[keepright]

I absolutely agree about the three buttons on the left hand side. I don't know who let that design out the door. I don't know what the best option would have been, but making the middle lozenge-shaped or having a bump on it would make finding and identifying them much easier. They shouldn't have let the design past the prototyping stage until a random person off the shop floor could learn how to change the basic controls it in thirty minutes blindfolded.

But I also get picky about these things. That's a standard that no camera meets.

And good design and interface issues should cost nothing. It shouldn't be a matter of price point, it should be a matter of pride.

But that's not to say that I agree with the criticisms of the E-3. A lot of the comments look for "intuitive" design. The biofos article uses the word seven times. But an intuitive design is one that can be deduced by intuition. There's no such thing with a camera.

Consider elevator buttons: It is intuitive that the call button to go "Up" is above the button to go "Down". There is a logical connection between their design and their purpose. It is intuitive that the higher floor numbers are at the top of the button panel, but putting the lower number on the left is not intuitive, it's based on convention. English is read left-to-right, but other languages are not. It makes sense to us because we're used to it, but it's not based on an inherent sensibility or logical relationship.

With the E-3, there's no inherent connection between which dial moves the cursor in a particular direction, or which dial changes which function with the AF and Drive buttons. It's an unintuitive design. But the positioning of the buttons is a question of ergonomics, not intuition, and ergonomics are subjective. I don't find the front control dial position difficult to reach with a normal grip, Mr. Foster does. Neither of us are wrong.

The E-1's design makes sense because we're used to it. The E-3 follows some of its conventions and breaks others significantly. The play buttons are in the same spot, but that's radically different from where it is on the E-300 and E-510. People coming from different cameras in the Olympus lineup are going to have very different experiences with the same control layout. People trying to adjust from different brands are going to have a completely different set of expectations.

I've read many comments from Canon and Nikon owners saying that they chose their particular brand because of the user interface, which makes perfect sense. It also makes perfect sense that people like or don't like the E-3 for the same reasons. Look at Windows and Mac OS -- those two products are all about user interface, and they're still trying to get it right.