I have two video camcorders that I use frequently, a Canon and a Panasonic. On the Canon, a red dot on the screen means “recording paused,” and a green one means “recording in progress.” On the Panasonic, the red/green coding is reversed. (Or maybe it’s the other way around; I forget.)
I am often using both cameras at once, in a multi-camera shoot.
Both camera’s buttons are push/push instead of a toggle which would show the situation as physically (or virtually) Up/Down. If you don’t push hard enough, it might not register at all without the operator knowing, resulting in the opposite action from what was intended.
There is no other confirmation that what you want is what you get other than the counter (no big flashing REC display, which would be useful). So many is the time that I have pressed a button to record, only to find out too late that I stopped it instead.
I have learned to ignore the colors and watch the counter for a few seconds after pressing a button to confirm what is happening.
On another subject (but still stupid product design)…Our town hall, constructed with a state-of-the-art design in 2009, has a “modern” heating/cooling system. It can be programmed to heat up or cool down any individual room at any day and any time, in advance. Sounds good, right?
But the main controls are in the clerk’s office, often locked when a committee meeting or other function takes place at non-office hours. Sometimes the clerk forgets to program the system for a particular time, or she doesn’t plan to warm up the room a minute before the official start time. It takes about a half-hour to get up or down to speed.
So you come in for the meeting; the room is too cold or too hot and the clerk is not around. There is no informational display in the affected room except for a tiny box with a tiny slider and a tiny temperature chart. Is the system on or off? Set for the time? What time? How turn it on or override the automatic system? Can it be overridden? Will a manual setting be overridden when the auto system kicks in? Absolutely no way to tell. Even the clerk doesn’t know the status instantly, and she has to get into a computer program to investigate.
It took me a long time to learn that nothing will happen with this tiny control box unless you first press an UNLABELED, tiny key, the equivalent of “start something”. Is this a push/push key? did I push it hard enough? No way to tell.
Sometimes the mania for automatic systems runs amuck. When the building was first constructed, some smaller rooms had automatic lighting systems that were supposed to sense a human presence, turn on the room lights, then turn them off when human activity ceased.
Except it didn’t work. When you went into a room, you might have to jump around or wave your arms wildly so it recognized the light was supposed to be turned on. Conversely, if you were in a room, sitting at a desk for a few minutes, it thought no one was there, and turned the lights off.
Many is the time that the lights in one room appear to be always on, but no person has been there for hours or days. They can’t be turned off, since there is no switch.
Yes, I know the system could be reprogrammed to be more or less sensitive, but that must be done by a technician, who charges $50 per hour plus roundtrip travel time (he’s an hour away). The time and sensitivity adjustments are a screwdriver control in the light switch with no calibration or indicator. The only way you can set it is try again and again until it works right. Since frequently calling the technician isn’t feasible, the switch never works right.
I got tired of the lights not turning on or turning off prematurely in my office, so I had the auto switch replaced with a standard off/on toggle. This works perfectly.
) “convenience” shortcuts.