Ergonomics Transfer to Cameras etc? (1 Viewer)

Only those who have tried the Zeiss HT's can truly appreciate the ergonomics of just holding this pair of binos'... Truly a unique experience and one that when I look at my birding gear (scope, camera, lens and bino's)....stands out. At the end of a birding day, it is the HT that I do not want to put down.

So a question to ponder is...will the ergonomics of the Zeiss HT's transfer to other birding equipment in the foreseeable future? Will camera bodies come out that take into account the intangible aspect of 'the feel'....how the camera body fits to your hands etc... Will someone (Canon, Nikon, Olympus and others) begin to make a 400 or 600 lens with ergonomics involved?

Just a thought.....

Hi,

I often have a rant about camera ergonomics, or the lack of them!

e.g. http://www.birdforum.net/showpost.php?p=2462651&postcount=14

Always tends to fall on deaf ears, but I think you are right, there are opportunities for improvement,

Peter

lmans66 said:

Only those who have tried the Zeiss HT's can truly appreciate the ergonomics of just holding this pair of binos'... Truly a unique experience and one that when I look at my birding gear (scope, camera, lens and bino's)....stands out. At the end of a birding day, it is the HT that I do not want to put down.

So a question to ponder is...will the ergonomics of the Zeiss HT's transfer to other birding equipment in the foreseeable future? Will camera bodies come out that take into account the intangible aspect of 'the feel'....how the camera body fits to your hands etc... Will someone (Canon, Nikon, Olympus and others) begin to make a 400 or 600 lens with ergonomics involved?

Just a thought.....

Click to expand...

Zeiss has made a start on doing this with camera lenses!

Go to:

http://lenses.zeiss.com/camera-lenses/en_gb/camera_lenses/otus/otus1455.html

I see some of the HTs grace and elegance in this lens, what do you think?

Lee

Troubador said:

Zeiss has made a start on doing this with camera lenses!

Go to:

http://lenses.zeiss.com/camera-lenses/en_gb/camera_lenses/otus/otus1455.html

I see some of the HTs grace and elegance in this lens, what do you think?

Lee

Click to expand...

Perhaps Zeiss is the company to break down the ergonomics boundaries in cameras and lenses just as they have with the bino's.... Maybe they have found a nitch. Now if they can just start working on long range lenses with that same ergonomics feel but perhaps at a Conquest price point, not a L lens pricepoint!

lmans66 said:

Only those who have tried the Zeiss HT's can truly appreciate the ergonomics of just holding this pair of binos'... Truly a unique experience and one that when I look at my birding gear (scope, camera, lens and bino's)....stands out. At the end of a birding day, it is the HT that I do not want to put down.

So a question to ponder is...will the ergonomics of the Zeiss HT's transfer to other birding equipment in the foreseeable future? Will camera bodies come out that take into account the intangible aspect of 'the feel'....how the camera body fits to your hands etc... Will someone (Canon, Nikon, Olympus and others) begin to make a 400 or 600 lens with ergonomics involved?

Just a thought.....

Click to expand...

here is some good ergonomics from Nikon,

Nikon 800mm lens,

note the lens foot, round, rubberized, i think this will be standard in all new Nikon tele lenses,

note programmable button on the front side of the lens

http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/images1/800mm-fl/800mm-d4-1300.jpg

Nikon D4, probably the the best ergonomics of any DSLR, works equally well in landscape or portrait mode, note the double joysticks, equally spaced

http://www2.crutchfield.com.edgesui...le/400/300/products/2012/18/054/x054D4-B.jpeg

note the shutter release button position

http://cdn.camyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/nikon-d4-firmware-update-a1.05-b1.03.jpg

(D4 camera body is an Italian design)

This is true beauty, a combination more expensive than most family cars...

Vespobuteo said:

Nikon D4, probably the the best ergonomics of any DSLR, works equally well in landscape or portrait mode, note the double joysticks, equally spaced

http://www2.crutchfield.com.edgesui...le/400/300/products/2012/18/054/x054D4-B.jpeg

note the shutter release button position

http://cdn.camyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/nikon-d4-firmware-update-a1.05-b1.03.jpg

(D4 camera body is an Italian design)

This is true beauty, a combination more expensive than most family cars...

Click to expand...

But its still designed for right handed People with 3 hands, no nose, and an eye positioned on their cheek that can focus at 1cm

peter.jones said:

But its still designed for right handed People with 3 hands, no nose, and an eye positioned on their cheek that can focus at 1cm

Click to expand...

Use Leica and you don't have to worry about your nose,

B

Thanks.. I just googled it and found a nice article...

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/common_sense_part_1_photographers_have_noses.shtml

Troubador said:

Zeiss has made a start on doing this with camera lenses!

Go to:

http://lenses.zeiss.com/camera-lenses/en_gb/camera_lenses/otus/otus1455.html

I see some of the HTs grace and elegance in this lens, what do you think?

Lee

Click to expand...

I see that lens has aspheric elements - I wonder why Zeiss has never incorporated something similar into binocular optics? Or, have they?

james holdsworth said:

I see that lens has aspheric elements - I wonder why Zeiss has never incorporated something similar into binocular optics? Or, have they?

Click to expand...

The late 1930s vintage Deltarem wide angle binoculars had hand figured aspheric elements in their optics. So Zeiss has long experience in this area.

Aspheric lenses, fancy glass, fancy coatings, anti-vibration, and, especially, electronics are endemic in the camera world. Ergonomics tend to mean something different, too. An awful lot of innovation has gone into using touch screens on the back of the camera rather than putting it up to your eye, including touch-screen selection of focus point combined with shutter (for the left handed). If/when you do put the camera up to your face, you are more likely to find a small electronic screen in there (EVF) than anything optical. True optical viewfinders, outside of SLRs, are slowly becoming obsolete except in the very high price bracket. Some would say that SLRs are slowly becoming obsolete, with the floppy noisy mirror, as mirrorless cameras get better and better.

Take a look at, for example, Luminous Landscape, dpreview, and LensRentals for discussions of these topics. LensRentals is especially amusing for camera lens geeks.

BUT the real issues about camera ergonomics are not about physical configurations any more. They are about where are the buttons, other controls, and how are the menus configured, i.e. how easy is it to change the settings when you want to? Are the things you change often right to hand (ISO, white balance, shutter speed, f-stop, under/over exposure)? Check out Thom Hogan for discussions of this sort of thing. (He is Nikon-oriented originally, but not in thrall to them, he bashes them a lot, but also has a site for mirrorless.)

It's worse than "what's wrong with cameras?", although indeed on the occasions at work where I handle a modern camera I am appalled at the smooth slick hard to grip coldness of it. This trend extends through all the cell phones and computing devices that I have used. I am not into knives, guns, or fishing rods which I imagine must be up there in hand feel, but in my experience the modern roof binocular is in this regard King of Objects. Arguably the HT and Swarovision are top of the current heap, but Leica Trinovid and Ultravid also ring my ergonomic bell. Piersgiovanni, over on the Italian Binomania forum, has called this quality grippabilita'. I like that!

Ron

ronh said:

It's worse than "what's wrong with cameras?", although indeed on the occasions at work where I handle a modern camera I am appalled at the smooth slick hard to grip coldness of it. This trend extends through all the cell phones and computing devices that I have used. I am not into knives, guns, or fishing rods which I imagine must be up there in hand feel, but in my experience the modern roof binocular is in this regard King of Objects. Arguably the HT and Swarovision are top of the current heap, but Leica Trinovid and Ultravid also ring my ergonomic bell. Piersgiovanni, over on the Italian Binomania forum, has called this quality grippabilita'. I like that!

Ron

Click to expand...

Couldn't agree more Ron.

Lee

lmans66 said:

Only those who have tried the Zeiss HT's can truly appreciate the ergonomics of just holding this pair of binos'... Truly a unique experience and one that when I look at my birding gear (scope, camera, lens and bino's)....stands out. At the end of a birding day, it is the HT that I do not want to put down.

So a question to ponder is...will the ergonomics of the Zeiss HT's transfer to other birding equipment in the foreseeable future? Will camera bodies come out that take into account the intangible aspect of 'the feel'....how the camera body fits to your hands etc... Will someone (Canon, Nikon, Olympus and others) begin to make a 400 or 600 lens with ergonomics involved?

Just a thought.....

Click to expand...

Ah! Somebody has found the ideal binocular (again).

On a personal level for him it might be the best ergonomically, but would it be for Brock's famous hands (Sorry Brock, but you have made comment about the incompatibility of your hands with some binoculars in the past) or for the many ladies with very small hands.

Binoculars need to designed for all hand shapes and sizes and head shapes as well. This is particularly so at the lower price levels, where they need to be sold in large numbers to make a profit and ergonomics take second place to manufacturing costs.

It is very easy to be ultra critical of any binocular, but for most people, once it is in use and they are enjoying it as a magnifier of what the eye sees (for that is what it is), they work round the imperfections.

The same thing is true of cameras. I hate working off screens and prefer a viewfinder anytime. I don't think that anyone is going to design an ideal viewfinder camera for me at a reasonable price, so I will have to get used to screens as it is likely that they are the future.

Happy viewing.

Stan

A few more Zeiss camera lens thoughts

I am a newby in binocular land, but an oldy in camera-world. I have lusted after Zeiss camera lenses for years, and have come close to buying one but never pulled the trigger. Zeiss single-focal-length lenses are more or less in the $1k to $2k range, but that is about twice (or more) than what Nikon gets for their equivalent premium lenses, that are really pretty darn good. And the single-focal-length lenses are for lens geeks, really, everyone else pretty much uses zooms. Zeiss is not competitive in zooms. And camera-world has long since (for something like 25 years) gone to autofocus, while Zeiss until very recently was only manual focus.

There are some differences in camera-lens-world and bino-world in the top players. Swarovski is nowhere to be seen in camera lenses. Leica is in a stratosphere of their own, with simple one-focal-length lenses costing between maybe $2,000.00 and $11,000.00 US, with the average somewhere north of $4,000. The prices for their camera bodies are also stratospheric. See B&H Photo for current prices.

Zeiss has just (finally!) gotten onto the automatic focus bandwagon with their new line of "Touit" lenses. They are gorgeous (ergonomics ho!) as far as I can tell from the on-line photos, but I have not yet seen one in the flesh.

For camera lenses, Zeiss is also in partnership with Sony. The new Sony A7R mirrorless camera has taken camera-geek-world by storm. Some are hailing it as a revolutionary product that will change camera-world. I am not so sure about that, but it is certainly interesting. The camera will set you back $2,300. The Sony Sonnar T* FE 55mm f/1.8 ZA Lens is $1,000. The Sony Sonnar T* FE 35mm f/2.8 ZA Lens is only $800.

To continue this discussion just a bit further, we need to get into sensor size. The A7R has a 35mm sensor, with the same area as 35mm film.

By way of contrast, the Olympus OMD E-M1 has a micro-four-thirds sensor, half the linear dimensions of 35mm and thus one-fourth the area. The OMD E-M1 is several internet sites' "2013 camera of the year", and seems to be gaining real credibility in the professional photographer world. Olympus has some absolutely spectacular zoom lenses, both in the original 4/3 size and in the current micro-4/3 standard. The images being produced at this sensor size now seem to be acceptable in the professional world, and the kit you have to carry is something like one-quarter the size and weight of a conventional DSLR setup.