Notes on life, art, photography and technology, by a Danish dropout bohemian.
When you drink the water, remember the river.
Friday, November 20, 2009
S90 grip
Richard Franiec has made a gorgeous aluminium grip for the Canon S90. I'm impressed with the looks, the quality, and the fact that it does not make the practical size of the camera any bigger.
When I got my first pocket digital Canon, and found it was tricky holding it steady, I got the idea to add weight to it by attaching a weighted hand-grip in the form of a pistol grip, using the camera's tripod attachment socket.
I drew a sketch of the idea, and sent it to Canon's Canadian headquarters, suggesting they make an accessory like that. They sent me back an email with a lot of legalese-type talk about how they couldn't accept ideas from anyone outside the company for reasons of copyrights and patents. I wasn't asking them for anything, except a better way to hold their damned camera, and I didn't expect to get a snarky reply like that. I thought I was being helpful, but they seemed to be insulted that I wasn't perfectly happy with the camera as it was.
I made a wooden attachment to fit onto the camera's tripod mounting socket, and it works. Too bad we have to re-engineer these things because the manufacturer won't accept suggestions from the people who buy the product.
I agree, Ray; that's a durn shame! The grip that Eo points to, here, is pretty nice, indeed! I like how he (RF) solved an issue and is benefiting from it, himself, also.
Durn...can't be "hurting" too badly: I will probably only ever go on my "dream vacation" to the Galapagos Islands...in my dreams! lol! ;-) GOOD for RF!! Would LOVE to see MORE of those pics!! :-)
It was really my own fault that I got into that mix-up with Canon, because I was 'jumping to conclusions'. I assumed they'd still accept my ideas, like they did back in the mid-1990s, when I made a couple of suggestions for improving their great little Typestar word processor. They sent my ideas to Tokyo headquarters, and the engineers there liked them, and used them while re-designing that machine into the next version, Starwriter.
It didn't sell worth a damn, but not because of my ideas, but rather because it just happened to hit the market at the same time as Windows 95, and if that wasn't bad enough, they'd used an obscure computer language in it, which had the effect of preventing it from being able to exchange its floppy disks with those in a standard computer. But otherwise, it works like a charm. The one I have is still going just as well as it did the first day I unpacked it, and it works perfectly after all these years.
So I'm not putting down Canon - I think they are a great company, and they make great products. I'm just sorry I can't continue sending them ideas that they will seriously consider - not because there was anything in it for me, because there wasn't, except for the satisfaction of seeing my ideas actually used (and that was a thrill, for sure!) - but just because I think that if an idea is good enough, it shouldn't matter who thought of it, if it improves the product and makes the people who buy it a little happier.
I'm still hoping Canon will take my hint, and get somebody there to suddenly discover the idea of making a removable hand-grip for these light-weight digital cameras. I don't want to get rich, I just want a steadier way to hold the camera, so I get better pictures. If we had that, we might not need all these image-stabilization things that don't work all that well anyway.
Try taking shots of birds in flight or aircraft overhead and you'll see what I mean... I waste more shots than I can use because I can't hold the camera well enough. If Canon can make a world-class camera, why can't they make a world-class grip for it?
4 comments:
When I got my first pocket digital Canon, and found it was tricky holding it steady, I got the idea to add weight to it by attaching a weighted hand-grip in the form of a pistol grip, using the camera's tripod attachment socket.
I drew a sketch of the idea, and sent it to Canon's Canadian headquarters, suggesting they make an accessory like that. They sent me back an email with a lot of legalese-type talk about how they couldn't accept ideas from anyone outside the company for reasons of copyrights and patents. I wasn't asking them for anything, except a better way to hold their damned camera, and I didn't expect to get a snarky reply like that. I thought I was being helpful, but they seemed to be insulted that I wasn't perfectly happy with the camera as it was.
I made a wooden attachment to fit onto the camera's tripod mounting socket, and it works. Too bad we have to re-engineer these things because the manufacturer won't accept suggestions from the people who buy the product.
I agree, Ray; that's a durn shame! The grip that Eo points to, here, is pretty nice, indeed! I like how he (RF) solved an issue and is benefiting from it, himself, also.
Durn...can't be "hurting" too badly: I will probably only ever go on my "dream vacation" to the Galapagos Islands...in my dreams! lol! ;-) GOOD for RF!! Would LOVE to see MORE of those pics!! :-)
It was really my own fault that I got into that mix-up with Canon, because I was 'jumping to conclusions'. I assumed they'd still accept my ideas, like they did back in the mid-1990s, when I made a couple of suggestions for improving their great little Typestar word processor. They sent my ideas to Tokyo headquarters, and the engineers there liked them, and used them while re-designing that machine into the next version, Starwriter.
It didn't sell worth a damn, but not because of my ideas, but rather because it just happened to hit the market at the same time as Windows 95, and if that wasn't bad enough, they'd used an obscure computer language in it, which had the effect of preventing it from being able to exchange its floppy disks with those in a standard computer. But otherwise, it works like a charm. The one I have is still going just as well as it did the first day I unpacked it, and it works perfectly after all these years.
So I'm not putting down Canon - I think they are a great company, and they make great products. I'm just sorry I can't continue sending them ideas that they will seriously consider - not because there was anything in it for me, because there wasn't, except for the satisfaction of seeing my ideas actually used (and that was a thrill, for sure!) - but just because I think that if an idea is good enough, it shouldn't matter who thought of it, if it improves the product and makes the people who buy it a little happier.
I'm still hoping Canon will take my hint, and get somebody there to suddenly discover the idea of making a removable hand-grip for these light-weight digital cameras.
I don't want to get rich, I just want a steadier way to hold the camera, so I get better pictures.
If we had that, we might not need all these image-stabilization things that don't work all that well anyway.
Try taking shots of birds in flight or aircraft overhead and you'll see what I mean... I waste more shots than I can use because I can't hold the camera well enough. If Canon can make a world-class camera, why can't they make a world-class grip for it?
They can, you just need to dig deeper, and get the D7.
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