Cameras Are Too Complicated?

[Mike Farley]

There is an interesting article at Luminous Landscape about poor design and the increasing complexity of camera controls, which is partly due to the trend of convergence of still and video functions into the one device.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essay ... city.shtml

I am not sure that I agree with all of it. On my Canon 7D, the video button is not placed in a position where it can be operated accidentally and it doubles up for the live view function which I find very useful. I also like the Quick Menu function which allows me to change the most commonly used settings from one place. I do wish that Canon would not hide mirror lockup in the sub menus, although I have partially overcome this by adding it to the custom menu. A simpler solution is to put the camera into live view which flips the mirror up. This means that focussing reverts to the slower contrast detect mode, but in most situations where mirror lockup is required lack of speed is not usually an issue. There is also the option to focus manually if it is critcal to take the shot as soon as the shutter is pressed.

The video button on my Panasonic G3 is more easily pressed by mistake, but for a stills only photographer Panasonic has a good solution - the button can be disabled. More frustrating is the fact that the other controls which I do need are placed very close to the thumb rest and I am forever accidentally pressing them. In particular this affects ISO, but I also inadvertently discovered that on this camera that the white balance presets can be customised! I ended up with the daylight preset, which is my default setting, having an excessive amount of magenta, which would have required several button presses. What I do like on this camera is the live histogram and the ease with which exposure compensation can be set. Pressing the main control dial alternates between aperture/shutter speed adjustments and exposure compensation.

What do others think?

[davidc]

To me it sounded like the author of the article had a rant about two particular cameras and tried to present it as a more generalised, commonplace grievance. Why would you put your camera in your bag turned on? And if you do that, do you seriously expect it to never accidentally take a picture/video?

Though I'm sure there are some howlers of poor camera design out there I've never found a camera yet that is so badly built that I can't use it. If anything, looking at my growing collection of cameras, I can see a definite trend towards better ergonomics especially when considering the extra functionality we're being given.

Sure, I've accidentally twisted the mode dial from Av to Tv before and had a load of unusable shots but that's remedied with good technique - take the time to check settings frequently and you'll soon notice a mistake and I've found in my second year of photography I've hardly ever had this problem.

[Mike Farley]

Quite. At some stage we must all have indavertently twisted control dials or put cameras away on settings which are not those we normally use. Some manufacturers stiffen the control dials on their cameras or provide a locking mechanism to prevent accidental movement, which is all part of the ergonomic design.

He is probably right about the Leica M and the M (movie) button. I have only briefly looked at one of these cameras, but the live view mode is not supposed to be well implemented and there is some lag, which would seem to mitigate against video work. A means of disabling the button or assigning it a custom function would be more useful. Just one of the many (there are more than 5,000 ) reasons that I not bought one!

Mind you, the author is not alone in his criticisms. I came across this a while back. Presumably the author enjoys being flamed by the fanboys?

http://www.dougchinnery.com/2013/09/camerausability/