Thoughtless Cameras
A long time ago, when I re-entered the world of photography after a break of many years, I bought a Canon EOS Elan. The Elan was a very nice camera, but I immediately noticed that I didn’t enjoy it as much as I had enjoyed that old Pentax Spotmatic. The Elan could do more things in more different ways than the Spotmatic could. It had more controls for me to play with. But somehow, the photos were not as satisfying as I had remembered the Spotmatic photos being. At the time I sort of chalked this up to rosy nostalgia.
After the Elan, I bought a Canon A2e, with even more whizzy features. Eye controlled autofocus, for pity’s sake. Again, nice, but again, not an improvement in satisfaction.
So I switched to large format, buying a very nice Wisner field camera. No whizzy features. Much more satisfaction. The field camera was good, but soon I switched to a Linhof Technikardan, a monorail/field hybrid camera that looks like a chinese puzzle that moves. And although operation of the Technikardan was more complicated than the Wisner, all the controls were right where I wanted them, and I *loved* that camera. I made a few very good photos with it, a surprisingly large pile of ok photos with it, and a staggering pile of not very good photos with it, enjoying myself immensely the entire time.
And then I got a bee in my bonnet, and bought a Leica M6, and rather to my surprise, I loved it. It had what I’ve come to think of as “Spotmatic-ness” – the property of being so simple that in practice you never think about it. Your brain thinks “faster shutter speed” and your fingers move the control, and that’s that. Your brain thinks “wider aperture”, and your fingers do the work, and there’s no fussage to it. And again, I *loved* the m6.
But the stingy little postage stamp negatives from the M6 periodically drove me back to the Linhof, which remained a favorite.
And then I bought the Canon EOS 5d, to be a fast, easy to use tool for *scouting* locations in advance of going there with the Linhof. And I loved it. It almost instantly became my primary camera, and the Linhof started to gather dust, and the Leicas started to gather dust. At the time, I thought it was about the image quality, and going digital, and all that.
And just recently I upgraded from the 5d to the 5d mk II, and I love the 5d mk II even more. Oh, sure, the image quality is better, but not by much. The no dust thing is brilliant after the dust heartbreaks of the 5d, but that’s not it either.
What it comes down to is that both the 5d and to a larger degree the 5d mk II have that ‘Spotmatic-ness’ to them. They are thoughtless cameras, which sounds negative but is oh so positive. They’re thoughtless because when I am out with them, either on the tripod or in my hands, I never think about them. I see possibilities, and the photos get made, but I don’t ever seem to be thinking about driving the camera. There’s a certain transparency to the process when you’re using a thoughtless camera. What I had been calling ‘Spotmatic-ness’ is actually more properly called thoughtlessness.
This thoughtlessness is, I note, a property of the Leica M6 as well as the Linhof Technikardan. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Before some enterprising camera designer starts questing, here, I’d observe that many people find the M6 to be thoughtless but others are driven insane by it, and that apparently I am one of 5 people on the planet who has never had trouble unfolding or folding a Technikardan 45s. So the Leica m6 and the Technikardan are thoughtless for me, but not necessarily for you. And that’s almost certainly true of the EOS 5d and EOS 5dmkII as well. I love them, but I’m certain there are people out there who, faced with the challenge of using them to make a photograph, would pronounce them instruments of Satan.
The sad thing is that the only way I know of to find out if a camera is really thoughtless or not is to buy one, and use it for a while. Sometimes there’s a shortcut when you go to the store, hold one in your hands, and feel an immediate urge to tie the camera to a cinderblock and throw it into the nearest body of deep water. But usually there’s no warning until after you’ve taken it home and tried to use it. How frustrating.
On the bright side, you can have a very frustrating camera, and switch to a camera very comparable in features but made by a different company, and switch from an instrument of Satan to a thoughtless camera, just like that. Amusingly, although the internet is full of writing about lens sharpness, feature set, mirror lockup, frames per second, megapixels, etc. those things are, at most, only tangentially related to thoughtlessness.
Paul,
You’ve made some great points here. I am right there with you. I have never called it thoughtlessness, but it is a perfect description. I’ve always tried to describe it as knowing your camera so well that it becomes an extension of your body. You don’t consciously breathe or lift your hand to pick something up, it just happens. A camera should be like that. Forget all the gadgets and fancy widgets, know your camera so well that when you want it to do something, it practically does it for you.
I’ve shot with 35mm film, digital, and 4×5. It is a different experience on all fronts. Today my 4×5 has sat in the closet so long that it wouldn’t have those same qualities as it did a few years back as I just don’t use it much and have gotten out of the rhythm. There is something about familiarity and comfort that makes things go even smoother. My D3 got shipped off for some repairs a week or two ago and I have since been using my D2Xs. It took a couple outings to get back to that third hand feeling but I am totally comfortable with the usability of the camera and I think that would happen with the 4×5 after a couple outings as well.
Great post.
A very thought provoking post, Paul. I couldn’t agree more. After having used an M6 for a couple of months, I’ve come to the decision that it has a certain feel to it that allows it to get out of the way. I’ve heard this before, but there’s nothing quite like feeling it. There’s a certain Zen-like quality to it, using it without using it.
Once set up to my specifications, my D300 had that same feel. I didn’t have to do much adjusting and that adjusting that I had to do came as second nature. The idea of thoughtlessness seems to fit very well.
I recently handled (in the same afternoon session) my Ftb, my newly purchased used F100, and my old trusty 10D. I had never used those back-to-back-to-back in the same way before, and the epiphany I had was very interesting, and related exactly to the issues you discuss above. The Ftb is 35 years old, and Leica-simple, it has always been for me, thoughtless. The 10D, in comparison, even though I have exposed thousands of images with it over the seven years I’ve owned it, has never become ‘thoughtless,’ and is a struggle to maneuver. The F100, though unfamiliar to me, headed quickly for the ‘thoughtless ‘ category even in comparison to the 10D which I knew very well. I believe this is a statement about user-interface design more than familiarity. That afternoon was really instructive to me.
Yup.
Some 15 years or so ago I wrote on some web forum (LUG?) that in some ways the Eos-1 and the M6 where very similar. This created a firestorm of non-understanding and got me labelled a heretic.
But they were and are. They are both Right Now cameras. A high end Canon or Nikon can be set to “shoot right now regardless mode!” – out of focus, exposure iffy, whatever, when I press the button, open the shutter. Do not argue with me.
An M6 knows no other way – that’s all it does – you press the button, it opens the shutter.
There is more to “thoughtless” or “effortless” – control layout, behavoiral logic, and so on. But for me it’s always been about speed.
In the cycling community, people used to talk a lot about “bikes that disappeared under the rider”, and other people wondered what they meant. I’ve not seen that phrase in some time, but I think what they are talking about is “fit”. If you have a good quality bike but don’t like it, you can often be made much happier with it by adjusting the fit.
Cameras are harder to adjust – the physical spacing of the controls is set at the factory. But issues of “fit” are still very real. Physical fit, artistic fit, practical fit.
Many people loved the OM-1. Especially people with small hands. I could never hold one steady.
A few years back I bought a spotmatic and the old wonderful screw mount Pentax 1.4 50mm. I have not shot film with it, but just handling and dry firing it reminded me of what fun it was when that was my first serious camera. I recently added an Ebony 45SU to my view camera collection and suddenly found a view camera that was thoughtless for me. It is not a folder, so all you do to shoot is put it on the tripod and crank out the bellows to focus the lens. It has asymmetric tilts and swings, which seemed frivolous until the first time I used them, and suddenly tilts and swings become thoughtless. Before I got the Ebony, I would denied that a 4×5 could be thoughtless, at least for me.
I am assuming that the 5D is thoughtless because you are not messing with the settings much – at least none of your posted pictures looks like it uses complex setting to balance daylight and flash or the like. I suspect that it would become more the tool of Satin if you had to mess with the menus a lot. So maybe thoughtlessness in camera also deals with how you use it.
I find it interesting that you find the EOS 5D to be thoughtless and the very similar ergonomically A2e to not be. While I’ve only limited experience with the 5D, I found it very similar to the A2 in use.
I do agree on the idea of thoughtlessness. I’ve generally referred to it with regards to cameras you have to fight and those you don’t. It’s one reason I’ve found myself preferring manual, mechanical cameras, I find they’re much less likely to fight me compared to more automated cameras.
I find it interesting that you find the EOS 5D to be thoughtless and the very similar ergonomically A2e to not be. While I’ve only limited experience with the 5D, I found it very similar to the A2 in use.
Yeah, that’s weird, isn’t it?
I can only point out that I am not the same person I once was. So the A2e was not thoughtless for the 1992 version of Paul. The 5d mk II, very similar in many ways, *is* thoughtless for the 2009 Paul, some 17 years later.
I suspect, but don’t know, that the big shift in my thinking came from years of use of view cameras. That practice trains your brain in a certain way, and afterward I think there’s a permanent change in how you interact with cameras.
One of your best posts Paul. I’ve been thinking about it since.
One of the main things I look for in a camera is for it to become transparent. I’ve always thought of it as a Zen-like condition (as in “Zen and the art of archery”, not necessarily the real thing).
Like yourself, I’ve done the 5×4 camera and the Leica M periods, which definitely influence one’s process permanently.
I’ve hit that state when I reduced my equipment to two Canon F1 bodies (simple meter with a stick and a lollipop to line up) with 35mm and 135 mm lenses attached, one (BW) film, one developer, one print size, printing full frame 12×18 inches on 16×20 paper.
I got there again when I had to go autofocus with two (old) EOS RT bodies (pellicle mirror, no mirror blackout, and less shutter lag than an M Leica). Same two lenses, same film, etc. Wonderful things – think “take a picture” and you’d done it. Only thing with those was that they really “wanted” to be used on auto exposure.
Like yourself, I fell for my 5D, and the 5DII is the same, only better. Unless I’m shooting for someone else, they are set up the same way – black and white, yellow filter (but RAW).
What I do find with the 5D and 5DII, and I’m still not sure how I feel about it, is that the most transparency comes when they are used in autoexposure (usually aperture priority), relying on the camera most of the time, and using the exposure lock button. It goes against my zone system, manual exposure background, but it seems to be that one either fights the camera, or goes with the flow, and the best results seem to be when one goes with the flow.
I’d be interested how much you shoot in manual, and how much you let the camera do it. It’s another similarity to M Leicas – they would get the shot at the time you wanted it taken, not slightly afterwards. The exposure might not be perfect, the focus might not be perfect, but the timing and the emotion usually was.
It’s funny, we’ve got the most complex, versatile cameras ever, yet we seldom discuss how we handle them and how we set them up. It wasn’t unusual to spend a lot of time practicing how to use a M Leica, a medium format, or a view camera, just so you could do it without thinking.