Bad design awards... bring it!

xayraa33 said:
Exakta VX cameras, what an awful design.
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Well, apart from being left-handed (which makes them no pleasure to use for 90% of the population) they actually were very well laid out and easy to fix and calibrate - there was no better 35mm SLR until the Nikon F.
 
I don't like when a camera needs to go in a case or needs a lens cap to switch the meter off. Olympus 35SP, Olympus Pen FT, etc.

Also, still not sure how much I like my Rollei 35, left handed, flash shoe position, etc :)

(link to Wikipedia)

800px-Rollei35s-flash128bc.jpg
 
pvdhaar said:
As an engineer, I somehow have a lot of sympathy for these so called 'bad designs', because often they aren't. They're brilliant solutions to jump 'managerial' hurldes. I bet a lot of other engineers will sympathize and recognize the following:

First you're sent out to build something according to a completely obscure specification, but you make it all fine and elegant and it works like a charm..

Then the guys in charge start to realize what it was that they actually wanted and seem to think 'hey, why don't we also make it flip backward if we twist its ears?' and after a while, you get it so that it does indeed also flip backwards when you twist its ears.. It's a lot less elegant by now; there are some warts in the design, but it still works so it's still somewhat fine.

At this point the guys in charge become over confident; we're now going to crush the competition, so there has got to be a quantum leap in technology in there as well, and it's got to be ready yesterday.. This is where things go bad.. You'd have to start from scratch to get a sound solution, but there's no time, so you're forced to build warts upon warts.. The most amazing thing is that it stil works and does everything, but don't ever look under the bonnet.

Next time you take something apart, and are amazed at what's in there, think about the poor designers that had to do that job of putting it all in there and make it work..
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software engineering no different--must be ISO standard project blueprint or something

back on topic, i'd like to nominate everything that doesn't have nikon written on it (disclaimer: all equipment i have ever used pre-dated the digital age by a far margin, i have no idea what happened after 1980s :)). unfortunately, i cannot comment on the actual engineering aspects because the scenario was invariably: press shutter release on the non-nikon device, hear "pfsht" or "flop" or nothing at all, throw out with garbage

(sorry non-nikon folks, don't send me dead fish yet, my true point is: good design is what does the job)

:cool:
 
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Pherdinand said:
although i kind of agree with pvdhaar (and the cartoon of Keith is also very valid), i do think german engineers have the tendency to overdesign things. A lot.
And i have more than camera related experiences - i work with some of those guys.
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Yes, if you have ever taken the bottom plate off of a bottom winding Retina you might agree but...

I dropped a Retina 28/4 Schneider Curtagon into 3ft of water in a wetlands marsh, off the boardwalk. I went in after it. Turns out, the lens did not leak. Take a look at a Retina Reflex Mount someday, the linkages for the aperture is typical German Over-Engineering. Worked for ME!
 
sanmich said:
anyone here ever tried a French car? :rolleyes:
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My very first automobile was a 1963 Renault Dauphine. Being a submarine sailor, I was especially enamored with the hood ornament. The car was ten years old when I bought it for three hundred dollars, and lasted three weeks. But that's another story.

Boy, you don't see those Graphic Jets on e**y everyday.

And for German engineering, sometimes things are not obvious as to why something is built the way it is, but they usually had a very good reason. It's just that none of them are around anymore to tell us.

PF
 
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There is something about German over engineering. In WWII the German tanks were superb but demanding to service. The Soviet T34 was simple and sturdy. I heard that a T34 was found in the past few years stuck in a swamp in the Baltic states since WWII. A crew came back the next weekend and drove it out.

As a machinist I feel for the difficulty of making a good design. It is not easy. Joe
 
farlymac said:
My very first automobile was a 1963 Renault Dauphine. Being a submarine sailor, I was especially enamored with the hood ornament. The car was ten years old when I bought it for three hundred dollars, and lasted three weeks. But that's another story. ...
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That's funny. I mean it's funny now, but I bet it wasn't then.
 
mwooten said:
That's funny. I mean it's funny now, but I bet it wasn't then.
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Well, it had nothing to do with the mechanical fitness of the car. It was rolled onto it's top in a parking lot, and all the windows and body panels kicked in. It did have a stick shift on the floor, which was cool. The uncool part was putting gas in the filler, which was inside the engine compartment (rear engine, rear wheel drive). One interesting feature was the locking steering column, way before it's use on American vehicles.

PF
 
I had a 1984 Peugeot 505 sti. I will never forget driving down the freeway only to hear a terrible grating sound as my transmission spontaneously disintegrated.
 
Can you name one that is purposefully designed to work for decades and one designed to work only for months?

Any by "work," do you mean work without maintenance or work with aggregate maintenance that approaches the purchase price of the camera?

Dante

dave lackey said:
Now as for bad camera designs, I respectfully submit that any camera that is not designed to be used for decades rather than months is a bad design.
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sevo said:
Well, apart from being left-handed (which makes them no pleasure to use for 90% of the population) they actually were very well laid out and easy to fix and calibrate - there was no better 35mm SLR until the Nikon F.
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Yes, it is always a good idea to make sure 90% of the camera users are at an un pleasurable disadvantage when using your brand of camera :). Easy to fix and calibrate are moot points for most if not all camera users that are not factory trained camera techs.
 
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