Comments Regarding the Photographer's Nose

Harold M. Merklinger

Sean Reid's article Photographers Have Noses brought back memories which in turn caused me to dig out some old correspondence. It all started in 1984 when I 'discovered' a Minolta ER camera in a local pawn shop. Here's what it looks like.

The camera has most of its controls placed such that they are most easily set when the camera is upside down. In playing with it, I discovered that the SLR viewing experience is much more comfortable when the camera is held to the eye upside down as well. Why had not Minolta placed the wind lever and shutter release - or the shutter release at least - on the bottom of the camera? (Kodak Retina rangefinder cameras placed the wind lever at bottom left and that seemed to work OK.)

I wrote to Jack Quigley, a noted Minolta dealer in North Miami Beach at the time, describing the camera. Here is an edited portion of his reply:

The human has yet to be redesigned, but Jack's last proposal has been implemented by Canon - and perhaps others - in the form of an eyepiece extender: an example being the EP-EX15 seen here on a Canon 5D MkII. And the adustable part has now been implemented in many cameras.

I'd like to point out that the whole nose issue was taken seriously by Leitz in the form of the LEICINA 8 mm movie camera.

With this camera there is ample clearance for the noses of both left-eye and right-eye users. And there is a pad that one holds firmly against the forehead to help stabilize the camera. I believe other makers of movie and video cameras have used similar arrangements. Several well-known 16 mm cameras have the viewfinder on the left side of the camera where right-eye users can position the camera comfortably.

Jack ended his letter with a comment to the effect that camera manufacturers will only change something when sales of existing designs decline seriously. In order to encourage change, all we need to do is stop buying the current designs!

The SLR design might have evolved differently. The first Exacta and other SLRs used waist-level viewfinders which are most easily used when the viewfinder is placed at the top of the camera. Then the pentaprism was added - often as an option - to make eye-level viewing possible. Eventually the waist-level viewing option was dropped.

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