What constitutes a 'well designed camera'?

[Tragg]

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In another thread I stated the following: "A well designed camera should be intuitive to use. Anything that gets in the way of the creative process is a hindrance rather than an asset." Though I regard this statement as uncontroversial - if not self evident - it was nevertheless dismissed as 'bull shit' by another forum member. Note that I didn't mention the 'L' word 😊. Obviously a camera that suits one person won't necessarily suit another - a rangefinder, for is for example may be less than ideal for close up work. So, taking as a given that a camera functions as intended and is capable of producing high quality images, how would you define a 'well designed camera'?

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[Narsuitus]

One that meets my current needs and my future needs.

[evikne]

3 hours ago, Tragg said:

A well designed camera should be intuitive to use. Anything that gets in the way of the creative process is a hindrance rather than an asset.

Fully agree.

[albertknappmd]

As the late supreme court justice, the honorable Potter Stewart once said about pornography: "I know it when I see it..."

Quite relevant to to photographic matters as well!!!!

Albert 😂

[earleygallery]

I'd say that a well designed camera is a camera that has been designed well.

[IkarusJohn]

Well designed surely means meets its intended purpose.  It’s a misunderstanding of the purpose which is the dificulty ...

[mdemeyer]

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4 minutes ago, IkarusJohn said:

Well designed surely means meets its intended purpose.  It’s a misunderstanding of the purpose which is the dificulty ...

Well stated.  We should all accept that not all devices meet our intended purpose, and accept gracefully that they might meet the intended purposes of others.  

[adan]

James - study up on the meaning of tautology.

noun: tautology - the saying of the same thing twice in different words, generally considered to be a fault of style. Logic: a statement that is true by necessity or by virtue of its logical form.

________________

I guess my first question is "what is intuitive?"

For many people, "intuitive" will mean a Ph.D camera - "Push here, Dummy!" A phonecam, a classic P&S or box camera. "You push the button, we do the rest" was Eastman's tagline for the first Kodak roll-film camera - fixed-focus with a fixed small aperture (f/11) and fixed shutter speed (and widish lens for good DoF), plus a wide-latitude, low-contrast film that could handle a fixed exposure under sunny or cloudy days (eventually sold separately as Verichrome Pan). Came loaded with 100 pictures, sent back to factory for processing and reloading.

That's about as intuitive as it gets.

As demands for flexibility increased, such cameras got more complicated, but the complications were there to keep the user experience intuitive. "You still just push the button" - and the camera takes care of things like autofocus, autoexposure, autoflash, face recognition, etc.

By comparison, a totally unautomated, but flexible, camera is far less intuitive. Someone with experience with a Leica M4 can eventually figure out how to use a Nikon F or SP (except finding the rewind release - allow 20 minutes to find that ). But hand either to someone with only Ph.D-camera experience (or no camera experience), and they'd be lost. Such cameras are only "intuitive" if one already understands the conventions of 35mm cameras (shutter dial on top, wind lever here, rewind crank/knob there, aperture ring on the lens, you turn the lens to focus, aperture + shutter speed set exposure, etc.).

The next question is "what is the creative process?"

Simply putting a box around something and recording it? Or using any or all of the controls available in photography (light, focal length, aperture, exposure time, exposure +/-, focus depth, focus point) to make that "thing" speak to people, and create a picture that is more than the thing itself? (see my signature quote).

Personally, I find capturing human moments to be the highest form of photography, therefore I try to do both of the above, at the same time. But I have done that as much by redesigning my intuition, as by choosing a camera well-designed for that job. The intuition-redesign has come in the form of 49 years of experience and learning, so that my response and "processing" of a moment or scene into a picture is as rapid as a tennis star's intuition of and response to a fast serve. Actually - I say "49 years," but the core training of my intuition took about 4 years, and I've just been honing it and using it ever since. Part of that has been acquisition of certain habits (pre-set intuitions), and "load-shedding" of some other things the camera can do better, so I can concentrate on what I do best. And those combine to define which camera is well-designed  - for me.

- I like manual focus. Using it for 20 years when no AF option existed ingrained it into my photographic "backswing", such that pushing the shutter (or other) button to focus feels as "wrong" as firing a cannon to launch a golfball down a fairway.

- I've like split-image focusing from the very first Canon FX SLR's screen I got in 1971. It's binary - aligned (1) or not aligned (0). No futzing with "Is it sharp? Could it be sharper? No, it's gone fuzzy again." Snap the two images into alignment, fire shutter.

- Exposure was pretty transparent in the beginning. Nikon F with meterless plain prism, wave around a hand-held incident meter to get "the light available", set exposure, shoot a whole roll without re-metering. "Sunny 16" as a substitute outdoors. Later I used some auto-exposure cameras, but always aperture-priority - counterintuitively, because it gave faster control of the shutter speed (set the aperture manually with my left hand, to pick the shutter speed).

- winding film got in my way (literally, with a lever right beside the eyepiece in SLRs) so I moved to winders when they became "Leica-small" (Nikkormat EL, Canon AE-1), and better yet, built-in (Nikon N2000).

- "Modal" controls, where one nameless dial controls various things depending on what button is pushed, get in my way. I like dedicated, labelled analog controls for focus, aperture, shutter ISO and exp. comp.. For the same reason I don't like LCD panels with 20 numbers or other items crammed into 1 square inch.

Thus, for me, a well-designed camera will have:

- focusing that is designed to be manual (no sloppy, loose or FBW "afterthought" focus rings)
- focusing that is split-image
- motorized winding
- analog dedicated controls that do one thing and one thing only
- minimal need to use the menus

In addition, as much as possible: compact and light for the image size and resolution. I once referred to that as "lines* per gram," and got a lot of cocaine jokes in response. Yet also metal construction - minimal plastic exterior. Clean in design - a basic geometric shape with minimal lumps, bumps, and protrusions.

Finally, with the advent of digital, exposure is once again as simple as with my Nikon F and separate hand-held (meter once) incident meter. "A" mode, with - .7 stops for highlight protection, and point/focus/shoot intuitively - RAW processing will deliver the final picture I want, just as printing my old Nikon negs dark or light in the darkroom got me the final print I wanted.

I'm using "Auto ISO" occasionally when shooting fast around the gallery, where the light (and my lenses) are extremely variable. The 50 f/2 in some areas needs only ISO 800, while the 135 f/4 in other areas needs ISO 12500. Why get distracted with turning the dial (or forgetting to do so)? Conversely, I also use pure manual in some settings, where old-fashioned "pushing" (set ISO to 6400 - underexpose 1-2 stops manually with shutter and aperture - fix in ACR with my "magic developing formula") produces less banding than a straight ISO 12500/25600 picture would.

I leave it to the reader as to which camera today meets those "well-designed" specifications.

And because pictures count, and "words are just there to fill the space between pictures" (as one of my picture-editing instructors once said):

4 days after 9/11 - intuitive response, M4-2, 21 pre-ASPH

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

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__________________
*of resolution, lens and sensor both.

 

Edited November 21, 2018 by adan

[Tragg]

1 hour ago, adan said:

- focusing that is designed to be manual (no sloppy, loose or FBW "afterthought" focus rings)
- focusing that is split-image
- motorized winding
- analog dedicated controls that do one thing and one thing only
- minimal need to use the menus

Adan, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts, which are both interesting and informative. With the exception of 'motorised winding', your definition of a well designed camera - at least, one that meets your needs - matches mine.

I would define 'intuitive' as a response that is instinctive rather than one requiring intellectual thought. In the hands of a skilled player a violin is intuitive to use, the sound being shaped by the left hand fingers and pressure of the bow, Of course to become accomplished violinist takes a lifetime of study and the same might be said of photography. I have read interviews with some of the great photographers who say that they still get out there and 'practise' on a daily basis. Great photo BTW!

 

1 hour ago, adan said:

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

__________________
*of resolution, lens and sensor both.

 

 

[pgk]

To me an 'intuitive' camera is one which allows the user to become so familiar with its operation that it becomes second nature to use and operating its controls becomes an almost subconscious action. I keep my M RFs set to 'default settings' of 1/250s and f/8 at base ISO. So when I lift one up to use I immediately know which controls to adjust and reset to current needs (I can't remember changing ISO). The whole point about a camera is that it needs to allow the photographer to take the photographs as desired with as little interference as possible. Automation is not intuitive simply because it cannot be guaranteed to produce a specific result.

Many cameras are too cluttered or have overly informative displays to make them easily intuitive these days. I'm sure that there are some as straightforward as the M but see no point in relearning a new system when I have one which is as well designed for my needs as I want already. FWIW I also use Sony A7 series cameras which, whilst highly capable, are abysmally let down by their appalling 'user interface' - the fact that the UI even has a name says it all. If only Sony would actually think about what a camera is designed to do rather than pack it with innumerable, often irrelevant, features they could produce well designed and great cameras, as it is they produce a rather quirky and very much less than user friendly system.

[Havamal]

Sorry I don't know where to put it. But it belongs to design.

With a manual digital camera I want to control all the essential parameters; exposure, aperture, ISO-setting and white balance. All but white balance has a physical knob of some sort. But white balance has not. If you are running in and out of sunlight and shadows as in street photography you would be helped by a knob which you could adjust swift and easily. Why not a knob in front of the camera body as in Leica III with a view on the back screen like a speedometer. So then you engage your white balance settings by lifting the front button from a locked position, your white balance setting interrupt whatever goes on on the screen and you could se a "speedometer" with a needle to adjust to a specific "speed" in Kelvin and a symbol. In other words to lift white balance setting out of the camera menu and make it more within reach by a knob.

Anders

[M11 for me]

That is an interesting idea. Nevertheless I imagine that for setting the white balance you would rather need a joy stick as you have to cover more than one dimension.

Then - what concerns me at least - I work with DNGs and prefer to change that setting in Lightroom. But when you shoot JPGs then it might make sense.

[IkarusJohn]

It always seemed to me that it was a good idea to get the best white balance in the DNG file as possible.  So, I used to press the front button on the SL and take a white card reading every time.  Then, I found that setting one white balance value (much like ISO) of, say, 5,500 Kelvin was simpler as I could then adjust the white balance in post if I was unhappy with it.

Then I used the M60 for a while (it was fixed on Auto White Balance) and I found that I could not improve on it in post.  As a starting point, I've found that Leica's AWB setting is the best starting point for me, as I adjust settings in post anyway.  I doubt you lose anything by not adjusting white balance for every change in lighting - it's all still there in the DNG file.