The new point-and-shoot

Although I don't drink, I have been seduced by champagne – that is, champagne-coloured aluminum. Last year [1994] I was heading to New York to cover the Gay Games for the Village Voice and needed a camera for my own snapshots. I figured I couldn't get the hang of a "complicated" single-lens-reflex (SLR) camera – the kind real photographers use – in the short leadtime I had, so, after researching the alternatives, I settled on a Canon Z115, a small, light "point-and-shoot" camera with a panoply of electronic features and a very chic champagne-coloured aluminum exterior.

While I've been happy with the camera, I began to wonder about these "basic" point-and-shoots. Like the original Kodak Instamatic of 1963 (designed by Kodak and Pentagram), these cameras are supposed to live up to their billing: You grab the machine, point it at your subject, press the shutter button, and you're done. But if point-and-shoots are intended to be easy and economical, why do good ones cost anywhere from $400 to $1,200 and come equipped with so many of the features of a contemporary SLR? If you're going to shell out half a grand for an electronic camera, why opt for a point-and-shoot (P&S) rather than an SLR? The answer, it turns out, turns on a combination of sophisticated industrial design, effective marketing, and consumer technophobia.

Designheads can point to some notable milestones in camera design. Peripatetic Italian designer Luigi Colani drew a camera for Canon, the T90, which echoed his signature curvaceous style; as I.D. averred, "Colani's organic form was a revolution, but... Canon's camera lost market share." (Other Colani Canons.) The foldable, flask-like Polaroid SX-70 shattered preconceptions of boxy instant-camera design. Industrial-design enthusiasts today, however, will be disappointed at the new crop of high-end point-and-shoots. In the main, point-and-shoot industrial design these days involves tweaking the configuration of universal features like controls and information displays; there is no new overweening "design language" at play comparable to the work of Colani, or even comparable to David Carson or Neville Brody in the graphic-design world.

Or rather, the design language is one shared by all makers, with minor deviances – industrial-design fillips used as a means of product differentiation within and between brands. Meanwhile, new hybrid cameras are spanning the design gap between point-and-shoots and SLRs, with unusual feature combinations and, in some cases, aggressively retro case designs.
Source:joeclark.org