Change … just because?

As a child, I used to watch The Jetsons. For those not familiar with it, I have included a link to a youtube video of the intro to the show. If you’ll notice the car, it’s basically the same shape of cars today, a little more headroom in these because they’re shaped like a bubble. Kind of reminds me of the ill conceived AMC Pacer of long ago, voted as one of the 50 worst cars of all time!

In many views of the future, the automobile is shown as seating 4 or 5 passengers in the same seating arrangements as you see today. The only difference is that the cars of the future drive themselves, or fly. The overall design of the vehicle is basically unchanged saved for some rounding here and there.

Now, on to the point. It’s always interesting to me to first see the fervor when something new is announced, as was such with the Leica M9. This post is not about the M9, per se, but about cameras in general. I’ve read a number of articles at Luminous Landscape and other sites about what Leica “should” do to be competitive and to bring their camera into the ‘present’. Some of the suggestions were interesting, such as provide a moving sensor that moved along the Z axis so as to make up for the rangefinders lack of accuracy when focused in certain areas. Others, like Michael Reichman, suggested the inclusion of auto focus, an electronic viewfinder, as well as an attachable electronic view finder for wide angle lenses. At that last suggestion, the EVF, I gasped in horror!

It sounded to me like taking a classic car, such as an old Mustang and putting a DVD player in the headrests! Not to mention taking a perfectly good view through glass and replacing it with a video image. Ick! Interestingly, he also mentioned adding an interesting anachronism to a digital camera, a film wind lever … a place to put your thumb basically.

Overall, the shape of cameras have not changed much, even though there is no need to provide room for film transport mechanisms. I would guess that the rest of the space is used for electronics. Perhaps the overall shape of the camera can change to morph into something else, but is it necessary? Would you want a digital camera shaped like a video camera? Hmmm, come to think of it, the Mamiya 645 is shaped rather like a video camera, but quite functional.

Though I do not own an M9, nor have I ever held one, I do think that they could dispense with the bottom load. It just seems weird that you have to take the bottom of the camera off to get to your memory card. On the other hand, I can understand why they might do that. They probably use the same manufacturing facility to build the M9 body as they did for the M6, M8, M8.2, etc. It would eliminate having to retool, I suppose.

I think that some things just work. I’ve held smaller, differently shaped cameras and, while you can get the shot, it still has to feel good. The 35mm design has worked for quite a while, though left-eyed individuals might disagree because the camera must cross their face and on digital cameras this probably leads to a lot of smudged displays.

Some things just have classic lines and I guess that’s the way that I feel about cameras. The shape is great for the function. Is there a need to change it?

I’m interested to find out what Paul Butzi’s account of the M9 will be as he is waiting for his to come in. He usually has a pretty straight-forward, unbiased opinion and doesn’t hold back in his assessment of the tools that he uses.