Filmic

Minolta Maxxum 7, Minolta 24-105 f3.5-4.5 D, Life 400N

Ergonomics are quite possibly the most important aspect in choosing a camera. There is little point in spending any sum of money on a camera that you find awkward or uncomfortable to use as you simply won’t end up using it. Ideally your camera should fit your hand well with the controls falling conveniently under your thumb and index finger. The control layout should be reasonably obvious to the user and not require awkward movements or reaches to access commonly used controls (uncommonly used controls like ISO on a film camera or card formatting on digital are a separate thing, you don’t change it much so it can be less convenient). Above all, the camera should feel ‘right’ in your hand. Needless to say, ergonomic preferences are intensely personal. Some people love the tiny OM bodies while others find them uncomfortable to even hold.

Over the years there has been a lot of experimentation with camera UI’s, particularly in the early AF era where nobody was quite sure what would work and the skepticism of many pros towards both electronic cameras and new UI’s caused early control layouts to often be uncomfortable mixes of traditional and modern.

Canon would be both the most radical and the least experimental of the makers, they would clone the radical T90 design for the early EOS bodies but it was the EOS 1’s nearly clean-sheet design which would cement their basic high-end UI in 1989, a UI which they have deviated very little from in the 21 year run of the 1-series EOS bodies. Their essential consumer UI would be settled with the original Rebel and would change very little over time, with the only significant change being the Digital Rebel’s extra controls (which would also remain essentially unchanged up to the latest Rebel T1i, despite significant changes to the overall body). The only area that would see experimentation was the mid-range bodies which changed with every iteration until the EOS 10D which set the essential configuration used right through the 7D 7 years later, the longest run of a basic control layout in the mid-range line.

Nikon tried a traditional layout initially with the F501 and its non-AF F301 sibling, then a hybrid design with the F4. They’d finally settle on a modern design with the F801, the original single rear wheel modern AF body. This basic layout would last with minor changes until they cloned Minolta’s dual-wheel design for the F5, and would live on with some tweaks at the lower-end to this day. Nikon would however make some silly arbitrary changes like reversing the button layout between the F801 and F90 bodies. The lower-end bodies would be Nikon’s place to experiment, both with naming confusion (there are 3 different F401 bodies and the last one, the F401x, was a completely new design) and silly control layouts. The F401 bodies would use aperture and shutter speed wheels in a configuration obviously inspired by the Canon A-1, the later F50 would get a single-wheel design with a wide selection of buttons and the F55 got a simplified but otherwise standard single-wheel design with mode dial. The mid-range bodies started as clones of the higher-end bodies, would get one brief experimentation with the odd F70 and then settle down as either mode-dial variations of the pro dual-wheel bodies or mode-dial and single-wheel designs which would remain consistent from the F60 to the latest D3000.

Pentax would be all over the place ergonomically (a tradition inherited from the MF K-mount bodies). They would try anything from button-based designs (SF series, lower-end PZ’s) to dual-wheel designs (PZ-1[p]) to traditional designs (MZ-5/3/m) to single-wheel designs (other MZ’s, *ist). In some cases essentially every camera in a product line might have a different UI (the PZ’s were worst for this). It wasn’t until the introduction of their second digital body, the *istDS that Pentax would settle on a consistent UI, using a Nikon-esque single rear wheel plus mode dial on lower-end bodies and cloning Minolta’s dual-wheel design for their higher-end bodies.

Minolta would experiment wildly early-on, with the button-based x000 series, the slide-switch i bodies and would finally settle on a basic high-end control layout with the 7xi and 9xi which introduced the dual-wheel UI that everybody except Canon would eventually copy for their higher-end bodies. The rest of the UI would evolve slowly from button-based initially, to dual dial-based and finally to the mode dial UI that Canon introduced with the Rebels and Sony adopted with the A700. unusually this would be a consistent evolution rather than the abrupt changes favoured by Nikon and Pentax. Their consumer bodies would have somewhat variation, but would generally use cut-down versions of the higher-end bodies up until the HTsi, and then settle on a Rebel-derived UI with some tweaks from the higher-end bodies.

Personally, I find the si and later higher-end Minolta AF bodies to be the best ergonomically. They fit the hand well, have logical and consistent control layouts and are not excessively large. This is the primary reason why I have an unfortunate attraction to the Minolta/Sony system.