Discovering Camera Ergonomics Part 3 The Shape of a Camera

Cameras over the years.  The humptop Panasonic Lumix fZ1000 on the left is a fixed zoom lens type.  Next is the GH4, a mirrorless interchangeable lens camera, then a Canon SLR which takes film and a 50 year old Pentax Spotmatic SLR. The folding Baldafix on the right is over 60 years old and still working although the lens has succumbed to the ravages of fungus. 

Over the years cameras have been made to a great variety of shapes.

Around the beginning of the 20^th Century the famous Kodak Box Brownie was, as the name suggests shaped like a box. This basic shape reappeared in many subsequent cameras such as the much more sophisticated Hasselblad V Series.

Many compact film cameras of the 20^th Century had the form of a rectangular prism (a.k.a. cuboid) which happened to be the shape which most efficiently accommodated the film and lens.

The 50 year old (and still working) Pentax Spotmatic shown in the photo has a  shape  which contains the internal components which must be laid out in a certain way. These include the lens mount, mirror box, prism, film roll, film rails, film take up spool and focal plane shutter with all the mechanical connections to make everything work.

Almost all single lens reflex cameras of the era looked very similar and worked the same way.

The shape of these film cameras embodied the solution to an engineering problem, namely how to efficiently package the component parts.  Ergonomic issues were a secondary consideration.

From around the 1970s  handles started to appear on SLR cameras to make them easier to hold.

Then in the 1980s Canon  put a big effort onto improving the operation and user interface of their SLRs culminating in the famous T90 of 1986 . This camera provided the basic shape and control layout  still used in modern DSLRs.

At the same time the rangefinder rectangular prism shape found expression in the famous Leica M series cameras and a few others. This camera type was an alternative to the SLR for users for whom a small body form was more important than the ability to mount long lenses.

It can still be seen today in Leica rangefinder cameras and many other flat top designs with fully electronic operation.

With modern materials fabrication technology and control-by wire operation, cameras can be made to any shape. The lens, sensor, electronic viewfinder and other components can be located almost anywhere on or sometimes off the camera.

Pocketable compacts. On the left a Sony RX100.  On the right is my marginally larger but ergonomically much more appealing mockup with a built in handle, top dial, built in EVF and fully articulated monitor.

Given this new found freedom  designers experimented with a variety of shapes and configurations.

The Sony R1 of 2005 had a prominent handle on the right side and a flip out monitor screen located above the EVF.  No follow up of this design ever appeared, suggesting the adventurous location of the monitor was not entirely successful.

The Sony Handycam from about 1985 utilised yet another form, control layout and holding system.

This was reprised by Canon in the early 1990s with its short lived  Autobody Jet series which looked like a handycam with a flip out lens cover-cum-flash unit.

Still cameras of this shape were not successful.  There was effectively only one position in which the camera could be held and the concept did not lend itself to provision of a comprehensive suite of controls for the enthusiast/expert user.

In the current era digital camera shapes have settled into three main groups with much less experiment  than was evident a few years ago.

1. Very small ‘pocketable’ compacts  in the ‘bar of soap’ shape a.k.a. rectangular-prism-with-lens-housing-in-front.

Larger cameras mostly come in two basic shapes, each of which reprises an earlier film camera type:

2. Hump top, ‘SLR’ style or some variant thereof and

3. Flat top, ‘Rangefinder’ style also in a range of variants.

We have also seen in the last few years a ‘retro’ trend in camera control systems often associated with one of the flat top designs, presumably as manufacturers strive to find some selling point which might enliven buyers’ waning interest.

I have been actively experimenting with camera shapes and layouts for the last five years, in the process making many handle mockups and 13 full camera body mockups, each designed to test some design concept.  When making mockups I build the shape in wood to fit my hands and the hands of volunteers of various sizes. This exercise has taught me a great deal about what works well and what does not.

This work and my use of many actual cameras of different types from different makers has led me gradually to some definite conclusions about optimal camera shape.

Very small (pocketable) cameras require some variant of the ‘bar of soap’ theme. The photo shows a Sony RX100 (original version) beside one of my mockups which is 2mm wider, 3mm higher and 6mm deeper.  

Current versions of the RX100 are deeper than the original to accommodate the flip up monitor and they have a pop up EVF. No doubt this is a clever piece of engineering but it is an ergonomic kludge. 

You have to pop up, then pull back the EVF for it to work. Then there is no eyecup, there being no way to incorporate one in the pop up design. So if you want an eyecup it has to be fitted separately, after popping up the EVF which means you have to buy one and carry it and find it when you want it….. ……in another pocket………maybe………somewhere…..and it’s just not worth the bother.

The mockup  is still pocketable but has a built in handle, fully articulated monitor and built in EVF which is always ready for use. It also features much larger controls including big buttons, a top dial and a JOG lever to quickly move AF area. 

I made this mockup to explore whether I could craft a design which retained the virtue of pocketability but with much improved ergonomics compared to any of the  RX100  variants.

The mockup achieves this and I see no technical impediment to any manufacturer building a real camera to this design.

Two approaches to the 'All day camera'. On the left a Panasonic LX100 with 'traditional' control layout featuring 'set-and-see' dials for aperture, shutter speed and exposure compensation.  Some people have managed to convince themselves that this is a desirable control system. However every time I run motion analysis studies the 'modern' control system as seen on the mockup to the right, gets the job done with fewer actions, each less complex. This mockup also displays a nice little inverted L shaped handle with quad control set on top.

I call the next size up the ‘all day camera’.  This is a bit too large to be pocketable but being larger it can have a proper handle making it easy to carry all day, is always ready for use and is able to have much better  holding, viewing and operating characteristics. It could work as an ILC with M43 (21.5mm)  or ‘one inch’ (15.9mm) sensors, but in my view is better suited to the FZL  (Fixed Zoom Lens) type with either of those sensor sizes.

The photo shows a Pansonic LX100 beside my ‘all day’ mockup which is also a flat top, the same size to the nearest millimetre or so.

But the mockup is much more pleasing to hold and has much improved controls. The handle is a full anatomical inverted L type, the thumb support is deep and actually is supportive.

The monitor is of the fully articulated type.

All the controls are larger with an efficient single dial  just behind the shutter button and a quad control set to the right of the shutter button. There is a JOG lever for instant control of the active AF position without having to shift grip with either hand. The lens shown on the mockup is slightly larger to allow either a wider aperture of longer zoom range.

This size camera could also work well as a small  humptop with the EVF on the lens axis and slightly greater overall height.  The Canon G5X has this form, making it quite appealing apart from the tediously slow RAW shot to shot times and other performance issues.

Here are two 'universal' camera candidates. On the left is a Panasonic GX8 with Lumix 12-25mm f2.8 lens.  This body has compromised ergonomics with a non anatomical handle, awkwardly placed dials and buttons and a strap lug which keeps digging into the base of my finger. On the right is my Mockup #13 which embodies much of  my current knowledge about camera ergonomics. 

Going up in size we come to what I call the ‘universal camera’.  This could be an ILC with M43 or APS-C sensor or it could have a fixed zoom lens.  

It is large enough to accommodate a full twin dial layout with a full suite of controls suitable for professional use if required.

I have shown the mockup beside a Panasonic GX8 for comparison. The GX8 is a good example of a camera with built in ergonomic problems which are mostly a consequence of the flat top style but also  a result of poor button placements, poor dial placements, poor handle design and inappropriate use of a set and see dial for exposure compensation.

The GX8 is a flat top.   The mockup is an advanced type of hump top with raised shoulders and a handle canted back 10 degrees.  It is, by chance,  the same size as a Panasonic G7.

The G7  although smaller then the GX8  has much better ergonomics and the mockup goes further with  improvements to handle design, dial location, button layout and the provision of a JOG lever.

In this size range the main determinants of actual dimensions are:

* At  the rear, width and height of the monitor,  width of the control panel and height of the EVF and its eyecup.

* At the front,  lens size and handle size and shape are key determinants of height and width.

Sensor size influences overall body size via it’s effect on lens mount and lens size.

In this size range the modified humptop shape has many functional and ergonomic advantages over the flat top style.  The EVF, flash and hotshoe occupy the same horizontal space. This allows the mockup to have three well separated Set-and-See dials on the top plate for Prepare Phase adjustments, full twin control (command) dial configuration and a quad control set.

The GX8 is 10mm wider than the G7 or Mockup #13 but has no room for a built in flash, the top plate buttons are awkward to reach, the Mode Dial is stacked with an exposure compensation dial making both less efficient to operate than they would be if separate and there is no Drive Mode dial.

My conclusion is that in this size range and larger the optimum configuration for a camera is the advanced humptop type as shown in the mockup.

Scaling   Early in my voyage of discovery about camera ergonomics I realised that cameras are not amenable to scaling up or down. A moment’s thought reveals the obvious reason, namely that the hands which use cameras remain obstinately the same regardless of camera size.

It is therefore necessary to create different shapes for small, medium and large size cameras so each fits the hands which use it.

At this point some readers might think that big cameras would suit big hands and small cameras might be a better fit for small hands, the implication being that camera makers should  make models of various sizes to suit the range of hand sizes. But that is not what happens. They do make different sized cameras but the determinant of size is almost always price, with the smaller ones being less expensive and the larger ones more expensive, without regard for the user’s hands.

My work with mockups has encouraged me to believe that within fairly broad limits it is possible and desirable to design small, medium and large cameras, all of which are quite suitable for users with a range of hand sizes.

Strap lugs    I don’t know where else to put this so it goes here. Many cameras these days come with eyelet type strap lugs. I regard these things as an ergonomic curse. The right side one in particular seems determined always to dig into the base of my right index finger.

Far preferable are the handle type lugs particularly if they are inset so they don’t protrude to dig into some part of the user’s anatomy.

Summary

My conclusions are that:

In the pocketable size range the optimum camera shape is a modified rectangular prism with mini handle and built in always ready EVF.

In the next size up, the camera to carry all day, the optimum shape is a small humptop with full anatomical handle, single dial configuration with always ready EVF and fully articulated monitor.  

Moving up a size range to the universal camera, the advanced humptop with raised shoulders and canted back handle is the optimal shape.

Cube and cylinder shapes have not proven viable.

These findings are based on my ergonomic analysis. They are not determined by history, style or legacy design themes even though there is a superficial resemblance between the  preferred shapes identified by me and legacy styles.

I will detail further  analysis and reasoning in support of  this position in subsequent posts in this ‘Discovering Ergonomics’ series.