Feel

Feel

I have written about the feel of certain cameras many times, in all sorts of places. Maybe one or two people wonder what I mean, and maybe others understand something different from my interpretation.
I’m not entirely certain that everyone gets the idea, so please excuse me if I rabbit on about something that is not of any interest to you. Let’s see if it helps if we start by talking about car doors. There are some that close with a satisfying, heavy clunk sound: others that clang, like a discordant cymbal. Some that bounce and fail to latch properly, whether you close them gently or slam them hard.

And it’s the same with cameras. For a complete, all-round lack of a nice feel, I’d nominate the Diana F that I bought a while back for an EPZ article. Everything about it was too stiff, or too loose, and it was, generally, very little fun at all. Sorry, Lomographers – it just isn’t a satisfying camera to use.



Similarly, the cheap plastic autofocus film cameras of the Nineties, which creaked a bit when you squeezed them, and where the back closed with a sort of slightly metallic plastic snick. Never convincing that it was going to stay closed…



My benchmark is a Contax RTS, and the two pictures show the difference between the resting position and the fully depressed, shutter has gone off situation – well below one millimetre, and requiring less pressure than any other camera I can think of.

Similarly, the lenses have a silky, lubricated feel to the focus ring, with a lack of backlash. Change the direction of rotation, and there’s no lost movement before the focus changes. With a poor lens (and that includes most early autofocus optics) there can be one or two millimetres of movement before anything happens. This is irrespective of the quality of the results lenses produce, by the way.

A Nikon D7000 has a much longer travel to the release, though it doesn’t’ take a great deal more pressure than the Contax. There are three distinct points in the travel where you can feel something different is happening – meter, focus, release. And that’s fine when you’ve got used to it: the distinct stages allow you to control your image-making very precisely.



By way of contrast, a Zorki 4 has a long-travel release, needing high pressure, and there’s no easy indication of when the shutter will go off. You just have to keep pushing until there’s a whirr and clack of the shutter going off. I’d count the noise as being part of the feel: a sort of hollow clonk (Alpha 900) is less satisfying than the D7000’s clipped snick.



Over to you: does the feel matter to you? Have you any pet hates or loves?