Progress in camera ergonomics to 2025 17 October 2025

 

This photo has nothing to do with camera ergonomics. It was made many years ago with a Canon EF mount 35mm SLR and Fuji Velvia film. There are places in New South Wales where we can find these strange pagoda formations created in sandstone by millennia of erosion. Many of them have collapsed as a result of ground movement caused by longwall coal mining beneath them. 

I recently watched two little YouTube videos which made me think about progress in camera ergonomics over the last fifteen years or so.

The first is by a gentleman who posts in the name of “Spicy Lens” who presents an unboxing of a Panasonic Lumix GX9 camera with the caption “my new love, my new baby”. He ends the presentation by kissing the camera joyfully. 

I have used several quasi-rangefinder style mirrorless cameras like the GX9 over the years and found every one of them to offer a very poor ergonomic realisation.

The second is by well known camera Youtuber Tony Northrup offering us commentary on the ambition expressed by a Canon Senior executive to make “the Porsche 911 of cameras”. Mr Northrup who it appears is a 911 owner points out that these cars are very expensive but rather impractical things which attract buyers precisely because they manifest the triumph of style over usability. Mr Northrup also owns a Leica M camera which offers a similar kind of experience to photographers.

I had a Leica M6 30 years ago and decided it offered me the least satisfactory user experience that I had thus far encountered from any camera.

Canon has been the leader in developing camera ergonomics for about the last 50 years.

Mr Northrup is not criticising this approach to camera design but suggests that Canon might grow their buyer base by offering a new line of products in addition to their existing catalogue. This would be something more stylish, with more bling, which someone might want to show off to their friends. Something to “love” even though it might not be the most practical thing one might own.

So we see there are differing philosophical foundations to the challenge of camera design. We can have products which work efficiently but look a bit boring, or products which cost more or are deemed beautiful in the eye of the beholder but don’t operate as efficiently.

I think Leica and Fujifilm have proven that there is a market for the camera-as-style-accessory even though or maybe because this type of product is more expensive.

The economist Thorstein Veblen published the book “Theory of the Leisure Class” in 1899. He described a class of goods for which demand increases with price, now often called “Veblen Goods”.  Porsche cars, Leica cameras and $50,000 watches occupy this category. 

All this is fine and happy days for those who wish to surround themselves with expensive things and can afford to do so.

But this blog is about camera ergonomics not Veblen goods and not ornamental things. 

So today I will compare two cameras, the Panasonic Lumix GX9 and the Canon EOS R10 as to their ergonomic functionality not their beauty or whatever it is which causes Mister Spicy Lens to bestow a loving kiss on his newly acquired GX9.

I make no attempt in this little post to be comprehensive but just to point out some differences between the two cameras in the shape and external controls and to examine why one of the two cameras works much better ergonomically than the other, whether blessed with a kiss or not.

Here we see the Lumix GX9 and the Canon EOS R10 from above.

The Lumix is a bit wider, the Canon a bit higher. The Canon is easier to get in and out of a camera bag because it has rounded shoulders and the EVF is over the lens axis. The GX9 EVF is at the top left corner where it snags on the edge of many bags especially if a decent eyecup is fitted.

The R10 has a well shaped, ergonomically contoured handle with a front overhang under which the middle finger of the right hand  can slip easily to support the weight without muscle strain. The thumb rest is positioned and contoured for comfort and a secure grip without the need to squeeze.  In use the thumb does not rest on any of the control modules but is positioned so it can easily reach several of them without having to move any other finger.

The shutter button is located and angled  just where the right index finger wants to find it.

The front dial is easily reached by the index finger without having to move a muscle in any other finger. The hand falls naturally into the half closed relaxed position without strain.

The rear control dial lies just where the right thumb wants to find it with no need to move any other finger. 

Check out the strap lugs on the right side. The Canon handlebar type ones never dig into my hand and slim straps can be attached directly with ease.

The Canon EVF and eyepiece are not huge but are large enough to be comfortable, with a nice amount of eye relief and a good sized eyecup which keeps stray light out all round.

The mode dial is a stand-alone module, easy to reach and turn, never to interfere with any other dial or control module.

The Canon has a handy little Fn button which together with the front control dial makes adjusting the user selected function very efficient.

There are no stacked or co-located control modules.

 The handle on the GX9 is much smaller and is not ergonomically contoured at all.  We must grip tight to prevent the camera falling. The thumb rest is quite good but it is not raised so the base of the thumb presses against the 4-way controller quite often, causing accidental activation.  The shutter button and front control dial are set back on the body of the camera which is not where the index finger wants to find them.

If the purpose of the small handle is to give the camera a slimline appearance then it fails as soon as we mount a lens, as we must for the device to perform any function at all.  A proper ergonomic handle would not protrude further than even the smallest 14mm and 20mm pancake primes or the diminutive 12-32mm collapsing zoom.

The annular front control dial around the shutter button works quite well as long as the haptic relationship between the two is carefully implemented. But that arrangement prevents designers from fitting a Fn button in there.

The rear control dial is awkwardly placed immediately over the thumb rest. We have to hitch the right hand up a bit to enable the thumb to flex enough to bear down onto the rear dial. That is not the end of the world but the basis of my understanding of ergonomics goes to the number and complexity of actions required to achieve full operating control of the device.

The mode dial and exposure compensation dial are stacked and in addition are closely located over the awkwardly placed rear control dial. This is an invitation to inadvertent activation of one while turning the other.

In addition the fixed function exposure compensation dial is redundant. It doesn’t need to be there and is a nuisance because it is. That is the epitome of poor design.

Moving right along we come to those annoying strap lugs which poke into the base of my right index finger every time I use the camera. In addition they require those pesky, awkward little triangle paper clip thingys if we are to connect the lug to a strap.

 

This is a picture of the Lumix DMC-HGR2 accessory grip. This is a tacit admission by Panasonic that the camera is difficult to hold securely. There are several alternative accessory grips from third party suppliers. This tells us that owners of these cameras, and many others with similarly inadequate handle arrangements have discovered that the camera as supplied does not provide the user a secure purchase.  So an accessory grip improves purchase but brings problems of its own in moving the third, fourth and fifth fingers of the right hand forward, but requiring the index finger to stretch back to get onto the shutter button which has not moved forward with the accessory handle.

In 2013 I bought an Olympus OMD E-M5 camera with a similarly inadequate handle. Olympus “solved” the handle problem with the ECG-5 accessory grip which when fitted gives us a camera with two shutter buttons and two front control dials. This improved the ergonomics but why not  put a proper handle on the thing in the first place ?

I guess the answer to that question is that a larger handle would not be in harmony with the styling. I have to admit that this was well received  in 2013 with many reviewers and users delivering very positive reports on this camera. They liked the look of it and that is important to a significant cohort of buyers.

Just for the record my E-M5 could not focus reliably on anything that moves and I never managed to decipher the menus.

Photo reproduced courtesy of Digital Photography Review

In the left photo we see the scrunched up relationship between thumb and the rest of the hand. The right photo shows how we cannot get a secure full hand grip on the device.

This is my hand holding the Canon EOS R10. The hand is in the half closed relaxed position. The grip is comfortable and secure without strain. The index finger rests comfortably on the shutter button at the optimum location and angle.  It can move back to the front control dial via the Fn buttone easily without moving another finger. The thumb is ready to move easily onto the rear control dial or the joystick

The rear view shows many differences between the two cameras.

In use the R10 allows the right thumb to lie diagonally across the back of the camera with the hand in the half closed relaxed position. This provides a secure grip with minimal muscle strain. It positions the thumb so it can easily move onto the rear control dial or the AF-ON button or the joystick with no disruption to the position of any other finger. The thumb never presses inadvertently on the cross keys or any other control module.

When we use the GX9 the base of the right thumb presses on the 4-Way controller, causing unpredictable unintended activation. The 4-way controller utilises 5 flat buttons. These are easily pressed accidentally but are very difficult to locate and operate reliably by feel when we want to. This is the essence of poor haptics.

When we hold the GX9  the right thumb has to adopt a pointing up position  with little separation between the thumb and index finger. This is less relaxed and not as strong as the hand position enabled by the R10. We could argue that the camera is light and so what. But put one of the larger lenses on the GX9 and we will not be happy with that holding position after a few minutes.

 

More recent Pana-Lumix cameras like the G95 shown here are much better ergonomically than the GX9  but have gotten much larger: as you can see  adjacent to the R10 which has a larger sensor.

Summary

Overall I think we can see that camera makers have improved their approach to ergonomic factors in the design of cameras over the last 15 years.

I have illustrated this by comparing one model from the past with poor ergonomic design to one current model with very good ergonomics.

Panasonic have improved the ergonomics of most of their current offerings to the point that I rate them about level with Sony and Nikon. Unfortunately all the camera makers still make mistakes and all of them can improve.

Having said that I do acknowledge that if they iron out most of the ergonomic rough edges, most cameras will end up looking very similar to the Canon EOS R6 or R5 or the R10,  the exterior and controls of which are basically a downsized and re-worked version of the R6.

I can see how the marketing people might have a problem with this as each searches for some kind of unique or at least characteristic selling point for their products.

Having said that the similarity of appearance of most 35mm SLR cameras in the second half of the 20^th Century did not seem to present camera makers with a marketing problem. They just directed their attention to technical, capability and performance issues.

Just to list for the (incomplete)  record we had, from Germany: Ihagee Exakta, Zeiss Ikon, Leica, Praktica,  Edixa. From Japan: Canon, Nikon, Asahi Pentax, Minolta, Olympus, Contax, Yashica, Topcon. And from Russia various models branded Zenit and Kiev, which is sad given that Russia is daily firing missiles at Kiev in 2025.