The User Experience

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This is hardly an example of excellence in bird photography. However I got the shot only because I had in my hand a light, compact micro 4/3 camera and lens combination at the time. This is a 5.4 Mpx crop of the original frame.

 

The Future of Cameras, Part 2 of 4

In the good old days  way back when when we used film, way back near the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Eastman Kodak  created the marketing slogan...."You press the shutter, we do the rest"...  With this slogan and the Box Brownie camera,  Kodak created the snapshooter.

Prior to this you almost needed a degree in physics and chemistry to make any kind of photo at all.   In due course the Box Brownie was replaced by the ubiquitous film compact camera. This in turn gave way to the digital compact camera and then to the smart phone. 

No longer do snapshooters need any kind of  separate camera at all.

The Snapshooter  User Experience  In the smartphone era, the snapshooter does not want to carry a separate device just in case they want to make a photograph.  More easily than any camera the smartphone can genuinely be carried in a pocket and be ready for use in a second or two.

The user does not want to engage with the smartphone camera's technical imaging function. He or she just wants to view on the screen, swipe to bring up the camera function and press. Selected pictures can be quickly uploaded to any accessible cyber location.  This type of photography emphasises spontaneity, speed, convenience and connectivity.

The Camera User Experience  If my analysis is correct snapshooters will not need to buy cameras at all. Therefore they will not do so. In fact, already smartphones suit the snapshooter's requirements better than the great majority of cameras.

This means the only users who will buy a separate, dedicated camera are the Aspirational Snapshooters, Expert/Enthusiasts and Professionals.

Way back in those good old days of film the snapshooters used compacts and the other three groups mostly used single lens reflex cameras.  The key feature of an old style, all manual SLR was that in order to operate the thing effectively you had to engage with it. You had to learn about apertures, shutter speeds, film speed and depth of field. You had to practice using the device to gain sufficient competence to drive it effectively.

I take the view that while camera technology has changed, some things have not changed. One is that cameras today still use the same primary exposure and focussing variables that cameras have always used.

Another is that people's aspirations about photography are much as they have ever been. Some are casual about it, others more intense, involved and engaged.

Consider also that camera user's functional anatomy has not changed at all. Their eyes, hands fingers and brains work exactly as they have done for thousands of years.  

In the Capture Phase of  use, the user has to do three things: Hold the camera securely, View the subject and key camera data and  Operate the device. This means adjusting the  primary exposure variables (Aperture, Shutter Speed, Sensor gain) secondary exposure variables (Exposure Compensation, White Balance) primary focus variables (start/lock AF, MF) and secondary focus variables (position and size of the active AF/MF area, AFS/AFC). 

The user who wants to take control of all this requires three things: A camera which makes these adjustments readily achievable in capture phase, a desire to do so and sufficient practice to enable all these things to be observed and adjusted effectively while making photographs.

For many years, camera makers have promoted their products as being ......."So easy to use"..........I think they have been barking up the wrong gum tree.  Those who want easy to use will get a smartphone. In the past, they got a compact camera which operated on fully automatic.

The key to enjoying the experience of using a camera is engagement with the process.

In the next post I will describe the characteristics of cameras which facilitate this engagement.