Canon comes up with a shutter button like no shutter button before it
Dec 20, 2020
Udi Tirosh
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
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There are many kinds of cameras: DSLRs, point and shoot, mirrorless, even that weird Sony F707 from when DSLRs started. But one thing almost never changed since when cameras started. Even the old Analog cameras. The Shutte Button. Sure, it was mechanical at first and got a new “half-press” when auto fucus was introduced. But the overall mechanics stayed the same. Click the button – make a photo.
In a patent application spotted by Canon News, you see something that resembles a touchpad. If you google translate the patent (like I did), you see that it does not just resemble a touchpad. It is a touchpad. Moreover, the back LCD has another touch screen, similar to what we are actually used to in recent camera lines.
Looking further at the patent, there are many diagrams, text, and charts explaining the menu system and sliding mechanism. It can detect different types of slides and distinguishes a press from a slide. To be honest, the machine-translated patent is not 100% clear to me. I could pick up that the pad can control the autofocus location. (You can usually find that function on the back of the camera for easy thumb access). The patent application shows a DSLR of some type, which shows that Canon is working on this for a while. If this was a new concept, it would have probably been a mirrorless camera.
Now, Canon did play a bit with touchpads in the EOS R line, and it has gotten mixed reactions. Some think it’s the best interface ever, while others are having issues dialing the sensitivity in. Putting a touchpad on the most used interface element in the camera will surely require some market education. On the other side, touchpads do not require any physical holds in the body to operate. This can be a huge boost in weather sealing.
What do you think? Is this ingenious or plain silly?
[JPO via Canon news]
Udi Tirosh
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
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22 responses to “Canon comes up with a shutter button like no shutter button before it”
Ho hum. I use the touch screen evf on my Olympus OM-D as a shutter button anytime I feel it suits the situation.
Yes, some people look at their cameras, not at their subjects – everyone has a style and a process that is comfortable for their purposes.
I shoot one handed, and seldom look at my camera, for me, touch-screens invariably separate me from awareness of my subject such that I miss the shot through not paying attention to them.
My partner looks at their camera as Ansel Adams might when looking at the ground glass, always assessing the qualities of the potential presentation image, often shaking their head, saying “There’s no there there”, and walking away without taking an image.
Where in the same time, I’ve collected half a dozen or more images.
Neither of us is right or wrong, just different.
Thanks for exploring this and sharing.
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I do like the idea of being able to control the focus point with that control. If they do it with pressure rather than capacitance it’ll work through glovess too.
I’m in Edmonton, and shooting outdoors around here gets really cold in the winter. No amount of touch screen sensitivity is going to compare to the tactile feedback of switching a dial.
Stupidity at its best.
Shooting 6 months of the year with heavy gloves that kind of technology makes me fear that one day I won’t be able to use mainstream camera anymore….
I have a he same thoughts. I need to shoot in gloves quite often during the winter so all of the dial notches and everything really help. I don’t think there’s any amount of touchscreen sensitivity that can work through big gloves.
Maybe they can build a Canon 1D or 5D BRR for us in the north, that works at -40, without any touchscreen, heavy duty shutter, and with longer battery life :D
I haven’t tried the EOS R5 up here yet but I am pretty sure it wouldn’t last long in the temperatures we had last week (-40, -45)
We are doomed :D
Yep.
I have to glue things on the shutter button on some cams. You can’t feel them even without gloves.
Photography is dead.
Speak for yourself.
The Minolta Maxxum 9000 had a single-function touchpad on its shutter release for AF control, and it was the best control ever. Rest your finger on the button and AF would start tracking… half-press and it would lock…then press fully for shutter release, or relax pressure to resume tracking. Canon should be able to do better with this as long as they don’t try to cram more functions onto it. But they’re Canon, so they will…
Thar was not a touch pad, but it was a multi-pressure depth-sensitive switch introduced in the 1970s Minolta HiMatic E to initiate camera-on and exposure warning in the eye-level viewfinder, eventually enhanced by eye-start auto-focus, still a hallmark of the Minolta design, I depend on it in my Sonys.
But yes the Minolta Alpha/Dynax/Maxxum 9000 was an unprecedented tour de force – available with a digital back, no less.
And I can still use all the lenses on my Sonys.
There is hardly anything ever totally new, but it’s nice to remember and honor lineage when there is one.
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On the very first “R” they introduced that strange touch-thing on the backside which magically disappeared in every later model……
On smartphones, Apple and Google are researching sooo much to bring tactile feedback to the user when doing actions on the screen – and Canon is going the opposite way and tries to remove exactly this tactile feedback….? ?
is it that hard to find someone that speaks that language and can translate it for you
They stole the idea from the Olympus XA…
(Only XA owners get that joke)
Don’t knock it until you see it. I fear that innate conservatism gives us a Luddite attitude to new technology. Whilst I appreciate if the photographer is wearing gloves that the sensitivity of the button may be problematic but under other conditions this button may be advantageous. Without progress we would be still using cameras that produced glass negatives.
What’s a focus?;-)
What’s a fucus? ;-)
My setup is this: Camera set to rapid shooting and AI Servo mode. Trigger half pressed: primed stabilizer and exposure metering. Trigger fully pressed: exposure. AF-ON back button: enable the AF. I can take pictures instantly without messing up the focus. I can lock the focus then recompose after letting go of the button. I can track focus if I keep the AF-ON button pressed. I’m guessing it’s superior to a non-tactile implementation.
Bogus patent to make the world worse. Well done Canon. When do you think you’ll fix the video in the Canon M6 to be 1080p and not 480p resolution as it is in reality? Or move the 4K M6 II video from effective 1080p to real 4K?
I fail to see how this feature is particularly original as screens are already used as shutters and fail to see how it could possibly make photographers lives better. The EOS R touchbar was useless enough as it is. Canon had to smarten up and return the 5D III/IV/DS interface to the Canon R5/R6. This is non-tactile shutter button is more innovation to make cameras worse. The patent is to make any competitors or real innovators lives worse. Canon needs to go back to having the engineers run the place and not geriatric accountants (check out Canon’s corporate management photos to see what I mean).
Less bad pictures with a camera without lense!