Confused yet?  Asking what the heck do shower faucets have to do with rangerfinder cameras?  Read on, dear reader!

This morning, attempting to take a shower in my hotel room, I couldn’t get the water to turn on.  I was faced with the fittings you see above.  I figured the big control knob with the faucet style handle turned the water on and off.  Nope.  Didn’t work.  Tried the smaller knob, which I had figured was a control to divert water to the four smaller shower heads.  Still no water.  Got out of the shower and called the front desk to let them know.  The very polite young lady at the desk told me that there was no problem with the water – i had to pull the big knob out to turn on the water.   Getting back into the shower I tried it and sure enough, everything worked.  For a minute there I felt like an idiot.  Then, being in the software industry for most of my career, I began to ponder the cognitive dissonance that can be caused by user-interfaces (UIs) – the knob has a faucet like arm that screams rotation to me.  No clues anywhere that the knob had to be pulled out to turn things on.  Not being used to this type of fixture,  I didn’t attempt to yank on the knob to pull it out.   Partially because something like that once got me into trouble with a plane full of people and very nearly with the FAA, but I digress – that’s a different story.  This sort of user-interface problem we see all the time with poorly designed software – you’re used to a specific way that something works and them someone goes and changes how it behaves, often causing frustration.  This chain of thought led me next to the Rangefinder style camera – usually very simple with the most basic controls that allow one to change shutter-speed, aperture, and with digitals, the sensor sensitivity or ISO and a very basic menu system.  That and the shutter release.  That’s it.  No complex array of controls – buttons, knobs, selectors, menus etc.  To many photography enthusiasts this represents a purity of purpose, a design that drives focus on the bare essentials. An ethos that speaks to the camera getting out of the photographer’s way, giving her total control, arguably in the simplest and most elegant of control interfaces.  A minimalism of design that is incredibly elegant.  A design philosophy that aligns with the dictum to “make things simple but no simpler”.

If one frequents any of the internet photography fora, one comes across many threads that have people arguing with religious zeal for and against rangefinders.  If the rangefinder in question is a Leica, the debate tends to be even more intense and often acrimonious, no doubt prompted by the opinions of many that Leica cameras are overpriced and under-deliver.   There are many that simply don’t understand why anyone would choose to buy a very expensive Leica when a Nikon/Canon/Pentax/what-have-you with all sorts of advanced technology can be had for much, much less.  To me the answer is very simple – the appropriate tool for the appropriate application.  The problem with many of these heated discussions is that people take positions on either side of the issue, without setting a context on the intended use of the tool – the camera.  If one if making fine furniture in low volume, one may well choose to use a hand chisel to carve out the mortise for a mortise-and-tenon joint.  This would require the craftsman carpenter to examine the wood grain very carefully, understand the flow of the grain and, in a sense, become one with the piece of wood before applying a mallet to the chisel.  Failure to do  so could well result in split wooden that would need to be thrown away.  I daresay once the carpenter chisels out the mortise, there is a sense of accomplishment at a job well done.  Why?  Because it requires skill.  It ain’t easy.   Now, it is easier to cut the same mortise with a appropriate bit and a router.   But that requires skill too, albeit a different skill.  For an artisan making handmade furniture, the choice may well be to pick the hand-chisel over the electric router.  For  the craftsman that has to turn out high volume, for example, the hand-chisel is not an option.   In other words, let’s pick the appropriate tool for the appropriate application.  If I want to shoot high magnification macro images, I’m not going to pick a rangefinder.  I’ll pick a SLR camera.  It simply isn’t practical to do macro images with a rangefinder.  It can be done, but it’s not elegant.   In the same way, If I plan to shoot in the street,  the rangefinder is the appropriate tool for me.  Can I shoot in the street with an SLR?  Sure!  But it get’s in the way of the photographer and is less elegant than a rangefinder.   The modern SLR, with all the “features” it has, tends to take away from the absolutely control over the camera that the rangefinder forces you to assume.  Can one shoot an SLR in totally manual mode?  Absolutely!  But is wasn’t designed to be used that way primary, especially if it’s a modern DSLR.  Many a newcomer to photography that jumps in with  DSLR does himself a disservice because modern DSLRs can easily take one into a “machine-gun” mode of shooting where one tends to shoot a lot of images, letting the camera make some or all of the critical decisions,  and the whole thing is a bit of hit-and-miss effort.  Manual everything, in contrast,  forces one to consider everything and set the camera manually to the desired exposure, for example.  This need to think before shooting is likely to make one a better photographer.  Again, can one do this with a modern SLR?  Indeed!  But it wasn’t designed to be used that way.

There are many other reasons why rangefinders can be better in specific applications like street photography and it’s not my intent to go into all of those here.  Suffice it to say the the user-interface often forces process, a way of working that lends itself well to a specific context.  A poorly designed UI or one designed for a different purpose can cause cognitive dissonance.

Ironically, the manufacturer of the shower control I had trouble with is MOEN, a respected german company.  Like Leica.  :)