Usability of Digital Cameras: Computers, Complexity, Hidden Functions, ... | Hidden GXR Functions | Not-So-Evident GXR Functions

This page discusses some usability aspects of digital cameras and then focuses on so-called "hidden functions," that is, on functions that are not indicated in the user interface itself and thus need to be remembered by the user. The page also lists some "prominent" hidden functions of the Ricoh GXR, as well as some functions that are not so evident implemented as I would have expected.

 

Usability of Digital Cameras: Computers, Complexity, Hidden Functions, ...

Cameras Are Computers!

At the end of the 1990s, I listened to two talks by Alan Cooper, a usability guru who is also called the "father of Visual Basic." In his talks he discussed, among others, BMW cars whose computers shut the fuel off in corners so that the car stopped, and he also held a Nikon Coolpix 900 (in owned one myself) in his hand and asked the audience, whether it was camera or a computer. As the Nikon 990 booted when it was turned on, he concluded that it was a computer. He was right back then, and he is much more right with respect to today's digital cameras.

Complexity Thanks to Computers

Turning cameras into computers has, however, an important side effect: Even simple consumer cameras are much more complex than cameras of 30 or 50 years ago. 30 years ago, my cameras had some electronic, but basically they were still electronically augmented mechanical cameras. 50 years ago, most cameras were completely mechanical (apart from an add-on light meter...).

Although all the gimmicks in modern cameras are meant to make handling the cameras easier, these cameras are way more complex than, for example, a simple box camera for roll film in the 1950s (or 1930s). The menu system alone introduces a huge complexity: Most cameras offer loads of automatic programs, including face and grin recognition. Currently, some manufacturers try to top this by introducing a "meta-automatic" that selects the correct automatic program depending on the motif...

Consequences

I see two consequences of this trend:

I feel like being somewhere in the middle - relying on automatics, but not on those that depend on scenes (I still want to know what my camera does), knowing much but not everything about my camera, and having at least some background knowledge of photography... Thus, I could pick on some people if I wanted to, and others can pick on me any time...

Hidden Functions

Apple Computer and Ricoh Cameras have one thing in common: they are praised for their user interface (however, not all reviewers praise Ricoh...). Despite their ease of use, they have one more thing in common, which somewhat conflicts with ease of use: hidden functionality. With hidden functionality I refer to functions that are not easily discernible in the user interface. For example, they:

There may be menu options that refer to these hidden functions, but these are usually not obvious.

Hidden functionality is a boon for computer magazines. Every month, they can reveal new hidden functions und thus fill their pages. Interestingly, nobody ever asked MacWelt, a German Mac magazine, how hidden functions comply with the idea of ease of use... For Ricoh cameras, there are no magazines - there are only user forums on photography Websites with a lot of threads with respect to unknown functions...

On digital cameras, most of the functionality is accessible only through menus. While this is normal for computers, for digicams this is regarded as cumbersome. Therefore, the most important functions that are needed for shooting are placed on buttons and levers. Cameras of different manufacturers differ considerably in how they distribute functionality between buttons and menus - Ricoh belongs to those who put a lot of functionality on buttons. The menus cover all the remaining functionality, particularly functions for configuring and maintaining the camera (and its memory card). Such a maintenance function is formatting the memory card. Since her first camera, my wife has never formatted a memory card in her digicams. She maintains that she cannot find this function in the menus and would also forget immediately how to find it - so I have to do the formatting... So much about the usability of camera menus!

Perhaps, I should add one more point: The Fn1/Fn2 as well as the My1-My3 settings buttons are in a sense also buttons without a description. However, in this case, the user actively assigned specific functions to these buttons. Therefore, it can be assumed that users have an idea what they assigned to those buttons, and I do not count the assigned functions among "hidden functionality."

 

Hidden GXR Functions

The following list of hidden GXR functions is more or less redundant with information presented elsewhere, although I am in the course of reducing the redundancy:

Magnification (Enlargement)

Note: The Ricoh GXR manual as well as the menus sometime use the term "magnification" and sometime speaks of "enlarge"...

I took me a long time until I finally was able to find in the manual, how I could magnify the view in the viewfinder or on the LCD screen. This feature is mostly useful for manual focusing, but may also be helpful when taking macro shots with autofocus (for confirming that the focus is on the correct spot). In addition, the way how this feature is turned on and off is by no means intuitive (despite the highly praised "intuitive" Ricoh user interface...) and easy to memorize for me (as a usability person...). Therefore, I decided to mention this feature here, in order to prevent you from pressing the "zoom" lever again and again, just to start the digital zoom - and get frustrated in the end:

Thus, by repeatedly pressing the "Menu" button for a about a second, you can cycle through the magnification modes. The magnified section can also be moved.

A few more things to mention:

Here is a demonstration of a scene with magnification off and on (the photos show the LCD screen, the EVF views are identical) before firmware update 1.40:

 
Magnification off   Magnification on (a section of the screen shows the magnified area)

Here is a demonstration of a scene with magnification off and on in two variants ("Enlarge Part", "Enlarge All") after firmware update 1.40:

         

Photos: No magnification (left), "Enlarge Part" (center), and "Enlarge All" (right); in the latter case, a small display indicates where the enlargement is located in the image

Note: I also cover this topic in the context of manual focusing for the standard Ricoh camera units and for the M-mount expansion unit.

Tip for Ricoh: In a future firmware update, the "zoom" lever might be used to change the magnification...

Magnifying the Review Image

In review mode, the image can be magnified up to 16 times using the zoom in button (alternatively, you can rotate the up-down dial next to the shutter-release button). The buttons of the directional pad can be used to pan the image not only in four, but in eight directions. Pressing the MENU/OK button (or the adjust lever) resets the view to the complete image; the zoom out button allows you to decrease image size.

These are the things that I knew all the time. However, I did not know until recently that pressing the adjust lever instantly magnifies the view to a certain size, which can be defined in the menus (Setup menu -> One Press Zoom Ratio). It is possible to use the MENU/OK button for this as long the image has already been magnified, otherwise this button resets size as mentioned above.

There are so many other options for the review of images, that I have to refer you to the manual. The basic issue with all these options is, however, that they are hard to remember...

Manual Focusing (S10, P10)

While the A12 camera units have a by-wire focus ring, the P10 and S10 have to be focused manually in a different way:

Of course, manual focus has to be selected first.

This procedure is OK if you use the LCD as viewfinder. However, I find it cumbersome when using the EVF with the left eye, because I have to fumble around between the camera and my cheek.

Manual Override of Autofocus (A12-50, A12-28)

The A12 camera units have a by-wire focus ring that you can use to override (or fine tune) the current autofocus setting after having pressed the shutter button half down.

This function has to be enabled in the menu "Settings > Focus Ring Settings". Also note that releasing the shutter button and pressing it again cancels the manual fine tuning.

ISO Setting

Since firmware update 1.17, the adjust lever can be used to change the ISO setting. The Ricoh GXR update documentation (not the original manual) states:

As a result, I removed the ISO setting from the "Adjust" menu and added another setting to it (e.g. format), instead.

Full Press Snap

Full press snap allows users to press the shutter button in one motion when Multi AF or Spot AF is selected for focus and switches to fix focus at a pre-selected distance (2.5m by default). Full press snap is enabled (ON) by default! This functionality had been requested by Harold Glit and implemented by Ricoh according to his specification (as I was told by him), including enabling the function by default. It is intended as a means not to miss a shot due to slow autofocus. The default distance of 2.5m is useful for street photography and many indoor situations. However, it is less useful for landscape shots.

Here is the description of the full press function taken from the GXR manual (adapted):

Full press snap can be disabled or enabled in the menu Shooting > Full Press Snap (default: ON). Snap focus distance can be set in menu Settings > Snap Focus Distance (default: 2.5m).

First, full press snap is an "expert function." I assume that some users are not aware of it and might overlook it. If users are not aware of this function, they may, however, be puzzled by the results that they get from time to time: unexpected fuzziness. As there is absolutely no indication in the user interface that full press snap took over, it will be very hard for them to find the real reason for the fuzziness. Probably, they will simply assume that Multi/Spot AF has failed.

See my conclusions and suggestions to Ricoh regarding this function.

Focus Assist

The GXR offers two methods for supporting manual focusing through a function called "focus assist" that needs to be enabled through the menu or by assigning it to a function key:

There is no cycling through the focus assist modes as there is for the screen magnification mode and macro modes. You have to select the mode in the "Setup" menu, item "Focus assist selection" (Mode 1 or 2). There is also no button for selecting a focus assist mode (after pressing it for a second). Actually, there is no button available any more, but maybe Ricoh will find a solution... As you can see, Ricoh is inconsistent here in comparison with the magnification and macro modes...

Here are sample photos without and with focus assist:

         

Photos: No focus assist (left, focus assist mode 1 (center) and mode 2 (right)

Most users prefer focus assist mode 2, whereas I prefer mode 1 or no focus assist at all, that is, only full screen magnification. Focus assist can, of course, be combined with screen magnification.

 

Not-So-Evident GXR Functions

The following functions may not be as hidden as the ones listed above, but they seems to include on or the other mystery as well...

Self-Timer

Recently, I struggled several times with using the self-timer - until I read the manual. As it is described in the manual, the self-timer function has been implemented very efficiently - but somehow this implementation clashes with my "user" expectations. Moreover, being in a hurry I did not realize that the self-timer had already been set correctly and tried to set it again - once again with puzzling results that did not conform with my expectations. So, there may be nothing wrong with the implementation of the self-timer function on the GXR, but nevertheless other people might struggle with it like me... Therefore, I will first describe how I struggled and then show how the self-timer is to be used.

When you press the self-timer button (at the bottom right in the photo) a menu comes up for selecting the self-timer mode. 10 seconds delay are pre-selected:

However, as the menu disappears quickly, and I was not sure whether 10 seconds were actually selected. Somehow, I expected that I would have to confirm my choice. In addition, I did not realize that the self-timer mode had been activated and indicated on the screen, as the following photos shows:

So I pressed the self-timer button once again. This time, 2 seconds were selected. Quickly, I tried to reselect the 10 seconds which was not always successful as the menu disappeared so fast. In the end, I somehow managed to reach my goal, but I was unsure about whether this was the way to go for using the self-timer.

Finally, I consulted the manual, which I should have done earlier, and now the scales fell from my eyes. Actually, you do not need the menu at all. Pressing the self-timer button once (the menu comes up and disappears...) gives you a delay of 10 seconds, pressing it twice (obviously the delay between two presses does not matter) gives you a delay of two seconds, pressing it three times offers you the creation of a custom delay, and four presses turn the self-timer off.

For me, it was also unexpected that the self-timer has to be turned off explicitly (or the camera is turned off). I owned cameras, where the self-timer worked only for one shot...

All in all, just press the self-timer the required number of times and watch out for the indicator - and you are done. I also like that the self-timer applies to several photos until you turn it off.

Flash Settings

Note: The following text can also be found in the FAQ.

A new GXR owner asked in a forum where he can find the flash settings for the GXR. On other Ricoh cameras these are usually on the direction wheel - but there are no such settings. I could not find them in the beginning and consulted the manual. And then the scales fell from my eyes: The settings are now incorporated in the button that opens the flash (see photos below):

 
GXR back with flash button indicated   Close up of position of flash button

There are three buttons at the top left of the back of the body. The center button "OPEN/Flash symbol" is the one to use!

A first press opens the flash, starting with the second press you can cycle through the flash settings. Or you press the button and turn the front wheel to change the settings (a second press is also needed!).

Note: The other flash settings (flash exposure compensation, manual flash amount) are located in the shooting menu and can be assigned to one of the "adjust" menu positions or one of the Fn keys.

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02.01.2012