right up to 1/16000 second or less.

Cameras which have this dial must perforce add an additional unmarked dial of some kind to enable intermediate, slow and fast shutter speeds to be set.

I cannot escape the conclusion that the dedicated shutter speed dial on cameras so equipped is there for show.

The simple solution for a modern camera is the Mode Dial+ twin control dial configuration. One of the dials controls all the shutter speeds with no problems or complex workarounds at all.

While we are on the top plate of the camera let us consider the once-ubiquitous LCD data panel. 

Early digital SLR cameras could not display much camera data in their optical viewfinder and had limited ability to display data on the rear monitor screen. So the makers provided an LCD data panel which could display a selection of exposure and other parameters as determined by the camera maker not the user.

Now we have mirrorless cameras with an electronic viewfinder and a fully featured monitor screen. Either or both these can display a large amount of camera data and give the user the option to select which data is displayed and which is not.

The top plate LCD panel has become redundant, serving no practical purpose related to taking pictures. Yes you can see various data sets without looking through the viewfinder but what is the point ?  The data is useless without the image preview to give it a meaningful real-time photographic context.

Despite this in 2017 Panasonic released the Lumix G9 flagship stills oriented M43 model with a top plate LCD panel.  Nowhere in all the promotional blurb for the camera did I see any kind of functional rationale for this retrograde step. If the top plate LCD panel were merely useless I suppose that would not be so bad.

But it is considerably worse than useless because of the opportunity cost of taking up a great big chunk of prime camera real estate with the LCD panel which forces the Mode Dial over to the left side of the EVF hump. If the Mode Dial is on the right side of the EVF hump it can easily be operated using the right index finger and thumb with a minor shift in grip with the right hand. But when the 

Mode dial is on the left side it has to be operated by the left hand which must be removed from lens support duty to reach the dial. In ergonomic terms working the dial changes from a task requiring few actions each of low complexity to a task requiring more actions each of greater complexity.

But wait. It gets worse. Now the Drive Mode Dial has to be stacked beneath the Main Mode Dial making it more difficult to reach and operate and increasing the risk of accidental actuation of the Main Mode Dial or the Drive mode dial or both because of the stacked configuration.

Now it gets more worserer. Having messed up the top plate of the G9 they carried over the same dysfunctional design to the all-new S1/S1R/S1H  full frame models. What on earth were they thinking ?

On the theme of retrograde camera controls we next come to the once universal aperture ring on the lens barrel. In the old days this was the only place the aperture control could be placed as it was connected mechanically to the lens aperture diaphragm mechanism.

But with electronically mediated operation of all mechanical functions aperture could be allocated to any control module on or off the device.

In the case of a Mode Dial and twin control dial layout the most efficient way to change lens aperture is with one of the control dials. This requires fewer actions each less complex than changing aperture the old way via a lens ring. It also requires fewer actions to switch from Program to Aperture Priority to Shutter Priority to Manual and back again.

There is no functional reason for aperture rings to appear on modern cameras yet there they are in models from Fujifilm, Panasonic and Sony. None of these makers has to my knowledge ever provided the slightest explanation for this.

Worse, each of them is inconsistent, providing aperture rings on some models/lenses but not others.

This is not only dysfunctional but capricious, louche and disrespectful of their customers who are forever having to change the way they use their cameras to accommodate the careless whimsy of thoughtless designers.

My complaints to this point have all been about camera makers fitting new, electronic models with old-fashioned control modules retrieved from the 1950’s parts bin for reasons entirely unexplained. 

One is left to guess that nostalgia might have something to do with it.  Perhaps an attempt to recapture the glory days of mid 20^th Century photography when real photographers used real cameras with simple controls which were actually quite awkwardly designed and difficult to use efficiently.

Several years ago Exposure Compensation Dials started appearing on all kinds of cameras from compacts to enthusiast models. Some users say they like these dials because you can see the amount of exposure compensation being applied before commencing the capture process.

But this is useless information.

The number on the dial is just that-- a number. It means nothing without the context of the image preview. When looking in the viewfinder one can use the zebras to determine how much if any exposure compensation is required and in what direction. Shift to a different part of the scene and a different amount of compensation will be required. All this happens while looking through the viewfinder.

The other problem with prescribed purpose exposure compensation dials is they cannot self cancel. If a user designated dial is used EC can  be configured to self cancel when the shooting mode is changed or the camera powered off.

Last year (2018) Canon introduced the EOS-R mirrorless interchangeable lens camera along with the all new RF mount and a bunch of all new RF lenses.  This was arguably Canon’s most important new product rollout since introduction of the EF mount in 1987. It was therefore vital that Canon should get everything right.

What actually happened was that Canon’s designers made several minor but inexplicable ergonomic mistakes with existing control modules.  Unforced errors you might say.

They tilted the shutter button further forward than had been customary on DSLRs. Then they moved the front dial back a little bit, maybe to make more space for the M-Fn button ?

I don’t know. But the result is that the front dial is not as easy to reach as it could be. Then they located the rear dial in a slightly awkward place which makes it not as easy to reach as it could be. 

Then they put the AF-On button in a slightly different place than you will find it on one of the  5D versions. This means the AF-On button often gets pressed accidentally. I had an EOS RP for a while with the AF-On button in a similar location and had to disable it to prevent accidental activation every time I picked up the camera.

They gave the EOS-R a top plate LCD panel which it does not need.  There is no LCD panel on the EOS-RP but I do not recall any reviewer complaining about this.

And there is no thumb stick, something which many would-be users did request.

And….OOOOPs ! they forgot the Mode Dial. Seriously ???  Canon pretty much invented the Mode Dial and now they want to be rid of it ?  Why ??

Instead they came up with a dial system like half a Leica CL.   Who thought that was a good idea ????

Then Canon’s designers surpassed themselves by  inventing a completely new mistake in the form of the M-Fn Bar, a user interface which nobody asked for, was poorly conceived, badly executed and dysfunctional in operation.

I do not recall a single reviewer, many of whom were paid by Canon to attend a launch event, opining that the M-Fn bar is a good idea. Most said they couldn’t get it to do anything useful and disabled it.

In its heyday Canon was top of the class for good design and implementation of the user experience. 

But the EOS-R is a loser for Canon at precisely the point in the evolution of the camera market that a very big winner was pressingly needed.

The problem is poor design of the user interface. The EOS-R was released in October 2018. Given this camera’s poor reception I would have thought Canon would want to bring out a revised version pretty darn quick.   And a budget kit lens………..But………………???

Most modern cameras are capable of making good pictures. Many offer a level of image quality in excess of most users' requirements. The main characteristic by which people might distinguish between one model and the next is the user interface design and the user experience. Unfortunately camera makers continue to blight their products with mediocre or worse design. I hold the view that if camera makers fail to improve the experience of using their products the currently precipitous decline in sales will continue.