The Online Photographer

What About Panasonic?

Just curious—what should Panasonic do, now that Olympus is jettisoning its cameramaking business?

I mean that question in two ways. What should it actually do, and how should it announce its intentions to its customers—or should it?

If I were in the business of making and marketing Micro 4/3 cameras and lenses, I'd be in a hurry to reassure customers that the format is still alive and kicking despite Olympus's recent bombshell. Of course, that presumes that Panasonic wants to keep making Micro 4/3 products. Maybe it doesn't. So maybe we haven't heard from the company because its PR people don't know what to tell us.

What do you think? Naturally I'd like to see the company continue to champion Micro 4/3. The format actually makes more sense now than ever, in my not-so-humble but sometimes wayward opinion. It's gotten good enough when compared to most formats over most of digital's past. I'd hate to see it wither away.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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beuler: "I guess Panasonic is now trying to figure out if Micro 4/3 is a viable business proposition. If they decide to exit, we will be the last to know. We will get very strong comments from the management to the effect that Panasonic stands behind its customers and will continue to provide Micro 4/3 products to the market. All that means is that they still need to sell inventory. If Panasonic decides to stay in the Micro 4/3 game, the GH6 will launch this year and G9 successor will launch at the start of 2021. If either of those are no shows, then we know Micro 4/3 is over."

Bahi: "I've been wondering the same thing. I took the existence of last year's 10–25mm ƒ/1.7 Panasonic lens as a good sign. Too expensive for me, but indicative of continued Micro 4/3 development, so I was pleased. They could do no better than to release the GX8 Mark II that you've been writing about. I'm still using the GX8 and loving it—would appreciate better low-light performance and stabilisation but that's all that needs to change for a stills photographer. The GX8 was thought of as too big at the time of its release but today, its size would be par for the course for Micro 4/3 bodies."

Henning Wulff (partial comment): "In April Panasonic's position was stated. Even if they are the only major manufacturer to continue with m43 they are fairly well positioned at this time with a comprehensive range of bodies and lenses."

Mike replies: My point was only that in April, Olympus's plans had not been revealed yet.

robert e (partial comment): "My guess is that Panasonic will simply soldier on with Micro 4/3, both in stills and cinema, where the mount has done very well, thanks in part to Panasonic's revolutionary GH and AF lines. Micro 4/3 always made sense for cinema—the sensor is similar in size to the old 35mm film formats (roughly half a still frame), and so adapts well to existing, often prized, cine lenses. And by now there are many modern Micro 4/3 cine lenses, too—from budget Samyang fisheyes to $25K Zeiss jewels. There are also a few other Micro 4/3 cam makers—Blackmagic, Z cam, JVC. I don't see the still or crossover cameras and lenses going away any time soon, but I can see them becoming more video-centric (or at least becoming so quicker than they have been already). Between pro and am video, and having relatively deep pockets, I don't think Panasonic is feeling much urgency to do anything different, at least they wouldn't under normal circumstances. The pandemic must be affecting sales, so who knows?"

Naming Things

Mazda, the car company based in Hiroshima, Japan, recently ran into a problem. Its range of "crossovers" and SUVs went from the CX-3 to the CX-5 to the CX-9, and it wanted to insert another model in between the CX-3 and CX-5. What would the logical name be? To go in between "3" and "5"? Any guesses?

The company decided on "CX-30."

I know, right?

The problem was that Mazda already had a CX-4 in China, and the new car for the rest of the world was not that vehicle; it was a different vehicle. So the decision was made (passive voice again!) to call the car the CX-30. I think if I had to name a vehicle between the 3 and the 5 and I couldn't use 4, I would just pick a verbal name, meaning a word, such as "Stinger" or "Tacoma." If it has to be an odd-man-out in terms of the established naming protocol, my reasoning would be, then just go all the way.

Of course, sometimes word-names aren't to everyone's taste. I've read over the years about product names that have unfortunate meanings in foreign languages. Sometimes that's done on purpose: consider that currently there's there's a line of inexpensive audio products branded "Schiit."

My uncle raised racehorses for many years, and he mentioned once how hard it was to name racehorses. You can't give a racehorse a name that's already been used, which is why you get names like Ghostzapper and Nosupeforyou (at least the latter wasn't named "Supenazi." Or maybe that name was already taken). I figured it would be easy, so I asked him if I could help, and he agreed. I came up with a list of ten potential names, including several I liked a lot.

Not only were seven or eight of my ten names already taken, but my uncle, off the top of his head, could list the accomplishments of several of the racehorses who'd been given the names I proposed. I ended up naming "Montana Blackfoot," who had an undistinguished career, winning three races and earning $21,111 in 26 starts. But I learned the lesson: naming things is hard.

I thought about that when I was considering the mistakes and missteps of Olympus Corporation's Imaging business. Let's face it, not only is OM-D E-M[x] not going to go down in history as a name to conjure with, a name with resonance, but even owners can't remember where the hyphens go. I can't tell you how many times I've corrected "OMD" or "EM-1."

It's like naming a magazine "Darkroom & Creative Camera Techniques," which was the name of the magazine I edited when I got there. On the evening of the day I got the job, I went to a dinner party at my brother's house, and when I told them about my new job everyone wanted to know the magazine's name. So, slowly and clearly, I told each of the people who asked. Later I went around and asked those same people if they could remember the magazine's name. Not one could.

I figured that was a problem.

Over the years I've poked fun at various camera companies for their awkward product names. I like to assume, in that smug, superior way we have of thinking about things that don't actually concern us, that I could do better. But in fact I probably couldn't. Naming things is tough.

After an arduous, drawn-out process that frayed many nerves, we renamed "Darkroom & Creative Camera Techniques" "Photo Techniques." It had nothing to do with creativity—it was entirely a negotiated settlement, and it was a tough slog to get there. The business manager felt we had spent a lot of money promoting the words "darkroom" and "techniques"—the magazine's original name had been "Darkroom Techniques"—and she didn't want to lose both words, and the newsstand sales manager wanted to put the word "photo" in the far upper-left corner, so newsstand browsers would stand a chance of seeing the P and the H and at least part of the O when the magazines were half-hidden behind other magazines on the newsstand.

And here's the story of that Schiit name, from Jason Stoddard, co-founder of the company:

[I]t always seemed like I was running out to the garage (where the workbench was).

“I’ve got schiit to do,” I’d tell Lisa, and disappear.

She’s endlessly patient, but one day, she’d finally had enough. “Why don’t you just call it Schiit?” she shot back, crossing her arms.

“Call what schiit?”

“The new company. You’re always saying you’ve got schiit to do. Why not just call it Schiit?”

At first, I laughed. A company called Schiit? No sane company would do that. If we proposed that name to any Centric client, I imagined what they’d say. Way too out there. Can’t believe you’d propose that. Piss off too many people. What a crazy idea. Then they’d fire us.

But I’d had 15 years of marketing playing it safe, second-guessing everything we did, and watering down every great idea until it was meaningless. Maybe you can blame my decision on that history. Maybe it was nothing more than that.

And this company wasn’t about playing it safe. Hell, we were trying to reach Chinese prices here in the USA. And do it without a million-dollar investment. That was about as crazy as it got.

“Nobody would ever forget it,” I replied, finally.

“It would cut down your marketing costs,” Lisa agreed.

“And we could say we make some really good Schiit.”

Lisa laughed. “Why not? Go ape Schiit.”

“And Schiit happens,” I agreed.

“If you don’t have our stuff, you’re up Schiit creek,” Lisa added.

I nodded and sat back. Suddenly it didn’t seem so crazy. Hell, the word was meaningless for, what, 80% of the world that didn’t speak English? And if you spelled it funny, it could sound vaguely German.

Hey, they've got us talking about them, right? Even though I personally absolutely refuse to buy anything called Schiit. Not gonna happen. When it comes to naming things, about the best you can say is that you can't lose them all. But you certainly can't win them all, either.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Patrick Murphy: "Company and product names can take on a life of their own. In the 1980s I was working on a the World Wildlife Fund publication with a cover story was about pangolins (until recently very obscure creatures...). For some reason I started making jokes with my friend Andrea about famous pangolin TV shows of the 1960s: My Three Pangolins; Pangolin: Impossible; The Pangolin Bunch, etc. It seemed hilarious at the time, working late, under pressure. When time came to name my one-man graphic arts company, I called it Pangolin Graphic Design. Then I started another one-man company doing laser light show programs. I wanted to answer the phone the same way for both, so it became Pangolin Laser Software: 'Hello, this is Pangolin, can I help you?'

"Fast forward 40 years, and Pangolin Laser Systems (slightly renamed after I sold it in 2000) is the world leader in this small but fun field. Probably any major laser show you've seen, from the Super Bowl to the Olympics to Disney to Pink Floyd—the vast majority were created and presented using Pangolin software. But imagine if the World Wildlife Fund story had been about aardvarks...."

Ken Ohrn: "My fave naming blunder is Chevrolet, who named a car the 'Nova.' In Spanish, of course, this means 'doesn't go.'"

Bob (partial comment): "If I could be the super-duper all powerful, I don't know, guy for a few hours, I would allow marketing people a maximum of seven syllables for a product name. Seven. If someone used all seven, I wouldn't fire them, but they'd lose their bonus and merit increase for the next two years. Too extreme? Consider this: iPod. iPhone. iPad. Three products. Three product names. Six syllables total! The company that adopted those names managed OK (and I don't work for that company, if it matters). You establish the brand through the quality of the product, not by making its name more bloated and idiotic, or illogical, than it should be physically possible to do."

John Camp: "I agree that naming things can be tough, but OM-D E-M[x]? Give me a break. Bozo the Clown could have come up with something better. 'Bozo' would be better."

Mike replies: Fewer syllables.

John Seidel: "Sitting here listening to music running through my Schiit DAC. It's good Schiit. You should give this Schiit a try, Mike. Dis Schiit's da bomb."

Weekes James: "When we go out to a market in Provence my friend Ian and I skip the market and go for a walk. We meet our wives at a little bar. We each have a nice cold beer and the ladies prefer a lemonade. The prevalent brand in our area is called Pschitt! With the exclamation point. It is meant to sound like the bottle being opened. Needless to say we always announce too the wives, 'You’re in luck! The have the good Pschitt!'"

Soeren Engelbrecht: "When I worked for Nikon in the noughts, we had three lines of COOLPIX compacts: S (~Style), L (~Life), and P (~Performance).

"We of course never told our customers what the letters meant—and they had to figure out themselves that cameras in the 'L' line were mostly cheaper than the 'S' Line. Most people could figure out that the 'P' line was the expensive one. Now here's the really weird thing: The three lines were managed by three product teams, who used different numbering schemes.

"So the L-cameras were simply named consecutively after the release date: L-1, L-2, L-3, through L-24. A lesser camera could have a higher number than a better one.

"The P-series also started out with P-1 and P-2, but that quickly went to two, three, and four-digit numbers. Within the same number of digits, a higher number was usually better than one with a lower number.

"The S-cameras were a mix of the two other numbering schemes—I never managed to understand that fully. Except that any camera with a 'c' appended had WiFi.

"Just imagine being a customer looking for a camera and trying to grasp this...."

Lee: "By coincidence I ordered three pieces of Schiit this morning while you were apparently writing this post. I also subscribed to D&CCT and Photo Techniques until the very end. I'm using isolation time to get my Schitt together."

Mike replies: People love talking Schitt.

Kurt G Kramer: "The current name change that I just don't get and think is stupid is from "Weight Watchers" to "WW". Typically acronyms serve the function of reducing a long name to a short one. International Business Machines became IBM. In this case they went from 3 syllables to 6 syllables. Not only is WW not descriptive of the product, but their name gained weight!"

Mike replies: I didn't know about that one, but you're right, it's incredibly stupid. "Weight Watchers" is one of the iconic brands, extremely well established and well known to people way outside its sphere of business operations. It's even descriptive, which most businesses would dearly wish for. "WW" connotes "world war" and perhaps confuses with "world wide web" and is otherwise meaningless. You might as intelligently change "Coca-Cola" to "CC" or "Ford Motor Company" to "FM Co." Very, very stupid.

Acronyms and initialisms are fashionable, but a lot of them are inane. I thought it was a big mistake for Photo District News to switch over to "PDN." PDN was long used as a nickname among initiates, but it only makes sense if you knew it stood for Photo District News. So why not just keep the name? Besides, the full name was cool, and distinguished their mission from that of magazines for amateurs.

Mike Chisholm: "I'm surprised nobody has so far mentioned poet Marianne Moore's attempts to name what eventually became the ill-fated Ford Edsel. Her offerings included: Thunderblender; The Resilient Bullet; Bullet Cloisoné; The Intelligent Whale, and The Ford Fabergé Mongoose Civique. The list is long (she was obviously taken with the idea), but culminated in the best of all: the Utopian Turtletop."

Olympus to Sell Its Imaging Business

Ach, well, unfortunately my inbox lit up this morning with the news that Olympus Corporation has signed a "memorandum of understanding" announcing that it will be "carving out" (i.e., divesting) its renowned 84-year-old camera and lens business. The Olympus Imaging business will be sold to a private equity firm called Japan Industrial Partners Inc. (JIP) in a deal planned to be signed on September 30th and closed on December 31st. JIP is the same firm that bought Sony's Vaio Group and turned it in to Vaio Corp. six years ago, so it's likely that the former Olympus Imaging will continue independently. The press release specified that the new owners may use such names as "OM-D" and "Zuiko" but didn't specify if it will be able to use the name "Olympus" to label future cameras.  

The Imaging division contributed 5.5% of Olympus's revenue, and posted operating losses for the last three years. According to Bloomberg, restructuring efforts in the Imaging business have been underway since U.S. hedge fund ValueAct Capital Management, which owns 5% of Olympus, placed two directors on the Olympus board earlier this year. No financial terms for the upcoming deal have been disclosed.

Olympus called the digital camera market "extremely severe" and pointedly blamed the "rapid market shrink caused by the evolution of smartphones" for its predicament.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Please help support TOP through Patreon

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Richard T: "For those alarmed by the prospects of Olympus being acquired by a private equity firm: Ming Thein, who I believe has a background in finance in addition to his photography knowledge, has an informative analysis on this. As he writes, Japan Industrial Partners appears to be 'a sort of quasi-government-linked fund that buys domestic brands that for want of a better description, are deemed significant to national interests. A large part is probably not wanting to have major Japanese brands fall into foreign ownership—or at least not publicly.' So 'unlike a western VC/PE, they are unlikely to do an asset or IP strip even though this would be the best option to maximise immediate value given the patents held etc.'"

William Hughes: "My two favourite cameras that I've owned were Olympus. The XA which was an absolute jewel with a fantastic lens, and an OM-4. You could put the OM-4 in one pocket and a 50mm in the other and walk around all day. The OM-4 controls made sense and I absolutely loved the shutter speed being round the lens mount. Speed aperture and focus all under the left hand. I really enjoy and appreciate my digital gear but I love my Oly cameras. I still have them of course.

"Significantly no Olympus cameras since those grabbed me enough to buy them, I picked up and played with every OM-D and then put it down again."

Severian: "Having been among the burned from Olympus film camera days (OM lenses did not have any meaningful path forward in digital, unlike most other brands) I am no great fan of the company, even with my positive feelings about some of their products. Their accounting scandals from a while back should have been sufficient warning that trust in Olympus corporate management on anything was an iffy proposition. I'm glad I steered clear of their entire 4/3 product set(s)."

Mike Ferron: "With trouble in the Olympus camp and Panasonic dabbling with full frame I worry for the future of Micro 4/3. There are some critics of the smaller sensor but as one who has used Nikon FF I see no huge penalty in using the Micro 4/3 sensor for most of my needs. That 20mp sensor that these two companies are using is quite impressive. As far as size, I ask, how small do you want your camera to be? For serious use one needs full-featured well-spaced controls, and cameras that are too small cannot offer one that."

John Krumm: "Olympus has always managed to be both ahead and behind the curve at the same time. It's surprising that they stayed coherent this long through the rise of full frame and APS-C DSLRs, the 2008 crash, the rise of cellphones, and now Covid-19. Hopefully Ricoh doesn't follow closely behind, but I think Ricoh is used to barely sustaining a small operation.

"Maybe the new company will surprise us and move them in a new direction while keeping the Olympus character, a combination of really good lenses, high quality bodies, and excellent sensor stabilization. It's possible the Olympus name will bounce around the world like a retired motorcycle make, seeing production here and there, getting hopes up of renewed glory as some new company tries for a resurrection. I personally had the most fun with their old 4/3 system, jointly developed with Kodak and a few other companies. I now have the Micro 4/3 E-M1, which works very well. I've mostly moved to Fuji and a few lenses, which I find a little more fun. I hope Fuji sticks around, but who knows?"

Richard Nugent: "The 43 Rumors site has an essay by Doug Janis that gives a dark assessment of Olympus's future based on an analysis of the fate of previous JIP acquisitions. Worth a read."

Coronavirus Could Kill a Camera Company

I hope you won't think it's tasteless of me to talk about this. The most important thing in this crisis is the health of people, far and away.

But the global situation is having drastic effects on online shopping—and it's possible that the suspension of normal life around the globe might have the effect of driving one or more players in the camera market to flee the field, either by pushing the companies into oblivion outright, as happened to Bronica, or by causing a more diversified company to pull out of making cameras, like Samsung did.

Most people are inspired to buy new cameras for reasons such as a trip or a social occasion like a wedding or the birth of a baby, or attendance at a big spectacle like a sporting event or a concert. With many vacations and social events curtailed or on hold, camera sales have taken a dramatic nosedive during the coronoavirus outbreak. And that's on top of already shrinking sales caused by camera phones.

A site called visualcapitalist.com recently listed the product categories seeing the most growth, which include disposable gloves, bread machines(!), cold and cough medicines, soups and dried grains and other packaged foods, and weightlifting equipment. Apparently people are thinking of their health while sheltering.

Very Mike-like digression (skippable!): People want to bake their own bread but not make their own soups? Crazy, man. I've baked my own bread, and I make my own soups. Bread machines are the pits. I say, get yourself a basic Instant Pot and make your own homemade soups instead! It's easy, and veggie/whole-grain/legume soups are easy to make at home, without the sky-high sodium content of canned and packaged soups. Homemade soup consumption correlates well with health and with weight loss; eat slowly, and savor.

The variety of Instant Pots can be confusing. Basically, they all do the same thing, with one exception: the WiFi model can be started remotely with a phone app. The newest, fanciest, easiest Instant Pot even has a Sterilize function. (On older models, "Steam" will do it.) The Instant Pot can destroy the geobacillus spore, a bacterium that's so hard to kill it's used to test commercial autoclaves. Cooking rice in an Instant Pot has been shown to reduce aflatoxin contamination, should it be present, to safe levels. A 653% increase in bread machine sales sounds impressive, but how many people were buying bread machines before? Bread machines are the epitome of the gadget you'll use three times and then never touch again, if you ask me.

And the biggest losers? Unfortunately, the only product category that's seen a worse decrease in sales than cameras is luggage. People aren't traveling. Camera sales online are down 64%, according to the report, luggage 77%.

It's quite possible this won't tilt any cameramakers into bankruptcy...most are thought to have sufficient reserves and strong enough fundamentals to survive even an extended restriction in the market...like, say, three years, which is about the longest projected time-frame for the development of a vaccine. So this might be wrong.

Is any company safe?
One company that won't be going anywhere is Fujifilm, which not long ago saw its stock prices soar because of a drug called Avigan, an existing flu drug made by its healthcare subsidiary which has shown promise in helping sick COVID-19 patients to recover more fully. So there's your silver lining.

Mike
(Thanks to Bob Rosen)

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Please help support TOP through Patreon

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Ben P.: "I cannot stress how bad breadmakers are at making bread. If you don't want to knead, then get yourself a stand mixer with a dough hook—it doesn't have to be a fancy-schmancy Kitchen Aid, anything will do—and then use your oven. Honestly, you'll thank me."

Greg (partial comment): "The other sad note is that we almost certainly are going to have a worldwide recession which will further depress the market for cameras. And no doubt because of economics and fear of traveling to 'strange' places, travel will be significantly reduced. And what do people get for their trip? Often a new camera. Added to the already declining camera market, optimism is not warranted."

JOHN B GILLOOLY: "Another very vulnerable group in this environment are professional photographers. I am 20+ years in with a pretty diversified revenue stream across dozens of clients, so I am optimistic. But I returned in early March from shooting a PGA event in Florida and the entire Spring calendar evaporated. My busiest season of the year, reduced to zero income.

"It is what it is. Millions of us are battling our own unique economic challenges that come with this thing. We'll manage."

The Contax Brand, 1974-2005

Apropos the previous post, Roger Bartlett wrote:

Having coined the term 'bokeh' you have a track record for instigating new stuff—so if such a lens were to be created, no matter who the manufacturer, then a lens with this feature set would have to be called the 'Johnston' or at least have the letters MJ included in the name on the filter ring. Mike, you already have a Patreon following—perhaps start a cloud funding drive and get this lens on a production line. A project for 2020.

Well, I had about as much influence on the camera industry as I had on the word "bokeh"—a slight emendation. Here's the only camera product I ever had any direct influence on (and I'm not even absolutely positive about that):

Contax S2b, 1994

Contax released the S2 in 1992 for its 60th anniversary. It was conceived as a "purist's camera," something you might imagine I would have liked. I also liked it because it was similar to the Contax 139Q, the camera I went through art school with. It was fully mechanical, with an uncoupled meter. The battery powered nothing but the meter. Really not a bad concept, if you happen to remember that "independence from batteries" was a value amongst camera mavens and advanced amateurs at the time, as evidenced by cameras like the Leica R6 and Olympus OM-3 (and, negatively, by the scorn heaped on the battery-dependent Nikon FE by Nikon FM fans). The conventional worry, often repeated but seldom experienced, was "what would happen" if you were caught photographing miles from civilization and your batteries failed? Oh no. With a batter-dependent shutter, you'd be SOL. Yeah, like that ever happened to anybody more than, like, twice ever. And the solution was not exactly beyond comprehension...you could just carry an extra set of fresh batteries in your bag. We're talking button batteries, remember, which are tiny and weigh nothing.

However, the S2's meter was a spot meter—the camera didn't have any other metering option. After discussing this with the American Contax rep at the time, I wrote a brief arguing for a center-weighted meter for the S2. He said it wasn't going to do any good, but he promised to take it to Japan. A number of months later the rep got back to me and reported that, much to his surprise, the brass in Japan bought the argument and would be making a variant of the S2 with a center-weighted meter. And the S2b was born.

So that's my sole influence on the camera industry, as far as I'm aware.

Embarrassingly, I couldn't even buy an S2b myself when it appeared in 1994. I was a single parent with a one-year-old and had just gotten hired as Editor-in-Chief of Darkroom & Creative Camera Techniques magazine at the time, and the premium price of the S2b was beyond my pay grade. I think it cost $1,100—something like that—and it was simply out of reach.

You know what they say: Oh well.

Some Contax history
The "anniversary" marked by the S2 was something of a manufactured occasion, in reality.

Here's a brief rundown: Zeiss Ikon first labeled a rangefinder "Contax" in 1932. That was the problem-plagued Contax I, which was essentially released as a "beta" as we might call it today. It was rushed to market and underwent many modifications after release, not really maturing until it became the Contax II in 1936. After WWII, with Zeiss split into West German and East German branches, the East German VEB Zeiss Ikon developed the Contax S SLR in 1949, followed by subsequent Contax models. (The Contax S is where "S2" as the name of the anniversary model came from.) But the Contax name didn't really resonate worldwide because export models were labeled "Pentacon." After the Japanese essentially blitzkrieged the German camera business in the 1960s (Germany had long been identified with cameras like the Swiss were associated with watches), Zeiss stopped making cameras. But in 1972, German Carl Zeiss and Japanese Yashica launched a co-operative venture with the in-house name of "Top Secret Project 130." Yashica would make the cameras, Zeiss the lenses—best of both hemispheres, right? The launch of the new brand did make a big splash in the early and mid 1970s. The first product was the Contax RTS, a beautiful camera with industrial design by the Porsche Design Group, accompanied by lenses in uniform livery made in Germany by Zeiss.

This partnership turned out to be not so cooperative as it appeared from the outside. It was instigated and motivated mainly by Yashica, which licensed the Contax name from Zeiss. Yashica had to order runs of lenses from Zeiss, paying up front, and Zeiss was sometimes less than forthcoming about filling the orders...something that became clear later. Yashica was acquired by Kyocera (originally Kyoto Ceramics) in 1984, and in the '90s Kyocera wanted to follow the hot trend and create an autofocus camera. But when it asked Zeiss to make AF lenses, Zeiss refused! Supposedly the tolerances could not be strict enough for Zeiss's standards (Nikon had weathered lots of criticism for this), so they just said nope, ain't gonna do it.

Kyocera, frustrated, in 1996 introduced its workaround, the Contax AX. The AX used Zeiss manual-focus lenses, but autofocused by moving the entire film plane back and forth! Keep in mind that the film still had to be transported past the gate as it was exposed, and held flat and in position to quite high tolerances, and you'll realize what an undertaking this was. Obviously this was not an ideal way to do autofocus. The AX was expensive as well as large and clunky by the standards of the time, and was understandably not a big seller. It was never followed up. It remains a true oddity in camera history. It was, though, as Barry Reid points out in the Comments, the only camera that could autofocus a tilt-shift lens.

Zeiss eventually did relent and there were a few AF lenses labeled Carl Zeiss made for the ill-fated Contax N, although it's likely Zeiss didn't really have much to do with them.

Back to the S2. Kyocera had swallowed Yashica, but was not shy about outsourcing cameras if it was convenient. I don't know this for sure, but I think it's fairly likely that the S2—celebrating the anniversary of the Contax I, an essentially failed camera that happened to mark the first use of the Contax name—was manufactured by Cosina. If true, one nice thing that would mean is that the S2 and S2b would have direct links to the Zeiss Ikon ZI rangefinder, which was manufactured for Zeiss by Cosina. (Cosina, one of the largest camera and lens OEM manufacturers in Japan, is the maker of Voigtländer cameras and lenses now.)

Another little factoid: Camera mavens were (and sometimes still are!) adamant in preferring German-made Carl Zeiss Contax lenses, but the Japanese-made versions were actually better because all the tooling was new.

The most beautiful true German-Japanese Contax if you ask me was the RTS II, a deluxe film SLR with an electronically controlled shutter, an electromechanical shutter release, and industrial design by Ferdinand Alexander ("Butzy") Porsche. I owned one briefly and had it stolen from me. It would be fun to have one with a Carl Zeiss 45mm ƒ/2.8 Tessar, a lens design that is central to Zeiss history and dates to 1902. You'll need sharp eyes, though—that combination is difficult to focus.

Contax discontinued the S2 and S2b in 2000. After hemorrhaging money trying to bring to market a deluxe and advanced 6-MP DSLR too early on*, Kyocera left the camera business in 2005.

Mike
(Thanks to Roger)

*It's a footnote now, but that camera, the Contax N Digital, was the world's first full-frame DSLR.

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Gaspar Heurtley: "There’s a typo under that picture. It’s not a Contax from 1994, that camera is a Fujifilm X-T100 from 2018."

Mike replies: Twin sons of (very) different mothers.  :-)

Al C. (partial comment): "Wonderful history lesson. Thank you. The Contax S2b has beautiful massing—perfect, actually. Its Fuji 'twin' has such ugly massing. The prism is fake, stacked on, entirely un-inflected by the rest of the body."

Peter: "Wow, memories...I was smitten by the Contax RTS back in the day before I could ever afford one, at the same time that I was smitten by the Lotus Europa before I had a drivers license. But 40-odd years later, I picked up a Pentacon FM, with its proto-steampunk whirligig shutter speed selector, and a 1932 Zeiss Ikon 520/15 folder, both great cameras—maybe no RTS but hey, no batteries to die on you either.  ;^)  "

Mike replies: You need to seek out the episode of "Pawn Stars" in which they buy a Lotus Europa. It'll make you smile and roll your eyes both.

Eamon Hickey: "I've had fun over the years tracing back the origins of camera and lens brands and manufacturers, and this post brings up one of those llttle threads for me. When Kyocera bought Yashica, the company (Yashica) was an integrated lens and camera manufacturer. But Yashica had acquired its lens manufacturing capability only a few years previously by buying Tomioka Optical in the late 1960s. Tomioka had been supplying Yashica with lenses for a couple of decades (and supplying lenses to other camera companies, too). The Japanese-made Contax lenses were manufactured in the Tomioka factory.

"Tomioka, in turn, was founded by an optical engineer who had worked at Nikon from its beginnings in 1917. At Nikon, he would certainly have worked with (apprenticed under?) one of the German engineers (some had worked previously with Zeiss) that Nikon had hired to teach them how to be a lens and glass manufacturer. Connections within connections.

"Something of Tomioka still lives at Kyocera."

Mike replies: So that was it! Tomioka. And I never knew exactly who manufactured the early Japanese-made Contax C/Y lenses. A piece of the story that has always been missing for me. Thank you my friend.

Pierre Charbonneau: "Mike, Have you ever sprung for the Contax G?"

Mike replies: No, but I followed its introduction closely and as it happened I was the first writer in N. America to receive the press kit for the G1. Another of my .15 seconds of fame: I was the first photo writer to receive T-Max 100 and 400 films for testing. One precious roll of each! Oh, how I brag.  :-)

Oskar Ojala: "I never owned a Contax, but since getting into full-frame mirrorless I realized that all my lens options are either sharp on sharper and adapting older manual focus lenses works better now than ever. So I started playing with the idea of getting some older Zeiss lenses for Contax, did some research and bought a 85mm ƒ/1.4, which I like very much for its look. This lead to me thinking 'why not get a Contax body for the original experience? surely they must be cheap now.' I was partly correct; the basic Contax body is indeed inexpensive, but the S2b, which would be appealing since the electronics failing do not render the camera inoperable, is quite expensive and rare. I'm not really surprised though, I doubt many people were tempted by an expensive full manual SLR in the mid '90s."

Mike replies: See if you can find an RX. I liked that one, and it might not be so dear.

Phil Aynsley: "Your words on the 'phobia' regarding cameras featuring batteries, or rather what happened if the batteries failed, reminded me of the lengths Canon went to with the design of the 1981 Canon New F1 (my all time favourite camera, with the T90 a close second). As a Canon technician at the time I could fully appreciate the elegant engineering that went into the mechanism that converted the shutter release from electronic to mechanical by simply removing the 6V battery."

Dan: "Kyocera is an interesting company that seems to get in and out of businesses. In the early '80s they made some top-notch high-end stereo equipment. Then went out of business in that field in the mid-'80s if I remember correctly. I still have my Kyocera receiver from 1982."

John: "I loved my Contax N and G kits and briefly the 645 MF camera as well, before all fell victim to the digital onslaught. There’s a follow-up story: when Kyocera left the business, PhaseOne wanted to buy the tooling and production lines for the 645 cameras. Kyocera refused and destroyed everything. The Contax name went back to Zeiss, which strangely enough doesn’t use it for its new digital camera."

Barry Reid: "Very interesting story about the S2/S2b. It’s amazing how expensive those bodies remain, even now. The 'batteries are for wimps' hair shirt mentality seems to be strong in many film photography fans.

"I do have the AX which is just about the only Contax body, along with the RTS III, which is big enough to counterbalance the Zeiss 28–85mm and 35–135mm zooms! Although, much like the Zeiss zooms, The AX doesn’t seem so large compared with modern DSLRs. It’s still quite an extraordinary experience shooting with one. Even more extraordinarily it’s actually quite an effective AF camera and able to hold its own against the early screw drive AF bodies, say pre-1990. With the PC-Distagon attached I believe it remains the only camera to allow AF with a shift lens.

"The RTS II the most stylish and usable of the RTS line. The original model went too far along with the ‘Real-Time System’ idea—the separation of metering preview and shutter release made it awkward. Something the RTS II fixed along with adding TTL Flash. If only they had added a spot meter option.... Unfortunately that only came with the ginormous beast that is the RTSIII. The 139Q is sweet though, a mini-me of the RTS II and probably nicer to use too.

"However the 159 which superseded it has by far the best spec (fastest shutter, highest flash sync, best selection of modes) of any of the non-motorised Contax bodies. The 159 with 25mm, 50mm and 85mm ƒ/2.8 was the camera my 15-year-old self would have most liked to get his hands on in the mid '80s. Thanks to the end of Contax plus the DSLR revolution, I’ve been able to pick up a really good collection of Contax bodies over the past 10 years or so. Sadly all the hype around the T2 and T3 seems to be lifting the SLR prices now."

Mike replies: The 159 was one of those cameras that always fascinated me but always remained somehow over the horizon, just out of sight. I do believe I finally saw one, long after they were new. I seem to vaguely recall that I bought a used one but learned on trying to get it CLA'd that it had a fatal flaw and couldn't be fixed.

Jerzy Z: "Was it really stolen? I bought an RTS II with 45mm ƒ/2.8 from you in the '90s through listserv for $460, if I remember well. ...Unless you had two copies of the camera, of course. I still have it and it’s an awesome camera. Thanks again for selling it. Best wishes for the New Year."

Mike replies: That's awesome that you remember that. And cool that you still have it. That was my second RTS II. The first one I bought in '85 when I got my first real job after graduating. You could still buy them new then. That was the one that was stolen.

Vijay: It’s intetesting to me that your last two posts have been about the 40mm focal length and Contax cameras. Several years ago, I purchased the Voigtlander Ultron 40mm lens to use with a Nikon FE2, inspired by your earlier article about the focal length. I loved the focal length but didn’t like the eyepoint of the FE2 so I sold the lens. Another article you wrote about viewfinders and eyepoints led me to the Contax Aria, which I love using for its light weight and great viewfinder. For the longest time, I had to 'settle' for using it with a 50mm lens. But much to my surprise, I found a 40mm Ultron in Contax mount listed on eBay a couple of years ago. I bought it and now enjoy the best of both Mike Johnston inspired tool choices! It’s the only film setup I use regularly in my kit. Thanks for your writing over the years!"

Mike replies: Very cool. You're more me-ish than me!

New Look for Nikons

How is it that a deliberately retro digital looks more 2020 and
up-to-date than a black-blob polycarbonate DSLR?

Respectfully proposed: isn't it high time for a new look for Nikons?

A few days I wrote about that great closeout deal on the Nikon D610, and it really is just a heck of a great deal. And I did like that camera. It feels sharp and capable.

But let's be honest. It's not a looker.

It got me to thinking.

Nikons just look old these days.

And dated. They just exude "yesterday."

Not even yesterday...last year. Last decade. Last century. Yeah, that black-blob polycarbonate lump (BBPL) look that came into the mainstream in the 1990s is just plain last millennium.

As with all BBPL cameras, originally it was inherited from the work of the renegade industrial designer Luigi Colani, via Canon. But Colani himself grew old and departed this coil, and anyway his original idea has morphed through so many less talented hands at Nikon that it's merely vestigial...and greatly debased, much as Frank Lloyd Wright's "open plan" concept—originally a subtle idea, in the master's hands—has come to merely mean barnlike interiors with no finishing.

Even the logo looks yesterday. Just because Ford and Coke keep their original typefaces (because they're glorious) doesn't mean everybody should. Yes, Nikon's italic forward-slanting sans-serif typeface was clean and modern...in 1953, when it made its first appearance. Now, it insistently screams "'nineties" to me, like scrunchies, slip dresses and Seinfeld.

Aaaugh!!
And speaking of screaming, I think if I see that poor shriveled misbegotten red "Nikon slash" stuck brainlessly on yet another camera, I think I might! Scream, that is.

A long way back, Nikon asked Giorgio Giugiaro, the famous car designer, to design a few of its cameras. Such was the fashion at the time: Contaxes (a cooperative nameplate from West German Zeiss and Japanese Yashica, later part of Kyocera) were originally designed by Porsche Design Studio (now Studio F. A. Porsche), the industrial design firm founded by Ferdinand Alexander "Butzi" Porsche, designer of the fabled and famous 911 and grandson of Porsche founder Ferdinand Porsche. Canon (in second place, and a striver) hired zany Colani. Nikon followed suite by engaging Giugiaro, who boldly put a red line down one side of the angular F3. Brilliant! It looked new, it looked fresh, like the bright new dawning decade!

...Trouble is, that decade was the 1980s.

Now, like a 90-year old who still pomades his ducktail like he did when Elvis was King, Nikon just keeps insisting on that same little old tired design fillip, doing like they were told by the cool guy way back when.

Same sad red accent a third of a century after it first appeared. Giorgio,
what hast thou wrought? Here on the D610 it's so tired it's literally drooping.

The very essence of anti-fashion is to stick with ancient styles and never change. I've seen hot-rodded Mennonite buggies shined to gleaming that look cooler than most Nikons do.

Black blob is the new old
One proof of this concept is that even the most "retro" of new cameras somehow look much more up-to-the-minute than the average Nikon does. How is that? Yet it's true. Possibly the most retro camera out there is the Fuji X-T30, and somehow even it looks more up to date than a BBPL camera. Have a look. My Fuji X-H1 just looks the business; it's really a handsome camera, whatever else you might think of it. Ditto a variety of Leicas, Panasonics, and other Fujis. Nikon DSLRs are ugly stepsisters. 

Automobiles have "house looks." And even those change from time to time...at least after a few decades they do. (Sometimes not for the better, I'll admit. I miss BMWs.) Even F.A. Porsche's 911, which is famous for staying the same, has changed an awful lot. 

Yeah, I know, cameras are tools and meant to be ergonomic, not pretty. Sony A7 family cameras look better but are said to handle worse. I get that. Then why is it that Canon BBPL cameras look about five times better than Nikon BBPL cameras do? Like Volkswagen sedans, Canons look clean and sleek and grown-up. Nikon DSLRs look blobby and frowsy and dumpy, and a little haphazard, like stuff just got stuck on wherever. You know what they say about camels—horses designed by a committee.

Cool. (I'm ignoring the red accent, because it looks like the
designer hated the idea and some suit insisted.)

Maybe the Z line will be the new Nikon look. Do they really look that good, though? I hear some people don't like 'em. I do like the Z7 myself. I think it's cool, like it would fill the hand like Wild Bill Hickok's Colt—but I'm not sure the Z7 [$700 off!] is pretty enough to hang a whole new house style on (or that Nikon has any intention of doing that).

Glass house
And yeah, yeah, I know, TOP itself is dowdy and frumpy and never changes, and Yr. Hmbl. Ed. is the furthest thing from a fashion plate, and I shouldn't talk. Got that, and yes. But doesn't that mean that if even I think there's a problem, there might actually be a problem?

All I'm asking is, is it time for a new house look for Nikon? A top-to-bottom rethink. Sometimes old is classic, but sometimes old is just old. Enough is enough. Even the Rolls-Royce grill has evolved! Enough with the black-blob plastic-lump look, the tired red bit tacked on like a dowager's pin, and the 1990s-looking Helvetica logo. However sharp and modern Nikons perform, most of 'em do it looking dated. And that's not cool.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Please help support The Online Photographer through Patreon

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Gordon Lewis: "Life is too short to wait for Nikon (or any other camera company, for that matter) to produce something I want. Instead I choose from what's currently available, like it or leave it. So, rather than wait for Nikon to introduce a camera that's more like a Fujifilm X-T3, I bought a Fujifilm X-T3, and guess what? I even mount my old AI-Nikkors on it from time-to-time. It's all I can do not to feel smug."

Thomas Rink: "I've used a Nikon D800 as my main camera for more than five years. A couple of weeks ago, I bought a Fuji X-T20 secondhand as a camera for family snapshots. In regards to aesthetics, I share your point of view. The Nikon is big, heavy and ugly, whereas the Fuji looks small and nimble, much like a '70s film SLR.

"In terms of function, both cameras are similarly competent picture-making tools. They provide everything I need, and the technical quality of the pictures from both cameras is very good.

"But: the Nikon is much easier to use, and handles much more 'fluidly' than the Fuji! There is a button to control each essential function right under my finger. In my opinion, the button-and-command-wheel interface is more ergonomic than the retro-style dial interface of the Fuji. Also, I find the general handling of the X-T20 a bit 'fiddly'; it is quite easy to inadvertently change a setting. This never happened to me with the D800!

"To sum it up: Yes, Nikon DSLRs are big, heavy and ugly, but their UI and handling has been refined during each subsequent camera generation since the '80s."

Larry Johnson: "Your design points are well made but I'll offer a counter view. I rather like the anonymity and blahness my camera (D610) exudes when I'm out in a crowd or alone on a remote trail. It doesn't shout 'hey! Look at ME!'

"As the most modest of the 'serious' Nikon DSLRs it's a notch above a nothing burger, but I keep getting good pictures out of it. I admire the 'look' of the new Leicas but don't want one. I think the little Fujis are nifty looking but I prefer a larger sensor. Furthermore, I can't easily handle their smallness.

"I love the look of the Fiat Spyder but I'm more of a Highlander guy. For me, pretty is as pretty does."

Happy 100th Birthday Pentax!

November 27th, 1919, marked the founding of Asahi Optical Joint Stock Company, the original parent company of what later became known as Pentax.

Asahi had humble beginnings—it was founded by Kumao Kajiwara, a younger son of an old Japanese Samurai family, in the Tokyo suburb of Toshima, for the manufacture of lenses for eyeglasses. After many years of manufacturing lenses, including camera lenses for Konica and Minolta, Asahi Optical Co. Ltd. (as it was by then known) introduced its first camera, the Asahiflex, in 1952. It was the first Japanese SLR-type camera to use 35mm film. Asahi acquired the name "Pentax" (a portmanteau of "pentaprism" and "Contax," a Zeiss brand name at the time) from East German VEB Zeiss in 1957, and from then on all its cameras were called Asahi Pentax. Honeywell was an early importer of Asahi cameras into the United States, where they were labeled Honeywell Pentax.

The beautiful, high-value K-1 II

Recent years saw the company name officially change to Pentax Corporation in 2002. In a complicated and somewhat contentious merger, Pentax became a consolidated subsidiary of Hoya Corporation, a precision instruments company with its roots in glass and optics, in the Summer of 2007. Hoya split off the camera-making imaging division (its chairman calling its acquisition a "mistake") and sold it to Ricoh, a copier manufacturer with a spirited devotion to cameras and photography, only four years later, in 2011. The company was at first called Pentax Ricoh Imaging Co. Ltd., but in 2013 was simplified to Ricoh Imaging Co. Ltd. The old word Pentax, which is now used by no fewer than four separate companies for a variety of products, returned once again to being a model and brand name where cameras are concerned. Thus far, the greatest production of the Pentax-Ricoh partnership is the very highly regarded K-1 Mark II full-frame DSLR. [UPDATE: Yr. Hmbl. Ed. may have misspoken. See the Featured Comments below.]

Happy 100th Birthday and congratulations Pentax, and thank you Ricoh!

Mike
(Thanks to Ned B.)

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Please help support The Online Photographer through Patreon

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Greg Heins: "It’s crazy, I know, but I tend to judge cameras by how they feel to use and by what the final prints look like. On both counts, my K-1 and 645Z consistently bring me joy. Not that I’ve tried everything else, but still...."

Tex Andrews: "Re 'Thus far, the greatest production of the Pentax-Ricoh partnership is the very highly regarded K-1 Mark II full-frame DSLR.' Oh, but I beg to differ! And I own this camera (upgraded version), and it is splendid. But I would say that thus far the greatest production remains 2014's 645Z. At its introductory retail price, it was at the time by far the least expensive digital medium format camera made, and it came with stellar DR and ISO range specs, plus video and more, all in a very robust, weatherproof body. I also own this camera.

"The K-1 Mark II is a very fine camera, but broke little new ground in the market's overall context, except perhaps in price. The 645Z was quite the bombshell, on the other hand, even more so than the 645D of 2010. So much so that both DPReview and DxO Mark both chose to bury their testing results for years (DPR has a somewhat lame excuse...DxO has none), as those results at the time made it the best camera out there in terms of IQ. Fuji has since caught up and with one camera exceeded Pentax's great achievement, but it's notable that the 645Z remains thoroughly competitive five whole years later, going on six. That is a whole lot of time in the camera world! Happy Thanksgiving, Mike!"

Mike replies: I must have had a synapse-lapse—as I was writing this post somewhat hurriedly yesterday afternoon (our last training session for pool league was yesterday evening), the medium-format Ricoh-Pentaxes completely slipped my mind.

At this moment, for Thanksgiving, you can save $3,199.95 on this camera and 55mm lens kit. That's not the price, that's the discount. Over the years since 2014 I've never heard a bad thing from a 645Z owner about the camera, and I've encountered a number of owners who, like Tex and Greg, are quite content with theirs. If I had to guess, I would say that's probably partly due to the satisfactory nature of the camera itself, and partly due to the calm, easygoing, phlegmatic disposition that seems to be characteristic of Pentaxians.

In any event, yes, I stand corrected, the greatest production of Ricoh's stewardship of Pentax thus far would be the 645Z.

Gaspar Heurtley: "I’ve been a Pentax film shooter since I was a kid,. My first camera was a Spotmatic my father gave to me when I was about ten years old. Still have it and use it from time to time. In digital I’m an Olympus shooter (I use a good old trusty E-M5 Mark I), but the lens I use the most, by far, is the Super Takumar 50mm ƒ/1.4 from that Spotmatic. I find the 100mm equivalent to be just perfect for my style of shooting, and after using that lens for more than 25 years (I’m 37 now) I know exactly how it’s gonna work in any scenario at any given aperture. As much as I like my E-M5, I really don’t care which body I use, just as long as I can keep taking pictures with that Super Takumar. I don’t think I’ve ever been that committed to anything."

Mike replies: You and Henri. He used the latest M bodies as they were introduced, but always stuck by his faithful fifty, a seven-element collapsible 50mm Summicron (1953–1960). It's not a bad thing to remain committed to a lens. Cartier-Bresson also sometimes carried a 35mm and an 85mm, but the then-President of Magnum Photos, when I visited in New York City, told me that you could page through book after book of his contact sheets (some of which I got to look through) and see only an occasional single picture that wasn't taken with the 50mm.

Dillan: "The first camera that I ever used was my parent's Pentax Program Plus, an SLR camera from the early 1980s. I enjoyed it so much that I have been shooting ever since."

Tom: "What Greg said. The ergonomics of Pentax cameras feels natural to me. The 645Z may have a few too many buttons, but at least it's nearly impossible to push one by accident, like say the GFX 50R. I've had more Pentax cameras than I care to list (see above photo) and along with some superb lenses using them is second nature. Photo is of my printer room with a display of old film cameras. Top shelf bodies are all Pentaxes (pun intended), except the Yashica 124G and a squirt gun camera."

Open Mike: Poetry

["Open Mike" the not-always off-topic Editorial Page of TOP. It appears on Wednesdays.]

-

I just sent a private message to my Patreon supporters with my ideas about when Leica "lost its soul." One more thing, though, that I didn't mention...people have soul, companies don't. We're speaking figuratively and metaphorically and imaginatively when we talk about companies having a "soul."

But the subject reminds me that there are many qualities that there are words for or that can be described that just can't be defined or "nailed down" so to speak. I wrote yesterday a little about Peter Henry Emerson, surely one of the more interesting (odd?) figures in the history of photography, so I looked to see what books about him are hanging around on Amazon. The classic, of course, is Nancy Newhall's P.H. Emerson: The Fight for Photography as a Fine Art, which is still procurable at reasonable prices. I read that one many years ago and found it tough slogging in places but engaging overall (there's something intrinsically boring about books about photographers—maybe it's what Martin Mull touched on in his famous quote "writing about music is like dancing about architecture." It's easier and more exciting to see a photographer in his or her photographs than it is to sift through details about all the effort of them doing their work). There's a newer title I don't know, a 2008 exhibition catalog, Peter Henry Emerson and American Naturalistic Photography, by Christian A. Peterson, which was published by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Christian Peterson was Acting Curator of Photographs at the MIA at the time. After more than 30 years at the Museum, he now writes independently about the history of photography and is a dealer in out-of-print photographic books who issues three catalogs a year. Here's his website.

Anyway, in the process of that, I noticed that there's a slight but expensive Emerson title called Poetry in Photography—not Emerson's own title; the book evidently contains selections from his writings, a little bit of which goes a long way.

It's funny, but one adjective that's been a linchpin of my own critical notions over many years has been the word "poetic." Yet I've never really developed the idea and certainly never defined it; I'm not sure you could define what "poetic" means where it relates to poetry, much less as it relates to photographs. I always tippy-toe around the subject. I don't even like talking about it.

Soul is another word like that. I used to have to dismiss 96% of all the photographs I see and now I probably have to dismiss 99%, and the hardest test for any randomly-encountered photo to pass is probably the simple question of whether there's any soul or poetry whatsoever in whatever I'm looking at. Is there a person in there, behind that random-seeming snap? A viewpoint—not literally but conceptually? Something, anything being said? Anything to be gleaned about the being behind the finder? If it's what's called expressive photography, well, does it express anything—anything at all? With most camera-pointing and "testing" photography today (most photographs these days are test shots!—tongue partly in cheek there, but only partly), not a scintilla of soul that can be inferred. I feel awash in a vast sea of sharp bright photographs of settings with nothing in them. It's not that the photos have nothing to say, it's that the camera-pointers don't.

And yet, what the hell does "poetic photograph" even mean? How in the world would you define a photograph with soul? It's too glib to say you know it when you see it.

Maybe your soul senses it.

I kid. Sorta.

People might have soul; and a lot of the people who used Leicas for many years did indeed have soul—so many they're like a parade. But remember, one real reason Leica is famous is that a whole generation of vital and vigorous yet penurious young photographers, photographers who felt an urgency about photography, found good solid sturdy castoff Leicas for sale on camera store shelves in the 1960s and '70s. They were there because people like thee and me who wanted the latest and greatest thing had all moved on to SLRs, which were better, and shucked off their limited and limiting once-expensive 1950s rangefinders. It's those many photographers' souls that rubbed off on Leica, eventually, not the other way around. Heck, in the '50s, Zeiss was top dog among German cameramakers; Leica played second fiddle. But for Zeiss's finicky and fragile shutters and Leitz's durable ones, we'd all be talking about the soul of Zeiss this Wednesday, not of Leica.

Companies don't have souls. It's just that we sometimes wish they did.

Mike
(Thanks to Scott Abbey)

Disclaimer: Whenever I say anything about my own notions about photographs, I'm only talking about myself. I'm not suggesting that my ideas are or should be valid for everyone or even anyone else. We all own our own photography, and different people have very different ideas of what they're after, and what they like, and why. That's as it should be, and is not something that anyone should or could seek to change.

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Please help support The Online Photographer through Patreon

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Jonathan Morse: "Yes, the term 'soul' is as slippery as a banana peel. But an aid to thinking in an unpeeled way about what you attempt to see through the finder might be an essay written in Russia 102 years ago by Viktor Shklovsky: 'Art as Technique.' Here's a quote. 'Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects "unfamiliar," to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object: the object is not important.' The essay is online."

Graham Byrnes: "Maybe not soul, but Zeitgeist. If Leica fitted the needs of poets, it was a poet's tool; if many poets used the same tool, chances are it was a tool that helped them make their poetry. And so as ever, someone wishing to be a poet would be inclined to equip him- or herself with such a tool, neglecting the past tense.

"As for the word 'poet,' it seems to have been mutated in a similar fashion: the poets of the School of Athens or Alexandria were more likely to be physicists or mathematicians or physiologists: they were doing science but saw 'poetry' as a fitting description for their enquiries into the truth of the world, while writing with elegance and precision. I expect the poets of the ancient world would be disappointed to see their discipline pass under the heading 'art' when science and art separated in the modern world (see e.g. C.P. Snow on The Two Cultures), after which many modern poets were proudly opposed to the scientific world view. They may have been happier to see technological devices used to capture and transport images of the world in a search for its 'truth.'

"Then one could also say much the same for the lost anchor of art, where fashion, nostalgia and marketing allow the word to take any meaning that can be forced into the public habits of thought...."

Kenneth Tanaka: "I don’t subscribe to such metaphysical concepts as 'soul.' But companies / organizations of people do usually exhibit an ethos at some points in time, usually near their inception. Leica was positively swimming in Lake Ethos for decades until it nearly drowned."

Mike replies: ...Or until it started selling tickets to sightseeing tours of the lake. (Are we torturing this metaphor yet?)

Curtis: "Reading or writing poetry can help promote the type of non-linear thinking that is required to produce soulful photographs."

Aaron C Greenman: "And Leica cameras don’t have a soul either, despite this (nicely shot and effective) advertisement (titled 'Soul'!) about a Leica camera’s lifetime, including being born in Wetzlar. Or the Leica official launch video for the M-10D, which described the camera as 'digital body, analog soul.'"

Martin D: "Thank you to our fellow TOP reader Jonathan Morse for his reference to the essay by Viktor Shklovsky: 'Art as Technique.' I admit I was completely ignorant of the man and the essay. A very perceptive essay. And yes, Shklovsky's reflections about the role of 'defamiliarisation' do help me think about what I do when I take a photograph. A real find (for me)."

David Comdico: "It’s interesting to note that the root of the word soul is anima, which means 'breathe of wind' which recalls many creation myths where God breathes life into humans and 'animates' them. Anima is also the root of animals (something like 'beings that breathe') and so all animals have souls (vegans +1) which is then contrasted with their form. Related, animus highlighted the mind/body duality and Socrates emphasized this quality of the soul (reason). It’s interesting that the term has become negative over time and codified in legal definition (is it reason that sways a jury?). So, I think it is reasonable to say that a camera can have soul. And one who wields such a device is always re-enacting a primal scene, the demiurge who breathes life into a pile of mud (a kind of sol, perhaps freckled with rare earth minerals)."

Geoff Wittig: "Peter Henry Emerson and American Naturalistic Photography is probably a niche title for a limited audience. It's a very nice, modestly sized book with good reproductions of photographs spanning the transition from Pictorialism to 'straight' photography around 1880 to 1920.

"I find it fascinating because this period matches the heyday of the Tonalist movement in painting. Tonalism emphasized moody, emotionally resonant landscape paintings, often representing intimate forest or field views rather than grand scenics. The photographic aesthetic highlighted by this book really strikes me as tonalism on film."

Dont' Worry, You'll Be All Right

My worries, reported yesterday, are not unreasonable...and yet there's no reason to be unduly pessimistic.

Yes, smartphone cameras have replaced digicams almost entirely, and this has hurt the camera-makers' bottom lines. Yes, sales of digital cameras and interchangeable lenses are down, and that's painful for the camera companies too. And it is very likely sales will decline further—Canon itself not long ago predicted that its own sales will soon be half of what they were in the peak year of 2012 (fast receding, alas). But the fact is that despite these contractions, interchangeable-lens cameras (ILCs) and the lenses for them are still selling very well. The camera industry continues to be blessed with a robust customer base. Sales will continue to decline to well below the peak; but the peak was very high. What remains as the market stabilizes will easily be enough to sustain the development and sales of new cameras.

I recall an article in Popular Photography in the 1980s which explained that the mass market had always supported the enthusiast market—the people who Kodak (and me, too, taking its lead) liked to call AdAms, for "advanced amateurs." (Art photographers are advanced amateurs, too.) That article, way back then, had a section of gloom-and-doom because point-and-shoots were robbing camera stores of accessory sales. A good SLR needed extra lenses and a flash and filters and a bag and a strap—follow-on sales galore—whereas a point-and-shoot had a fixed lenses and a built-in flash and no filter threads, and came with its own strap and could fit in a pocket or a purse. No accessories needed, or even possible. Disaster?

Maybe it was...for stores. Somehow, though, serious cameras continued to be made.

Recently there have been lots of articles sounding the death knell of "stand-alone" cameras. The Wall Street Journal had an article back in May called "The Tech My Toddler Will Never Know: Six Gadgets Headed for the Graveyard" by Joanna Stern (it's behind a paywall so I won't link to it)—it probably goes without saying that one of the doomed gadgets named by the article is the ILC. And two days ago Om Malik published a nice blog post called "Camera sales are falling sharply," in which he compares cameras to servers, and likens companies such as Nikon to Sun Microsystems. Interesting.

And he's perfectly correct—camera sales are falling sharply. But take a closer look at his second chart, which goes way back to the '70s.

Somewhere in his excellent book Life on the Mississippi (which is wonderful and essential reading for Americans in my opinion, whether as a companion to his two masterpieces or on its own), Mark Twain recounts that the river had been shortening at a certain rate, due to the fact that "loops" called meanders can be short-cutted when the river cuts a new channel. He then calculates the rate at which the river's length had been contracting, and extrapolates that by such-and-such a year the river would be gone altogether. (Forgive me if this is ill-described or badly reported—it's been decades since I read the book.) Of course he's being funny—the river obviously can't get shorter than the minimum distance from its source to its mouth as the crow flies.

I think there's a parallel to the market for ILCs and their lenses. Although (unlike the river) there's no absolute minimum size for it, just because the camera market is shrinking fast doesn't mean that it will continue to shrink and shrink until there's nothing left of it. In fact, what the second chart in Om Malik's article makes clear is that camera and lens sales are still more than three times what they were in the film era. Canon's ILC sales can shrink to 50% of peak and it will still be selling far more cameras and lenses than it was in 1989.

Sure, certain companies might go out of business, or leave the camera business; the pace of improvements might slow down; AdAms might be happier with what they have and keep their cameras longer; the used market might continue to cannibalize new camera sales; and so forth. Styles and fashions in what people prefer are fickle and will surely shift. Change will happen, including changes none of us can foresee. But a current trend doesn't imply eventual catastrophe, necessarily. It's just the normal warp and woof of business, which always has its ups and downs.

As I said yesterday, the important thing for people who love photography is that photographers continue to have what they need to do their work. Maintenance of an entire industry at 2012 levels is absolutely not a requirement for that to continue to happen. Gloomy memes in the press notwithstanding, camera sales are falling, but the sky is not.

Mike
(Thanks to several readers)

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Featured Comments from:

Donald Johnson: "As a software engineer who has deployed on Sun Servers(then), Linux Servers (later), and Cloud-based containers (now), I don't think it is an apt comparison to Nikon or other companies. I can run the same bit of code on all three types of servers, and get the same end results. The difference between the types is around such things as scalability and redundancy, and the cost of getting the same performance. Sun died because you could get the same result on much cheaper commodity Linux boxes, even if it took more of them to do it (and more effort as well). Also not mentioned in the comparison is the rise of Open Source software, of which Linux is one of the most successful examples. Is there even an equivalent in the photography world? Right now the bits from a phone are not the same. The real advantage for phones is the ease in use and sharing, which makes the quality 'good enough' for most people."

Kenneth Tanaka: " The future of cameras doesn't worry me in the least. Conversely, the current state and short-term future of photography itself (beyond hobbyist spheres) is certainly somewhat of a worrisome, incoherent mess right now."

Open Mike: I Worry

Y2K—Anno Domini 2000—wasn't that long ago in grumpy curmudgeon years. The best-selling vehicle in America then was the Ford F-150 pickup truck—same as now. The best TV sitcom was "Seinfeld"—same as now. I was young, dynamic, nimble, had a full head of hair, and was a chick magnet—same as now*.

But it was a long time ago as far as the camera market is concerned.

Then, each new generation of cameras seemed to offer amazing strides forward. Many photographers still hadn't "gone digital," but more and more did every day. Every year, digital camera sales rose. Hopes were high, the world was young, the sky was the limit. Photography (which I called digital imaging in Y2K) was booming.

And where the camera market is concerned, I was worried about the same thing then as I am now.

What worried me was the lowest common denominator. It just seems to me that with all kinds of products, first companies compete by trying to make their products better, and then, later, they compete by trying to make the products cheaper. And, eventually, cheaper dominates.

Digital cameras are truly high-tech products. Unlike, say, a view camera, they require technology that no individual, no matter how clever, can fabricate alone. What would happen, I fretted, when the mass market decided it had what it needed, and digital cameras became commodities to be mass-produced in huge numbers for the largest possible segment of the market?

You see, it's always been my contention that, to us, the market doesn't really matter and that fashions and styles and trends don't really matter. What matters, to my way of thinking anyway, is that photographers have the freedom and the tools they need to do the work they want to do. So what would happen if the digital camera market devolved to the lowest common denominator and the equipment and supplies that serious photographers needed became casualties of market forces?

Back then, those concerns were, shall we say, shouted down. According to the responses, I was an idiot**, the world would always need cameras, they would always give us what we wanted, new cameras were coming along all the time, the market was huge, there'd always be a niche, etc.

Which could well be correct. But I worry.

It looks like that lowest common denominator product, the one I was worried about in 2000, has at least assumed a shape. Here's what it looks like:

Credit: Samsung

It's an amazing, incredible achievement, don't get me wrong.

It's also not enough of a camera for every serious creative photographer.

We can still buy high-quality cameras, obviously. The competition to make cameras "better" is still ongoing. But, there's at least a little to worry about there, too. You might not have been paying too much attention over the last couple of years, but the camera industry has been in decline. All five of the top brands have seen their sales take a swan dive. The companies are obviously still being creative—witness my lately-beloved X-H1; and the market is still dynamic—witness the recent en masse shift to full-frame mirrorless; and, just like it was doing in Y2K, Canon is still putting downward pressure on prices—witness the full-frame Digital Rebel, the RP.

But it's not same-old same-old. The day that was dawning then is heading into, let's say, late afternoon now. Is that an allowable metaphor? Is it possible that we're fated to live through the entire lifespan of digital cameras, like some of us did with, say, cassette tapes?

We were okay when this happened with film. Granted, there hasn't been a whole lot happening in the 35mm-film-camera manufacturing segment in recent years: there's no latest-and-greatest tempting our wallets there. A fair number of those players have gone the way of all things. But it's a fair bet that everyone who who still needs film for their work (admittedly, there are fewer and fewer such people) can still mostly get what they need, within certain limitations. They're not being catered to any more, but they're okay.

Will it be that way with digital?

Could be.

Or, we could all end up stuck with only what the mass market wants. Like I say, I worry.

But then, I always have.

Mike

*TOP's official statistician is out to lunch, so there might be anomalies in this data.

**Which might be true, but the fact was not relevant to whether my argument was valid.

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Featured Comments from:

Pete_S: "Why worry? Do like most of us: start using a mobile phone for everyday photography. I have a phone, three years old. In June I bought a new camera. It looks like phone, everybody confuses it with a phone, but it is not a phone for me. It is a camera with three lenses. I don't use it like a phone. I take pictures with it and share them, sometimes instantly. I have a good DSLR with many lenses. I use it for 'serious' photography and for fun. It suits me perfectly. But sharing is pain. So on I just enjoy taking pictures with it. Mostly not seriously, enjoying just like I would walking on a beach on a beautiful day. No hurry. Just pure joy."

huw Morgan: "I think we're looking at something like the turntable market here. A mass market for cameras will disappear and will be replaced by a healthy niche market. The great masses have already shifted (my Facebook is filled with back-to-school pictures of the kids of friends and relatives—all taken with phones). The question is: what will the niche market look like and who will satisfy it? Will the large companies like Canon, Nikon and Sony leave the market and be replaced with smaller players? Or, will they persevere and just reduce the size of their camera divisions? In any case, if the turntable market is anything to go by, we'll still have lots of choice. Innovation will continue."

Thomas Paul McCann: "There is nothing in this world that someone can't make cheaper and worse."

marcin wuu: "As one of the people still working with film I gotta say, I'm feelin' less and less okay as the time flies. Not only because of the middle age crisis, mind you. The costs skyrocket, quality and availability of services plummet. I'm slowly planning to move to digital, but damn, it's a shame—I truly believe that for what I do, digital is really not the way to go."

Dennis: "Check out Thom's article '2019 Starts Badly.' It ends with an outlook that's neither rosy nor gloomy. Worst case, I think we end up with the situation you describe at the end of the article. Imagine if Sony didn't come out with an A7XIV and an RX100MCI in 10 years! What if the A7III was replaced in, say, four years instead of one year? And what if Nikon didn't come out with a D6 in time for the Olympics? It's really astounding to me that we still are seeing so many product releases—cameras, lenses, third party lenses, tripods, bags, bags and more bags, even medium format gear. I guess everyone is fighting for market share at this point. The market is big enough for 'stuff.' How much, how often, and for how long, I don't know, but enough to keep me happy, I'm sure. Just so long as I reserve the right to grumble about what's not available."

Mike replies: Thanks for the heads up. Very interesting article, as usual. I'm glad he thinks Nikon is negotiating the contraction well.

Thom's Fujifilm Roundup

Thom Hogan (right) has just produced a flurry of Fujifilm camera reviews—how he churns this stuff out so quickly astonishes me—but the article you ought to see if you're in the Fuji camp is called "Rounding Up the Fujifilm XF Cameras." It's his overall summary of Fuji's current product lineup, setting aside and omitting the X-Pro2.

As usual, he's very interested in the marketing and business angles, and his comments about APS-C's shrinking "niche" are trenchant. The camera market has been volatile lately and his summary of the changing boundaries are as good as I've encountered.

He makes a number of specific statements that I'd like to comment on. I'll add those later today, in an Update—you can go to the source and read the article for yourself first.

Probably best to hold your comments till the Update appears, so I'll close the comments to this post this morning and open them up again later this afternoon. If you have your own reactions to Thom's article, hold that thought.

Mike

UPDATE late Wednesday evening:

1. Thom's basic premise has to do with what he calls "camera squeeze." There are $1k smartphone cameras on the low end nipping at the heels of 1"-sensor cameras, and full-frame (FF) cameras coming down in price from above to compete with high-end APS-C models. This means there's a narrower window for APS-C cameras to fit while keeping them "right priced." Within that window, he feels, there's not as much room as there used to be to spread out the number of models that Fuji has. Remembering that he's excluding the X-Pro2 from his discussion, that means there are six Fuji models between $400 and $1,300, and he thinks that's too many. He thinks there ought to be more like four, with the "two inner points...curved slightly more towards the lower boundary (e.g. US$500, US$700, US$900, US$1250)."

My comment: That sounds perfectly reasonable, although I don't know why he picked $500 when the X-T100 he likes so much costs just $400 right now. I just have one thought...that since there probably isn't going to be a successor to the unpopular X-H1, mainly because any camera I like gets orphaned (*cough* GX8), I suggest that the $1,250 spot go to an "X-T4" that's a merging and a melding of the current X-T3 with the X-H1.

(I assume the X-Pro2 can continue to be priced above his range because it's so well differentiated from anyone else's offering. Nobody else has anything like the X-Pro2.)

2. Thom also says [the italics are his], "(To Fujifilm: one reason the X-H1 underperformed is the lens lineup. At the high APS-C level, Fujifilm just doesn't have the extensive telephoto lens lineup that's necessary to fully attract wildlife and sports shooters.)"

My comment: I'm on shaky ground when I say this, because I'm not a telephoto shooter (although I'm very much looking forward to wringing out my new-to-me 100–400mm). But I really don't think Fuji should chase that market. Those lenses are very expensive to make, and aren't sports and wildlife shooters why Canon and Nikon keep their high-end APS-C DSLRs around? So people with long FF tele lenses can get more effective reach?

Frankly, I don't know why all ultra-long tele guys aren't shooting Micro 4/3, but then as I say long telephoto is not my bag and never has been, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.

3. When Thom is talking about Fuji differentiating its products and finding "ways to stand out," he says that "key among them is the size/weight thing."

My comment: This matches my own personal experience as a consumer. I like small, light cameras, and I experienced a bit of a personal dilemma when my desire for IBIS collided with the relatively hefty size of the X-H1. I'm going to accommodate to the X-H1, but "accommodate" is the word for it—I'd like it better if it were the size of the X-T3. Yeah, I know all the arguments about why that supposedly isn't possible, but I really do feel like the Panasonic G9 and the Fuji X-H1 just shouldn't be bigger than the Sony A7III. They're not big cameras and anybody could get used to them, but I think Thom is right about the size and weight being key. Those "Fujicrons" loom really large for me among the reasons why I like Fuji.

4. I'm going to risk quoting a rather long section here (Thom reads TOP at least sometimes, so if he objects I can change this). I'll truncate the bullet points so as not to pirate too much of his material.

"Thus, if you're a serious general purpose APS-C shooter, I'd say that today Fujifilm is your best choice. [Bold text his.] That's because:

• In the DSLR world, Canon (EF-S) and Nikon (DX) basically went 'all consumer,' and mostly serve up low-cost convenience cameras and lenses. [...]
• In the Canon mirrorless APS-C world (EOS M), the emphasis seems to be on very compact cameras with modest build quality, and again only with consumer convenience lens choices. [...]
• In the Sony mirrorless APS-C world (E mount), you have one basic camera that has been updated into four (A6000, A6300, A6400, A6500), and you may not like that camera design at all. Lens choice originally looked like it would fill out, but Sony abandoned that work to produce more full frame lenses.... [...]

"So what it really boils down to is this: are you a serious APS-C shooter? 

"I'm not sure what would define you as such a photographer any more, unfortunately."

My comment: It's curious, but that guy is me. The only thought I have to contribute under this heading is that Thom writes under the basic assumption (which may reflect objective market research for all I know, but still) that buyers would naturally choose FF if they could. [John Camp put this better in his featured partial comment, below.]

Speaking just as a camera user, I don't share that assumption. I've repeatedly used FF cameras and repeatedly been underwhelmed. I just don't see a clear enough differentiation in the results to make it worth my while to spend more money and carry bigger lenses. (Consider this. Those lenses are 630g vs. 300g and  $1,598 vs. $899. I have the one I want. [See also the picture by Ben Jacobsen linked by Matt in his featured partial comment below.]) Maybe I just don't value the properties in pictures that makes others prefer FF; after all, I made the same decision in the film era, shooting 35mm after repeatedly trying medium format. Granted, other people have other requirements. Or maybe there's such a kneejerk correlation of "bigger" with "better" in the general population that FF is preferred even among people who can't actually distinguish the differences in the pictures or the equipment. But if I personally were given the choice of a $1,250 "X-T4" with IBIS and a $1,250 Canon RP, and they both had all the same equivalent angle-of-view lenses available, I'm pretty sure I would still prefer Fuji.

Fuji's lenses would be smaller and cheaper—but that's not the only reason. It's possible it boils down to being a cultural thing: the Japanese tend to be charmed by exquisite, small, gem-like objects, and Americans drive enormous four-door pickup trucks as personal conveyances. We like big; they like small. I probably just come down on the side of Japanese aesthetics in that regard is all.

—MJ

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Matt (partial comment): "Thom claims Fuji's top cameras are almost as big and heavy as full frame cameras. Coming from Canon and Nikon full frame, I disagree. Even Fuji's bigger lenses, like the 10–24mm ƒ/4 OIS, are nowhere near as cumbersome as Nikon's 16–35mm ƒ/4 VR. Just look at this picture and tell yourself the two systems have the same heft.

[...]

"What Tom underrates is the strength of the Fujifilm system as a whole, in particular the appeal of Fuji's small yet very capable lenses. With Canon, Nikon and Sony APS-C cameras, you have either low-quality consumer lenses or big full-frame lenses. They offer almost no quality APS-C lenses, unlike Fujifilm. If you add the size, weight and cost of full frame lenses, you cannot claim that full frame trumps Fuji in terms of bulk and price. I'd even be happy to pay a bit more for the same quality output in a smaller, lighter package!"

beuler (partial comment): "Bigger sensors and bigger lenses output higher resolution (spatial and chromatic). I take this as fact. The majority of FF users will never use all the resolution available to them, but they value owning it nonetheless. This phenomenon mirrors the SUV syndrome closely. You might say the Japanese value owning only what they can use, while Americans value owning as much as they can afford."

John Camp (partial comment): "I think Thom makes a fundamental mistake in his overall argument, and that is, he assumes that most people still pay a lot of attention to sensor size. A person like Ctein, who could said to be quite persnickety about print quality, finds a good deal of satisfaction in a Micro 4/3 print, as do other persnickety people. So I think photo enthusiasts are no longer as focused on sensor size as they once were, but rather on other things. Fuji, for example, is its own ecology. It's like Leica. They're different. You either want what the Fuji or Leica cameras offer, or you don't, and it's not about the sensor."

Matthew (partial comment): "Over the past ten years I've become one of those older guys standing behind the counter in a local camera store, and the shopping emphasis has shifted substantially over that time. Image quality, and its sensor size association, is no longer the defining factor in the hobby of camera-choosing. They're all good, so design and suitability become deciding factors. We're past the time of the 'Best Camera,' and instead look for what will serve each individual photographer the best."

John Krumm (partial comment): "These days I don't pick cameras by sensor size (or at least, it's way down on the list). To me it comes down to how the camera feels, how it works, how the images look I get out of the camera, and what lenses are available (do I like them). Most important is this: does the camera make me want to pick it up and use it a lot? Sensor size is more of an afterthought."

MikeK (partial comment): "I think, broadly speaking at least, that a fair proportion of people would opt to go FF if there was only a minor price difference."

Nat Young (partial comment): "I respect Thom and read his blog, but he seems to have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to photographic hobbyists. Hobbyists aren't gearheads, as they don't necessarily want the latest and greatest. However, like gearheads, they find equipment part of the fun. They enjoy the process of tinkering around with lenses and cameras, as well as the images they produce. For the hobbyist, the smaller formats are a dream."

Paul Amyes: "Theoretically, long-lens shooters like myself should be flocking to Micro 4/3. My experience has been that using Micro 4/3 for bird photography has been very mixed. I like the compact size of my E-M1 and G85 with the Panasonic 100–400mm; what I don’t like is the noise when shooting at ISO 3200 which is quite often with small birds in the understory of the forest. It is a very delicate balance with removing noise and maintaining fine feather detail.

"This year I finally broke down and dug the the old Canon 6D out of the back of the cupboard and bought a copy of the Sigma 150–600 Contemporary. What a difference! It’s not all beer and skittles though. I miss the light weight, the EVF with prechimping, and focus points to the edges of the frame. I’m now waiting to see if Canon can make a well specified full frame mirrorless camera."

Is Canon On To Something Here? The Elusive Fun Factor

Canon EOS RP and RF 35mm ƒ/1.8 IS lens.
Photo courtesy Canon Ireland.

In the previous post I asked my old friend Josh Hawkins (former camera store manager, longtime photojournalist) how he likes his new Canon EOS RP (at $1,299, the lowest-priced full-frame camera ever at initial pricing) and this morning he answered:

"I’m really enjoying it. I’m used to using Canon in live view a lot. Focus at ƒ/1.4 is much better in live view, so it’s a really small step for me to use it all the time. I’m a much more flippant photographer with the RP. I think that’s good for me right now. I’m just having a lot of fun with it. I used it for several weekends with the RF 35mm ƒ/1.8 IS ($449), and I was really delighted with that lens. Far more than I should be. It’s got an excellent flavor/mojo/vibe, call it what you will. A lens that cheap shouldn’t feel that good. It is completely oversized for a 35mm ~ƒ/2 though. I’m now trying my 50mm Leica Summicron DR, and other things in my closest, and having a good time with that. I miss focus with the DR constantly but it’s a lens with great mojo that I’ve never gotten comfortable with before. Again, just having fun taking fun pictures for me. It’s a good space to be in."

I spent a few hours last night poking around the Web reading the conclusions of reviews of the RP, and here's my meta-analysis summary report:

It might not technically be the greatest camera with the latest features, but it's a lot of fun to shoot with and the reviewer enjoyed it

That's all the reviews I read in a nutshell.

So my question is, how did strange concepts like being a lot of fun to shoot with and enjoyment somehow get separated from our notions of what a great camera is?

Think about that for a minute.

Shouldn't those things come first? Or at least be equal?

Consider what Tim Bradshaw wrote the other day when I wrote about modern cameras being too complex:

"Thank you for reminding me why I never want to buy another digital camera. Today I took out my Pentax 67 II for the first time in, I think, two years. I think I had to check to see which way the exposure compensation dial worked, but that was it: the rest of it was muscle memory, down to the use-the-self-timer trick to avoid having to carry a shutter release cable. And its not a camera I ever used that much. I have two digital cameras, and every time I swap to the other one I have about a day's worth of nausea trying to work out which of the several hundred parameters I left in some odd state (even though I never do that). At least the menu system on the Ricoh makes sense. I am done with this absurd, useless complexity."

I keep my ear to the ground in this hobby, listening for hoofbeats. And although few people come right out and say it, I think there's a lot of frustration out there with the diminishing fun-factor amongst the evolutionary dead-ends of ultra-competitive geeky specsmanship. Mastering stills/video hybrids has gotten to be like a university course in a subject you don't like, and over every outing looms the possibility of a pop quiz.

I'm sure Canon's engineers aren't paying much attention to the RP any more. It was built to the brief and they've moved on. They're no doubt beavering away building the S1R killer, the upcoming Canon FF mirrorless flagship über monstercam, which will be an insanely complicated camera-like product that, like a Mercedes, will have 87 onboard computers and, like Photoshop or Microsoft Word, will be impossible to fully understand or master. And all the review sites will say it's a "great" camera but it's got 987 features and it needs three more, and this feature is measurably but not noticeably poorer than the Z7 and that feature is measurably but not noticeably poorer than the A9 so it's not perfect, for some angels-dancing-on-a-pinhead forum-disputation value of "perfect."

If Josh is right and the RP is a lot of fun, I wonder how such a thing happened. Canon certainly isn't in the business of providing its customers with fun. Is it possible that they've built a great camera accidentally? As in, they tried to build a small-and-simple "Digital Rebel" version of the new R mount for the much pooh-pooh'd entry level, beginner, price leader, backup-body tier of the perceived market, and they came up with something that's actually fun and satisfying to shoot with? How else did such a thing happen, except inadvertently?

Meanwhile, they've actually built a good camera for once—one about which a longtime camera buff and everyday shooter like Josh can say "I’m just having a lot of fun with it." Could be they're on to something. I just wonder if anyone realizes it.

I want to live in a world where fun to shoot with and I enjoy this is valued more highly than diminishing-returns OCD levels of time-stamped techy perfection that will fade in a few years, if not months, like the bloom on a cut rose.

Do yer research
I want to know what I'm on about, so I'm gettin' my peeps to send along an RP and one of those 35's Josh likes. I'm not a big Canon guy, and FF doesn't hold any allure, but I have a feeling I ought to check this out for myself.

Mike
(Half of this old-fashioned weblog's support now comes from direct voluntary donations from fans via Patreon. If you enjoy the written word and like The Online Photographer, here's how to start a Patreon donation. Thanks to all my Patreon supporters! And thanks as well to all those who have upped their original donation amounts. I notice every one, and I appreciate it. It's very kind of you.)

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Bob Keefer: "Fun is essential in any pursuit. I took my most recent job when, as I told the boss, it looked like a fun place to work. The fact she agreed that fun was important sealed the deal. Back to photography: Fun is what has kept me shooting with Pentax DSLRs lo these many years. Their cameras feel good in the hand and are fun to shoot with. I mean, who really needs perfect autofocus?"

robert e: "Yes! Now that you say it, fun really was the thing for me with cameras like the Olympus XA, and the quality missing from so many cameras that passed through my hands. Sadly a headline we never see on those camera-measuring sites: 'The most fun camera you can buy today,' or 'The most fun cameras ever'...."

Josh Hawkins: "It's good to know I can still sell you cameras...kind of. There was actually a point on one of my camping trips where I was shooting with the RF 35mm where I started wondering what your opinion of it would be. I've got experience with lenses but not like yours. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on both items."

Ned Bunnell: "Josh has the right attitude. We’ve definitely lost sight that first and foremost photography should be fun.

"I was very fortunate to attend three workshops with Charles Harbutt in the early '70s. In my opinion he’s underappreciated as one of our great photographers and teachers in the past 50 years. He made a point in each workshop that if you don’t feel a little rush every time you see one of your prints come to life then you probably should find another hobby. He also soundly admonished anyone who asked if the camera made a difference.

"I’m sure if Charles were alive today he’d have a lot to say about how technology has not made us better photographers.

"I could never match Charles’s insights or way with words. However I think the problem with technology today is it has made us far too serious about what’s in our bag. For the vast majority of us, photography should be personal, fun and simple...which can be easy to forget if you’re obsessing over the latest and greatest.

"Sorry for the diatribe, but here’s another example of why the fun or simple joy in photographing is apparently not an accepted attitude if you are 'serious.' I went to a Peter Turnley workshop in Cuba in 2014. I only brought my little Ricoh GR, while the other attendees came loaded for bear with multiple bodies and lenses. Peter instructed everyone they only needed one camera and that if they were going to use a zoom lens, tape it down so you were only shooting at 28mm or 35mm. When he got to me he smiled a little and said I was OK.

"I know most attendees looked at me wondering why this old guy had only brought what looked like a nondescript point-and-shoot camera. I had a blast walking the streets of Havana, the GR hanging unnoticed at my side. I think by the end of the week a few of the attendees realized my little camera wasn’t really a toy. The problem was and still is that many folks don’t take the GR seriously. (Note: this is not a plug for the GR. It could be any camera that allows you to effortlessly get the technology out your way so you can just take pictures.)

"Fortunately, I carry as little gear as possible with me these days and focus instead on maximizing the joy that I still get when I see a photograph and depress the shutter. And if that means you don’t consider me a serious photographer, I couldn’t care less. Thank you, Charles."

[Ned is the former President of Pentax USA and has always been a dyed-in-the-wool photography enthusiast. —Ed.]

Mark Sirota: "I can very much relate to this. We spent spring break this year in your neck of the woods—Watkins Glen, Corning, Ithaca—and all I brought with me was a Nikon FM2N with a 50mm ƒ/1.4. And it was fun in a way I was really not expecting...I loved having only two controls, focusing manually through a bright, effective ground glass, and being selective with my shots. Got nothing exciting out of those two rolls, but I've got dozens more in the freezer that I had been contemplating throwing out, and now I think I'll shoot them. Haven't had that much fun in a long time.

"This isn't the only film camera I shoot with—I do shoot 120 in a pinhole camera more frequently than 35mm. But that doesn't have the same fun factor. My big question is, had the camera been mechanically identical but digital, would it have been that much fun? Hard to say."

Curt Gerston: "Fun has become my top criteria for a number of years now. I figured out ultimate speed or image quality wasn't what I wanted (I chased that for a while, though). So, yeah, pump up the fun factor on our cameras please!"

John Krumm: "For me, fun photography has come down to a wide to normal small prime, and a body set to manual. I use manual so much now it's second nature, and the small primes keep my cameras light enough (though I would welcome a lighter K1). When this Canon system came out I found it appealing immediately, and it was because of that affordable prime lens."

Gerard Kingma: "Re 'Canon certainly isn't in the business of providing its customers with fun'—and yet, I had the exact same experience that Ned Bunnell describes, but with a Canon M2. The whole photographic world p*sses on the Canon M system, and perhaps deservedly so, but I had the honor of attending a week-long workshop with Jay Maisel, together with 15 other enthusiasts loaded with tons of in-your-face DSLRs. When Jay saw me with the Canon M2 and its tiny but excellent 22mm ƒ/2 prime, I saw a glint in his eye but he said nothing. We went to a farmer's fair in rural Maine, I talked to people and matter-of-factly shot the most wonderful portraits one after the other of people who otherwise froze up or skittered away at the sight of the big guns. I've had tons of fun with the M2. Probably because no one takes me seriously with it."

Mike replies: A camera no one takes seriously is a big asset. It's one reason why it's so relaxing to take pictures with a phone.

I first learned this when I was doing portraits in the mezzanine of the art room when I taught high school. My usual lens was a little Carl Zeiss 85mm ƒ/2.8 Sonnar with a small and unimposing front element—a lens I was "slumming" with until I could save up my money for the magnificent Carl Zeiss 85mm ƒ/1.4 Planar I really wanted (below). But a friend loaned me one of the faster Zeisses with its much larger front element, and I noticed that my portrait subjects were noticeably less comfortable in front of it. There was something about that huge front element staring at them like the eye of a giant squid, seeing into the secrets of their hearts, that just made them tense.

It was intimidating to be "looked at" by this giant front element. But they
sure have held their value—this one's for sale on eBay right now.

I went back to the little ƒ/2.8 Sonnar (discussed near the end of this long post) and never bought a Planar.

Tom Burke: "Absolutely. My Canon 5D Mark IV is a much better camera than my Canon 750D [Rebel T6i in the States —Ed.], both in terms of the specifications and the files it produces, but I seem to enjoy using the 750D more—have more fun with it—than the 5D. Possibly just because it's lighter? Easier to handle? Less complex? More in tune with the sort of Canon (D)SLR I've been buying and using for 30 years? I don't know, but I do know I'm a happier bunny with the smaller, simpler, less-good camera."

FujiFILM?

Clean and attractive

Should Fuji stop emblazoning the word "Fujifilm" on the front of all its digital cameras? Wouldn't "Fuji" do just as nicely?

Changes happen. Pentaxes used to be made by Asahi and were engraved "Asahi Pentax." Contax, as a marque name, was owned by Yashica which was eventually bought by Kyocera, but none of the cameras said "Yashica" or "Kyocera" on the front of the prism. Nikons used to be made by a company called Nippon Kōgaku (Kōgyō Kabushikigaisha, 日本光学工業株式会社, Japan Optical Industries Corporation. The company was renamed Nikon Corporation, after its cameras, in 1988*. —Wikipedia). But Nippon Kōgaku (not to mention "Japan Optical Industries"!) was too long for a top plate.

Mike
(Thanks to David Zivic)

*And the lenses couldn't be called Nikon because Zeiss objected that it was too close to Ikon, Zeiss's premier model name. Hence Nikkor.

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

B&H Photo • Adorama

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Tim Bradshaw: "Almost certainly not: I suspect strongly that 'Fuji' is a word which the company can't assert suitable rights over, which means anyone can label their camera 'Fuji' and there would be nothing that could be done about it."

Franklin Berryman: "It doesn't matter what it says under the tape."

David Goldenberg: "I'm pretty sure that the name Nikkor came before Nikon and the dustup with Zeiss. See here, where it says that the first Nikkor camera lens was an 'Aero-Nikkor' made in 1933. The first Canon camera, the Hansa Canon, in 1936, also had a Nikkor lens. Nippon Kogaku didn't enter the camera business itself until after World War II. I have always presumed that the Nikkor name was meant to follow in the European tradition of giving lenses names, like Tessar, Sonnar, Elmar, etc. Except that Nippon Kogaku used the same name for all of their lenses, rather than using the names to distinguish among designs, or later, by Leitz, maximum aperture."

Grant Cunningham: "In the 1980s, Fuji's corporate name was Fuji Photo; their cameras were labeled Fujica. In the mid-'90s, as the digital revolution came on the horizon, they renamed the company Fujifilm and adorned their cameras with the new corporate logo. Now that we're in the digital era, their cameras are stuck with an incongruous label that would have been more appropriate 35 years ago—and the camera brand they used then would be perfectly at home now, had they only kept it!"

Niko X: "The examples you mention (Kyocera Yashica Contax, Asahi Pentax) are far longer and offer little more than historical/ownership information. 'Fujifilm' has more significance, being a reference to the company's film heritage, which is still relevant today. Isn't its praised color science based on the 'feel' of its emulsions? I say keep 'Fujifilm.'"

George Feucht: "Simple: while Acros exists, call yourself 'Fujifilm.' When you take Acros away from the world, you are not allowed to ever say the word 'film' any more."

Mike replies: There's lots of bitterness out there about that, isn't there?

Kalli: "This makes me think of how Panasonic brands their cameras as Lumix. As much as I like my Panasonic G80, which is a lot, I can't stand the Lumix moniker. I get that Panasonic is a long word and not a particularly sexy brand name, but Lumix just sounds like…like a pretentious brand name.

"That said, part of what annoys me may be how I think the Lumix logo on the not-pentaprism housing on Panasonic cameras doesn't look good. On the GX line of cameras the L is bigger, than on the DSLR-style cameras, which makes the logo look nicer and maybe even fitting for the boxy GX cameras (their DSLR-style cameras hardly distinguish themselves style-wise, but I tend to like the looks of the GX bodies—maybe that says something about which brandname/logo fits each?). Maybe if I'd buy a GX9 I'd start referring to my camera as a Lumix instead of a Panasonic as I do now?"

Mike replies: That reminds me of a good joke from when I was a magazine editor and had to deal with corporations all the time:

A behavioral experiment: ten monkeys are confined in a small room. In the middle of the ceiling is a hook and from the hook hangs a bunch of fresh bananas. Under the bananas in the middle of the room is a stepladder leading right up to the bananas.

No brainer, right? But every time a monkey tries to climb the stepladder to get the bananas, sprinklers in the ceiling douse all the monkeys in the room with ice water, which they hate.

So whenever a monkey tries to climb the stepladder, the rest of the monkeys set upon him, pull him off the ladder, and beat him up. Soon enough, none of them tries to climb the stepladder any more.

Then one day, one of the original ten monkeys is removed from the room and replaced with a new monkey. The new guy sizes up the situation, wonders why no one has done the obvious and gone to get the bananas, and begins to climb up the stepladder. At which point all the other monkeys set upon him, pull him off the ladder, and beat him up. After two or three tries, he, too, no longer attempts to climb the ladder.

Then another of the original monkeys is replaced by a second new guy, and the same thing happens to him. Only this time, the first new guy joins in with all the other monkeys and helps to beat the new guy up. Except he doesn't know why he does this. All he knows is that everyone else does it and it seems to be the accepted thing to do. So he goes along.

This process is repeated until all ten of the original monkeys have been replaced.

Now, none of the monkeys in the room has ever been doused with ice water. But whenever a new guy comes along and tries to climb the stepladder, everyone else beats him up. None of them know the reason for this behavior. It's just the way things are done, and the way it's always been.

And that explains corporate culture.

So I'd guess the reason why Panasonic doggedly sticks with "Lumix" is that whenever someone suggests doing something else, he's pulled off the stepladder and gets beaten up.

Richard Parkin (partial comment): "The brand story I’ve always liked is that giant Sharp electronics brand takes its name from the pencil they made 100 years ago."

Save the Tax: B&H's "Payboo" Card

[Full disclosure: I'm a B&H Photo affiliate. Purchases from B&H through my links benefit me. So I'm not an objective outside observer here. —MJ]

Desperate times call for desperate measures. In October of 2018, B&H Photo, as a result of the South Dakota vs. Wayfair Supreme Court decision, began collecting sales tax on interstate sales in 22 states. This put it at a disadvantage compared to some of its competitors.

As a corrective, B&H is today implementing a give-back program for its customers called "Payboo." It struck me at first as a rather odd name, but at least it's unique rather than anodyne, which is practical in the Age of Google. Under this plan, you apply for the B&H Payboo credit card and use it to make your purchases at B&H. You still technically pay sales tax (this is important because it means you are not required to self-pay the tax in your home state, as you are now), but B&H pays you back by applying an equivalent reward instantly at checkout, thus effectively nullifying the sales-tax hit for you.

Implementation will vary from state to state, and Payboo doesn't affect international sales. (I'll just mention that it's especially good news for those of us living in New York and New Jersey, because we were hit with sales tax even prior to the Wayfair decision, on account of B&H has "physical presences" in our states, and now we get relief through Payboo.)

You still must apply for the card, but once you do, the tax-back reward is instantaneous at point of purchase, whether you're in the superstore on buying online. For more information, check out B&H's FAQ page about the new program. To check if your state is affected, click on the "Check Savings" link near the top of the page at the link and enter your Zip Code. Note that people in some states were already not paying sales taxes.

But beware—be sure you don't carry a balance. The interest is very high.

I had a credit card only once in my life, when I got my first "real" job in the 1980s. I quickly racked up debt to the limit, compulsively buying the then-new supercool Compact Discs, or CDs, which now slumber in boxes in the barn. (Smart purchase decisions, Mike.) The debt then took me two years to pay back. The lesson was clear: credit cards are not for me. I haven't had one since—all I've had for the past 30-odd years is one debit card.

But I buy a lot of things through B&H, so I think I'm going to make an exception this time. Tax relief for photographers—or at least for this photographer—that's a cause I can get behind.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

B&H Photo • Adorama

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Dave (partial comment): "Good luck if you make a late payment. The fine print says the APR is 29.99%! Any tax savings will be eaten up—and then some—by the interest charges. Nice idea by B&H, but as is said, the devil's in the details."

Mike replies: I added a sentence cautioning about this to the post.

Geoff Wittig: "This may seem bizarre, I realize. But I don't actually mind paying the sales tax. No, really. Follow my logic here. I love my photography toys, but honestly they represent a luxury purchase. I live in NY State, and the sales tax I pay at B&H goes to pay for things like highways, schoolteachers and the State Department of Environmental Conservation. (Okay, it also goes to pay for tax abatement for grifting billion dollar corporations, but you get my point). So I'm not sure I feel happy about helping B&H dodge a bit of social responsibility. As the saying goes, taxes are the price we pay for civilization."

Bob Rosen: "B&H is not going to 'dodge a bit of social responsibility' by not paying sales tax on your purchases. As it states in paragraph four of their FAQ, they will continue to 'remit sales tax in accordance with state laws and regulations.' Obviously, this program appears to be an agreement between B&H and Synchrony Bank, and the tax credits given to customers will somehow be reimbursed to B&H out of the income Synchrony hopes to make on their sky-high interest charges to anyone foolish (or careless) enough to carry a balance on their account."

John Camp: "Not paying sales tax is the reason that we no longer have camera stores in many towns—I just bought a Z6 kit over the Internet and saved a bit more than $200. That's why people in NY buy cameras from Samy's in California, while people in California buy cameras from B&H in NY. The country really needs a federal sales tax on Internet purchases, with the money then divided between the states according to population. Right now, sales tax is an extremely difficult issue, because with local options, a single state can have hundreds of different sales tax rates, depending on where a person lives, because of local tax options. A single federal tax (that also barred state sales taxes on Internet sales) would avoid that problem, and probably bring back some local stores."

Real Options

Just musing here. Mulling over the comments about the Range Rover thing, how's this for a concept....

A.) you pay a healthy amount of money for a luxury car, maybe double what you'd pay for a similar mainstream non-luxury version of something similar, b.) you get presented with a list of options, and c.) tick as many boxes as you want, configure your car just the way you like...

...NO CHARGE.

That's having options!

I predict the first company to do this will make out like bandits. Kia could do it, maybe. As a differentiator. Or Genesis.

And lest you say this is off topic, oh no, because it's exactly the way I'd like to buy premium (luxury) cameras. Pay one price, and they'll configure it the way you want it. Put everything on it, take everything off it, or anything in between.

To my knowledge only Leica has ever done this, with its à la carte program with film M's back in the day (and you paid an à la carte charge but nothing past that, right? I think), but that was mostly for cosmetic choices.

Mike

P.S. I'm sure people will say it can't be done. Nonsense. If it was what the market expected and the only way anyone could make money selling premium cameras, everyone would be doing it.

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Want to help?

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Speed: "Prix Fixe."

Walter, from girlfriends account...: "Sorry to disappoint, within this à la carte program Leica charged and charges for everything extra, besides a hefty basic fee to do so at all."

Brand Sunsets (and Kodakit)

I wish there were such a thing as "brand sunsets." A sunset provision in public policy, as you might know, is "a measure within a statute, regulation or other law that provides that the law shall cease to have effect after a specific date, unless further legislative action is taken to extend the law." It would be nice if brand names had to be retired after the conditions which earned them their luster in the first place had changed irrevocably for the worse. So many great brand names get dragged through the mud after their glory days are gone.

The "brand sunsets" idea is just idealistic fantasy, of course. You could never enforce such an idea, because so many companies have complex arcs during the course of their existences. So I'm just musing here, not suggesting serious reform. But maybe there could be a word for when an older, trusted brand has been seized by miscreants and the public's residual trust in the name is being exploited in what can be interpreted as, well, swindles.

Consider the situation with "Kodakit." A company that happens to share the same name as the former august, principled, ethical, legendary and trusted American photographic giant, Eastman Kodak, which I once heard described as "the bluest of blue chips*," has set up a division, Kodakit, which pilfers pretty much every conceivable photographic right from the people who own them...photographers, which Eastman Kodak used to serve so well. Its contract details a rights grab with all the integrity of the small print in a smarmy, cynical fly-by-night "photo contest."

Why? Because "to manage copyrights…is a pain point for [clients]," in the words of Kodakit's chief marketing officer. Do an assignment under contract for Kodakit, and you surrender your "entire copyright." You aren't allowed to keep your own outtakes (!), you can't use the shot for your own promotion, and you can't even claim that you're the person who took the picture you took! Then-Kodak-CEO Jeff Clarke called this "building upon [Kodak's] longstanding legacy as one of the most trusted names in film and photography." Right. Stripping the copper piping out of the once grand old building might be a better way to put it.

It's so much more convenient not to have to be fair and ethical.

Several websites are sounding the alarm about this. The two I've skimmed are PDNPulse and PetaPixel, and I refer you to those sites if you want the full rundown. Suffice it to say I wouldn't touch "Kodakit" with someone else's ten-foot pole, and I don't think anyone else should either.

Last ray of sunlight
Pie-in-the-sky though it might be, one excellent example of brand sunsetting did occur, and with one of photography's most august company names, too: when the Leitz family sold Leica, it forbade the buyers to use the Leitz name. You'll never see Ernst Leitz on a post-Leitz-era Leica.

That's the way to do it.

Because really, is what Kodak doing worthy of Kodak? Shame on Kodak for besmirching Kodak.

Mike
(Thanks to Michael J. Perini)

*"A blue chip is a nationally recognized, well-established, and financially sound company. ... Blue chip companies are known to weather downturns and operate profitably in the face of adverse economic conditions, which helps to contribute to their long record of stable and reliable growth." (Investopedia)

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Here’s the situation

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Featured Comments from:

Geoff Wittig: "One of the wackier recent attempts to strip-mine the Kodak brand for residual value involved a scheme for renting hardware and software to permit the customer to 'mine' for Bitcoin. Near as I can tell, this is a vaporous electronic faux-currency about as solid as pixie-dust and unicorn dandruff, hence a fertile field for get-rich-quick schemes. The same dynamic is at work with Polaroid. Once a solid brand name for instant photography, it's now evidently a label anyone can stick on a piece of shabby plastic stuff for a licensing fee."

Michael Perini: "If the process of swindling the creator's rights to his or her own images under the guise of streamlining the copyright issue isn't bad enough, the next step is that if the the client 'rejects' the work (or pays a pittance for it), the rights are passed to Kodakit. They now have an ever growing set of stock images that they own but didn't pay for.

"One would hope that common sense among photographers will cause this effort to whither on the vine. Disgraceful."

Is Apple Showing Overt Hostility to...Us?!?

Forgive the possible paranoia—it's election day in the U.S., and we have a clash of different cultures in this country at present. (The book American Nations by Colin Woodard is a readable and entertaining deconstruction of this that I recommend—if you read only one book about North America and the U.S., these days that should probably be it. But I digress.)

...So paranoia aside, as I was saying, maybe it has become time to keep in mind that Apple is now a direct competitor of the entire camera industry. I said directly. Indirectly, does that mean it's becoming antagonistic to established photographic culture as it's been practiced for the past 70 years or so?

The signs are small as yet. Exhibit one: it killed its own Aperture app—aimed at, and useful to, people like us. What, couldn't they afford to keep it going? Exhibit two: I don't remember where off the top of my head, but an Apple spokesman recently corrected an interviewer to claim that Apple is the number one camera manufacturer in the world. Exhibit three: there's no SD card slot on the new Mac Minis.

It's tempting—a little too tempting—to explain that last in conspiracy-theory fashion, by suspecting that Apple is relegating people who use "old style," unconnected, large-sensor, interchangeable-lens cameras (ILCs) to the purgatory of using a dongled card reader that takes up a port because...well, Apple no longer likes or approves of the likes of us, nor does it wish to support us.

We're the competition? We should be using our Apple cameras (AKA iPhones) like other good citizens?

I mean, I do. My iPhone is firmly ensconced in my camera kit and in my daily practice. But I also use my Fujis and Panasonics and my full-capability photo editing programs (like, um, Aperture was) and my Epson printer. But maybe Apple no longer supports me or my creative life.

If so, that's a long, loooong way from the original stated Jobsian mission of the Mac, which was to enable creative people to create. Ordinary everyday non-computer-geek creative people. And I know whereof I speak there too: the Apple Macintosh was what enabled me to become a writer in the first place, period, back when the Orwellian hero hurled the hammer at the huge screen image of Big Brother. In my little study on a locked corridor in the stacks of Baker Library at Dartmouth, I literally cut up paper manuscripts and taped the pieces to the wall to reorganize written works, and laboriously retyped short story manuscripts again and again to revise them. Then along came the Mac and let me do in minutes what used to take me hours. I honestly seriously doubt I would be a writer today if it weren't for the v.1 128k Mac I used in 1984 and the seventeen or so Macs I've owned or used since.

I'd hate to think that the now-mighty juggernaut wants the likes of us to wither up and go away. Who would be the Big Brother then, hmm?

Dyspeptic musings? Maybe. I'll probably feel better after the election's over. You might have to give me a week or three.

Mike

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C.R. Marshall: "The book recommendation reminds me of The Nine Nations of North America by Garreau."

Mike replies: Yes, you're right, it's a direct descendant of Joel Garreau's 1982 book, and builds on and updates it.

Matt Anderson: "It’s interesting how differently the same facts can be framed. That Apple wishes to be seen as a camera manufacturer and has invested so much in computational photography and democratizing the taking and sharing of pictures could be seen to indicate that it is the biggest ally we have. Big-name Apple executives (like Phil Schiller) are reported to be photography nuts like us, using DSLRs and digital medium format as avid hobby photographers.

"More evidence? The latest iPad Pro just announced may be the best photo-editing computer (and value on a cost per image computing cycle) ever, and its introductory keynote and ads featured Photoshop, Lightroom, and connection to DSLRs prominently.

"While I’d prefer to see the SD card slot continue (and it does in the iMacs), Apple’s focus on portability could be seen as a miscalculation about what Pros need and/or a bad forecaster about the direction of storage, and not an overt war on independent photography.

"The narratives we put around facts to give them meaning to us make up so much of how we see the world. Maybe that’s something useful to remember as we hear the election results tonight? (Whatever the results and whatever your leanings.)"

MikeK (partial comment): "I'm not sure Apple hates us, so much as it just doesn't care that much. Leaving off SD card slots and USB ports might be seen as an echo of the decision to leave a floppy drive out the original iMac (which might seem prescient now, but there weren't really any other options in removable storage back then).

"What really proves their ambivalence to me, though, is found on the bottom of my mouse. On my old work Mac (2011 vintage) when the batteries died, I needed only swap them out for another set of (rechargeable) AAs. On its replacement, the batteries are non-removable and it must be charged via the propietary USB cable, which plugs into the bottom of the mouse, thus rendering it completely unusable when being charged. They could have put it on the front, but no, that would compromise the aesthetics by about 0.01%. It wouldn't be so bad if the OS gave more than about five minutes warning of the mouse's paucity of power....

Mike replies: It's pretty indulgent, that form-over-function thing they do. But I also like a lot of things about it, for instance the insistence on simplicity.

Yonatan K: "From the very beginning, the Jobsian ethos was to let creative people create...as long as they did it in the way that Apple thought best. Just to be clear—I am now fully entrenched in the Apple gear-o-sphere, but I didn't cross over to the dark side until OS X made its debut precisely because the previous OS was an inflexible black box: it was the Apple way or nothing. This principle hasn't really changed; Apple has just gotten better at covering all the bases (except the ones that they don't want you to use anymore). Rant over."

Scott Symes: "I am unhappy about the SD card slot going away too but.... Maybe you should consider it from the other side. Let's say the traditional camera manufacturers are failing us. Why are they not doing more to build connected devices in this age of constant connectivity? Snapbridge, Fuji Cam Remote, etc...NOPE. This is not what is needed. This is the traditional camera manufacturers being hostile to us. Build us the cameras that connect with the rest of the digital image ecosystem. This is overdue."

Michael Perini: "I don't think Apple hates us. It's just that traditional enthusiast/professional photography is seen by them as an increasingly irrelevant niche.

"When they killed Aperture after recruiting professionals to build their business on it, it was still one of the most popular App store Downloads. Apple's model is iPhone pictures stored on Apple's servers. They view dedicated stills cameras as dinosaurs. Apple has been right about an awful lot of things, and they may be right about this too. But that doesn't make it any easier for those of us who prefer traditional photography and like to be able to upgrade their own computers. They look at traditional camera companies with their lack of connectivity as dead men walking. They may be right about that too.

"So while they don't hate us, they are not going even a tiny bit out of their way to accommodate us. Even their choice of the fairly obscure P3 Video Projector Gamut and color space was a message—the Adobe RGB and ProPhoto RGB folks can do it our way, or buy a PC.

"PC's had 10 bit color workflows four years before Apple.

"I have been using Macs since 1985; I doubt I'll change, but I remember a time when the creative community were their only customers. I think we deserve better even if our pursuits are not 'cutting edge.'"

Joe Holmes: "I won't offer any opinion whatsoever on your crazy, paranoid, delusionary psycho-rant, but I will note that I dearly loved Apple's Aperture and I miss it like crazy. The interface was vastly superior to Lightroom (which makes me feel claustrophobic); it let me scroll thumbnails at top speed unlike Capture One, and, with one exception, its interface was smooth. The counterexample: allowing unmodified letter keys to perform actions rather than standard command-keys. I don't know how many times I thought I was typing a keyword but accidentally ended up typing a whole string of commands which I then had to try to undo. I've been using Capture One for more than a year now—it's the closest thing out there to Aperture—and I still miss Aperture all the time."

Mike replies: Made me laugh.

Ed Hawco: "I am in a constant emotional loop with Apple innovations: Outrage > Ambivalence > Acceptance > Approval. Then the next innovation resets me back to outrage.

"A classic example is the move from the original iPhone connector to the Lightning connector. It just seemed so pointless and manipulative. Now I'm in awe at the Lightning connector and how universal and useful it is. I suspect I'll go the same route with the SD slot. From Apple's point of view, it probably seems silly to build an SD slot into the unit when probably only 5% of Mac Mini users need an SD slot. Those in the 5% can buy a dongle! Or they can use the SD slot that is built into many monitors. In my case, I rarely use my 2012 Mac Mini's SD slot because it's hard to reach (due to the unit's placement on my desk). My Dell monitor has one right there on the side, within easy reach, so that's where I go.

"Hey look, I don't even have a 2018 Mac Mini yet and I've already gone through the outrage loop!"

T. Edwards: "While it's true that paranoid people do, in fact, sometimes have enemies out to get them, I think there's another explanation here. Apple dropped the card slots from all (I think) of its laptops, too. Along with old-style USB ports, HDMI ports, etc. Now you have to get dongles and adapters. I think the purpose is to jettison everything possible to free up space inside and make products smaller overall.

"I use the SD card slot on my 2103 era MacBook Pro all the time, but I have had friends who own other Macs ask me—what's that little slot for? So they never use SD cards. I would guess that there are enough people out there who either a.) don't care at all about this or b.) will buy adapters. Apple isn't alone in this. I've been eyeing the new Lenova Yoga 930—a fantastic thin, light, laptop/tablet—and it, too, just has to USB-C (I think) ports.

"As for Aperture, my uneducated guess is that keeping that going and doing raw converters for new generations of cameras and dealing with the kvetching of photographers was just not worth the time. I mean, when you are selling $1,000 phones like hotcakes, why do you want to task employees to do low-return work on a photo editing program?"

Open Mike: What's All This Mean?

This might be a short post, because my answer to the above question is "beats me."

And it could be even shorter because thunderstorms are moving in, and if the atmosphere really gets to thrashing I might have to turn off the computer.

But...quite a day yesterday. I haven't even covered all the news yet. But if you admit the idea that "camera culture" is a thing, and a thing distinct from photo culture, then, clearly, Photokina '18 is a watershed moment. Here's the capsule review:

Sony, relatively new to the camera business and very ambitious, becomes a "throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks" kind of company, embracing everything from a tiny FF fixed-lens camera to the old pellicle mirror idea (before that, last seen dying a prolonged death with the Canon EOS RT, a camera I loved but the market decidedly did not). Eventually it alights on full-frame mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras, and the spaghetti sticks to the wall: people love 'em. Sales soar, and Sony, fickle as ever, dumps resources into full-frame mirrorless (FFM), plunging its old APS-C lines into benign neglect, discontinuing the SLTs and responding to criticisms about the FFM lens line with an ambitious flurry of pro-oriented paperweights.

Meanwhile, the flourishing used market, the sufficiency of older models, the rising cost of upgrading, and the slowing of technological development puts a lasting damper on the camera market. Suddenly it's not just point-and-shoots AKA digicams being pillaged by smartphones—it begins to erode the DSLR market as well. Prestigious Leica seems to be quietly copying many of Sony's ideas, but putting its own spin on its takes on those ideas. Even Complacent Canon starts getting shaken. By some metrics, Sony begins to look like it's...winning.

So at some point, Canon and Nikon (ever mindful more of each other than of other competition or even of the market, in classic Japanese corporate fashion) decide that Sony indeed has the magic formula and they'd better protect themselves. Giant Panasonic, evidently not reaping enough profit from sustainable energy and kitchen appliances and the lovingly reimagined SL-1200G, and feeling increasingly ghettoized in the Micro 4/3 box, wants a piece of the Sony-identified pie too, and gets a creative idea to expand its longstanding Leica partnership in an innovative new way, bringing Sigma into the picture too, and the L-Mount...what's it called? Not "consortium"...alliance, that's it, alliance—the L-Mount Alliance is born.

So now the camera industry is poised, one would think, to a.) move away from legacy SLRs and consign that antiquated 1950s configuration to the dustbin of history at long last and b.) to annoint FFM as the new serious format-and-camera-configuration standard.

The only trouble being, it would seem, that the market really hasn't decided that's what it wants, entirely.

I mean, what if Sony's FFM cameras are already saturating the segment? Can the potential energy of the unmet demand really sustain the move from one and an eighth players (Sony and Leica) to four big players, one of them a three-company consortium (er, alliance)?

Is everyone (and his brother, and his uncle) going to start buying FFM system cameras now? Is the camera market going to be smartphones at the base level and FFM for pros and camerafans, with Fuji as the set-aside company that gets to be truly independent and go its own way (like, say, Woody Allen among filmmakers) and Leica as the sole Veblen Good supplier to the carriage trade?

Or will this watershed moment—FFM—become an historical diversion, a backwater, a onetime next-big-thing that fizzled? After all, with sensors getting better and better, 1-inch, Micro 4/3, and APS-C get more capable all the time, not less. And more sensible as a realistic choice for photographers as time goes by, too. And along those lines, one last question: did Olympus just get lucky, seeing its biggest competition turn to a new project and a new direction, which means that in the future Panasonic will effectively leave Olympus alone to increasingly own Micro 4/3? Or if it, too, doesn't turn to FFM, will Olympus be odd man out again, as it was in the second half of the '80s when it made the decision not to go to AF right away?

I'm doubtful that there's enough gas (pun intended) in the full-frame mirrorless market to sustain four big players in the kind of prosperity they all want—the kind of prosperity Sony's earned after working it for five years. Because, don't forget, Sony's been working hard at it, diversifying the A7 product line and reiterating each tier several times.

But maybe there is. Maybe FFM, like pickup trucks and SUVs on American roads, is what everyone actually really wants.

And then of course there's always the specter of real disruption lurking—some magic formula that no one has quite divined yet but that the buying public will take a shine to. These days, you can never rule such a thing out.

Mike

"Open Mike" is the editorial page of TOP. It appears with rigid regularity on Wednesdays.

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

John McMillin: "FFM leaves me cold. When I bought my FF DSLR, it wasn't for greater detail capture or bigger pixels. My K5IIs gave me everything I needed in the IQ department. I just wanted a bigger optical VF, like I enjoyed in the film era, the better to study and respond to the framed image before I clicked the shutter. Once mirrorless tech came along to decouple sensor size from viewfinder optics, I see far less need for FF. Whatever full frame gives in acuity, it takes back in DOF problems. And the difference between image detail from my two-pound K-1 (plus lens) and my featherweight Ricoh GRII is surprisingly small.

"That said, there's no denying the market's zest for bigness and overcapacity. Like those jumbo, dual-tired pickups in the school dropoff lane, we like to look like we're packed for action, and better equipped than the next guy, because, who's really secure anymore? In that sense, all FF cameras are Veblen goods."

Kenneth Tanaka: "What does it 'mean'? It means 'Summer’s here an' the time is right for dancin’ in the streets!' It means that nearly all of the big camera companies are taking advantage of a now-or-maybe-never moment, albeit a year or two late, as is characteristic of cautious industrialists. Consumer confidence and spending in most developed nations has risen sharply. Money is still relatively cheap and the prospects for good return on investment figures are good. The big (mirror) box boys are sick of being called big fatties. The small-sensor boys are tired of being...small-sensor boys. It means that Leica has found new friends in their desperation to save their over-weight/over-priced/under-featured SL system. It means that Panasonic thinks it might have a path out of the languishing Micro-4/3 bog. It means that Fujifilm is enjoying a well-earned moment in the warm sun.

"What does it 'mean' for photography? Nothing, really. None of the Photokina announcements I've seen so far have any apparent relationship to the recognition of where photography as a medium is going. It's just consumer electronics."

David Raboin: "I've never seen so much exciting camera tech released in such a short period of time. Is the photography economy approaching peak GAS, or can we go higher?

"The camera manufacturers and many of us photographers are obsessed with camera specs but nobody outside of the smartphone world and Silicon Valley pays attention to the other half of photography: sharing and displaying photos. How do you consume and share most photos? In my on-the-go life (which I'm guessing is similar to your 2018 life) I do 90% of my photo sharing and communing through a phone. As an image resolution fanatic this leaves me disappointed. I wish my photos were viewed bigger and I would like to see other's work displayed bigger, but we live in a smartphone world. Every now and then I get a chance to show somebody my work on a high-res laptop screen and it always has more impact than a picture sent over the phone.

"If photographers and camera manufacturers want to save cameras from the encroachment of smart phones we need to figure out a way to more easily display our photos larger. Canikon should be dumping research dollars into making printing easier and less expensive. They should also be inventing new ways to display photos. Someone please come up with a wall-mount LCD display that's affordable and that my wife approves of. Also, us photographers need to do a better job sharing our high resolution work. We should publicly show off our photos as much as possible. It's our job to inspire the masses to want better cameras."

Jim Richardson: "I think it means that the pull of 'Full Frame' has proven to be irresistible and that all other formats (however logical or practical) are doomed."

More About Variety in the Marketplace

A couple of further points to add to the "Wealth of Choices" arguments.

First, check out this article at The Verge, the upshot of which is that Sony has surpassed Canon and Nikon in U.S. sales of full-frame cameras, reportedly in both dollars and units sold. A linked article notes that "Nikon will try to position its [Z-series] cameras head-to-head with Sony’s. (Even the names are kind of similar)," and "from the sound of it, Nikon is going to kick things off by going straight after Sony’s most important mirrorless line."

Corporations aren't omniscient
I don't buy the arguments that more variety isn't possible in the camera marketplace because the companies only develop and build what sells. Bullcrêpe! Companies don't know what will sell; they only know what has sold in the past. That's why most of them keep building the same thing...or building what seems to sell for other companies*. Publishing was my business for a while, and publishers don't know where the next bestseller is coming from. That's why they "spray and pray" by publishing ten new books for every one that makes money. Magazine publishers love to tell you how much "market research" they pay for so they'll "know" what covers will attract attention and trigger newsstand sales, but the fact is that they don't know which cover will sell and which cover won't, or why. (I once actually demonstrated this with a deliberate experiment with the magazine I edited, to refute an outside consultant who had been hired to harass me. Well, maybe that's not why he was hired—it was just what he did.) Do the movie studios know what's going to be popular? If they did there would never be a flop. They game the system and manipulate public opinion down to the gritty nubbins and they still can't accurately predict the hits and misses.

The BMW 3-series has a long history of success**, so Lexus builds a nice 3-series clone called the RC-F. High-performance car, gorgeous interior; doesn't sell. Why? No one knows. All this hoohockey about companies only building what sells is nonsense. What, Toyota can't afford market research? And can't independent individuals sometimes guess what might be popular? Don't forget, I wrote an article essentially describing the Fuji X100 five years before it came along. Predicted the focal length of the fixed lens to within one millimeter. The fact is, companies try things and see what works. If companies knew what was going to sell, everything would. They try their absolute best to predict trends, tastes, and sales and they still can't get it completely right. Sometimes they even get it completely wrong***.

Who needs it?
Next, I never said I cared about whether the manufacturers make money or not. That's not my business—I'm not on their side. I'm on your side. That is, I care about photographers and whether they have what they need to do good work. That's whose side I'm on; that's whose interests I think about. If I worked for a camera company, then I would spend my days thinking about what would sell. But I don't.

Take for an example a thought experiment about a postulated imaginary digital "view camera." Imagine a medium-format-sensor camera intended to be used on a tripod in the field that had an integrated viewing screen the size of the Retina screen on a 12.9-inch iPad. Imagine the camera had controls that allowed the application of basic movements in software, but in real time so a photographer in the field could see the effects as he or she worked.

In response to that idea, a certain number of commenters would say "I don't need that," or "you could do the same thing with a tethered laptop" (or with some other workaround) or "just use film," or "you could do the same corrections later in post." In another "bin" would be comments such as "it would never sell enough" or "there isn't enough demand" or "the company that developed such a camera would lose money." Still another group would dismiss the idea with what amount to veiled insults like "you're just attached to the past," etc.

But to me, you see, all three types of comment miss the point I happen to care about. The question for me is, are there photographers out there for whom the small viewing screens of existing cameras aren't big enough, whose work would benefit from being able to see their subjects more clearly with a much larger viewing screen? Are there photographers out there who would be enabled to do better work if they could see perspective corrections in real time, as they were photographing?

If there aren't, then I don't care about such an option. If there are, then I would wish such an option existed. Even if it can't.

The variety I would want to see in the camera market is directed at these sorts of issues. Whether it's a viable product for a company to make or not is perfectly rational to consider, because it possibly describes why such a product could exist or doesn't exist. But either way, it's not the salient point to me. I want photographers to be served with what would enable them to do good work more effectively. That's where I'm coming from. 

Back to the Z-series
Here's what I think is going on with Thursday's announcement. Nikon is responding to Sony's rising market share in FF cameras by poaching the successful A7[x] lineup with two copycat products. Since there will be few native lenses at first (and possibly forever), much attention will be paid to offering top-level support to the use of Nikon DSLR lenses with adapters. Meanwhile, since the Z-series introduces a new lensmount from Nikon (this is huge news in and of itself, actually, given the history of the F-mount), the lensmount, as one of our commenters noted, might support a medium-format sensor size and lenses, presaging a future Fuji GFX killer from Nikon as well. (That's the end of the market these companies are most interested in these days, because smartphones have eaten their lunch at the other end.) [UPDATE: Stephen schooled us on this...not gonna happen. Okay. —MJ]

And yep, there's always the possibility that Z[x] will out-do A7[x], and be better cameras.****.

All that is guesswork. But now I feel I have a framework for evaluating this development as it develops! Grab popcorn, sit back....

Mike

*Remember how Nikon built the Coolpix A in 2013, going after the success of the Ricoh GR? How'd me-tooism work out for them that time?

**I said that instead of using the word "iconic," and you're welcome!

***cf. Kodak PhotoCD.

****Heck, I liked the Coolpix A.

TOP will be off tomorrow, as Yr. Hmbl. Ed. attempts to rejuvenate by going 24 hours without thinking about photography.

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Jim Arthur: "I see what you mean. I often consider too many variables when faced with an issue and don’t focus on the crux of the matter. This can lead to inaction on my part. In this case, if the market does not have a wish list, the market research is of no use and things remain the same. You have to make your heart’s desire known."

JH (partial comment): "Aha, now you are getting into topics I'm covering in my book on management you inspired me to get back to work on!

"Corporations are stupid. Ever hear of the 'Peter Principle'—people in corporations rise to their level of incompetence. Based on 50 years in business, I can assure you that is the case. The people running companies are generally incompetent and the absolute worst people to be running them. A survey of corporate executives in America a few years ago showed the majority would rather be playing golf. Most work to protect their bonuses and some, like Elon Musk, work and tweet on acid (true according to today's New York Times.) Most companies have an idea they start with and few ever have a second good one. After a while they rely on chasing their competition and products become 'me too' copies. They either stagnate or die.

"I'll skip the stories about cars and focus on cameras. Maybe. Look at Kodak. They invent the digital camera but let it kill them. They had stagnated and had no idea how to apply the same creativity to marketing that they had in R&D. (Hell, I was helping them develop integrated circuits in 1969, I know how good their R&D was.) Nikon and Canon focus so tightly on each other, they can't innovate much at all. I've seen this in tech companies before. Management refuses to allow innovation because 1.) it's risky and I don't want to risk my job and 2.) that's not what the competition is doing. Olympus was a backmarker so developing a new type of camera (Micro 4/3) was easier, even easier for Panasonic who was not a serious player at all, since the alternative was to continue to fade away. Innovation worked for them. Sony was a tech leader and had no baggage to stop new ideas—ever see the Mavica? Early success showed the idea had merit and justified continuing the process.

"Ninety-nine percent of all the innovation going on in photography and camera development today is in the cellphone business. That's where the innovative companies are and more importantly, that's where the money is. That they understand how most users want to use cameras leads to their success.
If your interest is along the lines of traditional photographers, you have to live with what the Canikon companies give you—better traditional cameras (what they know) but poor interface to today's digital world. In another decade, they will probably decline similarly to the film photography industry as their market shrinks, revenue and profit declines, and innovation becomes less justifiable."

Michael Perini (partial comment): "As for the predictive value of 'Corporate Marketing' I'm not sure you are looking at that in a realistic way. Pick any business that makes consumer goods then narrow that down to a group that has had long term success—say 25 years or more—then narrow that down further to a group that has been so successful that they are now a multi-billion dollar corporation. The most successful enterprises. They could have only gotten there by making lots of correct decisions about what they can sell. For better or worse they all have a process that they use to decide what to make. They know it is highly fallible, but the also know it got them where they are. But if you look closely you will see that they have all had lots of failures. Failures that look really dumb with the benefit of hindsight. It is very easy to cherry pick those and point them out. They all know that it is not an exact science, and if they can be right more than they are wrong they grow. If the balance shifts negative they shrink. If they can't turn it around they disappear."

Stephen Scharf (partial comment): "Some points I'd like to throw in for discussion: Its pretty clear to me that you have no experience in formal product development for engineering-based products, or your views would likely be very different. With all due respect, publishing a magazine is the not the same process nor poses the same challenges as researching, developing, verifying, validating and manufacturing a camera, or a DNA sequencer, for that matter. Movies don't qualify, either. Movies and magazines don't have deliver on a set of critical functional responses (aka CFR) and be able to manufacture them in statistical control. Here's some facts for you: any product development company that has and implements a formal and disciplined Voice of the Customer (VOC) process, and then executes and the fulfills on the customer requirements that are the deliverables of that VOC process, then executes on those customer requirements with a high level of engineering specification and quality (by using an approach e.g. DFSS) can, and does, make products that will sell and sell well, all the time. I personally have 10 years of experience and data in the biotech sector to prove it."

Mike replies: With all due respect back at you, I do realize that the people charged with developing new products do so responsibly and intelligently. But the limitation of VOC is contained in your phrase "customer requirements." The better the customer can define their requirements, the better companies can fulfill them. Sometimes that's straightforward. But not where real innovation is concerned. It's the focus-group problem: focus groups can only tell you what they think of what they already know about. They can't evaluate what they will like or dislike about products they can't yet imagine. Imagining new ways of doing things is what real innovation is about—it gives customers things they're going to love but that they don't yet know they want. 

Steve Jacob: "Corporations identify target markets with very wide definitions, but once those markets are defined it is almost impossible to de-silo the entire customer requirements > R&D > production > marketing > sales pipeline from the organisation that is created to service it. R&D are clever folks, but they are given a bucket list and a price point. Whether the list and price point are correct is not within their remit to decide. And so begins a long steady process of refinement of a model range to the point where it is very good, but no longer what the market wants. Their blind spot is that they gather requirements from existing customers and channels. They should be analysing the customers that didn't buy them instead."

Wealth of Choice? Really?

If you're in my business, you get used to certain things. For example, that whenever a post about gear gets a lot of comments, someone will bemoan the fact that posts about pictures never get that many comments. (The post before this one has gotten 121 comments so far.)

...Even though most gear posts don't get that many comments, and a few posts about pictures do get a lot of comments.

I'm not calling anyone out, please understand—I'm not criticizing. It's just a thing that happens. I get fish-slapped with the patterns.

So. Another comment that rises above the waves regularly is that "we've never had so many cameras to choose from," "it's a great time to be a photographer because we have so many choices," etc., etc.

I do not think so.

Or rather, I do, because we do have a lot of choices, and a lot of those choices are nice. (And maybe I should write a post celebrating the options we have.) At the same time, I wish people would stop saying that. Here are a few things we could have but don't:

1. A TLR-inspired "street" camera with a side-mounted handle and an upward-facing viewing screen that has a pop-up hood;
2. An affordable B&W-only camera;
3. Cameras that are radically simple and de-complexified;
4. Cameras that dispense with JPEG modes and options to reduce menu and processing complexity;
5. Cameras with built-in memory;
6. An affordable rangefinder camera that takes M-mount lenses;
7. Cameras with modern sensors that have web-only resolution, i.e., two, four, six or eight megapixels;
8. A camera or two with a square sensor....

And the list could go on.

Granted, some of these things we've had in the past (the affordable M-mount rangefinder, 6-MP cameras), some of them we do have in extremely expensive or otherwise impractical versions (the B&W-only camera); several of them have workarounds; a few of them might not be marketable. (But don't think I couldn't name choices specifically conceived to be marketable.)

The wacky but delightful (and star-crossed) 2010 Ricoh GXR, with its
interchangeable lens-sensor modules. Image via Amateur Photographer.

I don't even fault the manufacturers, who, collectively, have been pretty adventurous in trying different things over the years, e.g. the clever "Optical-Porro Finder" on the 2005 Olympus E-300 EVOLT, or the pellicle-mirror "SLT" models from Sony, or Ricoh's terminally quirky GXR that never quite made minimum sense as a product offering but definitely offered creative design thinking that was way outside the box, or Sigma's Foveon-sensor cameras. I might also add that if you removed Sony and Leica from the current camera market, a lot of the choices we do have go away.

I'm not even saying that we should have all of the things listed above. All I'm saying is that we don't. They're not choices we have.

Just because there are nine different me-too DSLRs that mimic each other and seven different models of mirrorless cameras that are all cautiously, conservatively similar to each other doesn't mean that those things are "choices." I mean they are, obviously, in that you have to choose whether you want one or the other. But if you hate pickup trucks, having more pickup trucks to choose from doesn't help.

Really, there is lots of room for more choice.

Mike

P.S. And in response to the comments about a digital view camera, why not a capable digital ILC camera designed to be used on a tripod with a viewing screen the size of an iPad? The technology is all right there. The movements could even be effected in software; that would be cool.

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Sharon: "Like I said in the previous thread, I recently purchased a Fujifilm GFX 50s. If I were my cat, you could hear the purring from there. This is the most satisfying experience I have ever had with a camera. I'm not much of a gearhead and have no patience for charts and graphs and data. I'm not a fan girl either. Using this camera makes me want to belt out a song like our beloved Aretha. I wish everyone could find a camera that makes them feel this way. So I hope if that list of camera wishes would ring your bell the way this camera has rung mine that some camera company hears you and makes it.  :-)  "

Yonatan K.: "One of your favorite cameras has built-in memory and is (or can be, in its default mode) very simple.... Just sayin'.

"You caught me in a congenially argumentative mood, i.e., awake. This is a genetic condition, as we found out when our kids learned to talk."

Mike replies: The mind-picture you painted of argumentative toddlers made me laugh. Thanks for the pick-me-up.

Kirk W.: "To your point #2, I am surprised that Fujifilm hasn't released an XPro-2M. Seems like an easy way to squeeze some sales out of a model already imitating the M series. And by a firm that can roll out some semi-legitimate marketing lines about 'deep knowledge of what artists prefer in B&W film-like simulations.' I'd be tempted and I don't even have a particular affinity for B&W."

c.d.embrey: "A Dixie® Cup economy. The original Dixie® idea, from 1907, was a use it once and throw it away paper cup. This spawned the commodity paper-plate industry. Now-a-days ubiquitous paper cups/plates and their cousin the plastic eating utensil, are clogging-up landfills in first-world countries. The consumer goods marketplace is being changed by commodified products. Is there any quality difference when using an Android or iOS device? When looking at a photo on social media, can even the most dedicated pixel-peeper tell what camera was used? At this point in history, does anyone really care anymore? Sony has been in the commodity business for a long time. They build Dixie®-Cup-like products at a price-point that allows the consumer to replace them with a newer and better item, rather than make expensive repairs on obsolete gear. What's not to like? In this modern, and changing, world does it make any sense to agonize over the imperceptible differences between commodity items? I think not.

Jonathan: "I personally would love to see 3, 6 and 8. I think you are right that we essentially have a lot of great cameras to choose from, just like we have a lot of great crossover SUVs to choose from. A little more variety would be nice."

SteveW (partial comment): "I am in agreement with this take on the camera market. There's a reason Apple and Google have not jumped in the camera ILC market: they already own the camera market with smartphones. Same reason Samsung bailed. In my opinion, the camera companies are great with camera hardware, but the software is mediocre at best, and the connectivity to modern technology such as our computers and the internet (i.e. cloud) is poor. Cameras have no built-in memory. The menu systems are archaic and cumbersome, and sometimes seem to have no logic to them. Using the camera has levels of complexity over other modern devices that seems totally unnecessary, or at least mostly unnecessary. Why not built-in memory, an android or iOS system, LTE/Wireless connectivity, ability to download apps, and so on and so forth. Having a data plan for the camera like we can get for iPads would be nice as well. Memory cards? At most memory cards should be for back up or overflow, not as primary storage...."

[Ed. Note: You can see the remainder of SteveW's comment, and the full version of all other comments marked "partial," in the Comments section. —Ed.]

Robert Roaldi: "I wish I spent as much time taking and looking at pictures as I do thinking about equipment."

alex-virt: "There was a 'TLR-inspired "street" camera with a side-mounted handle and an upward-facing viewing screen'—the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-R1. No pop-up hood though."

Mike replies: I loved that camera and would love to see it resurrected, but I fear the size of the viewing screen expected today would make it impractical to design. It, like the Nikon CoolPix 950-style designs, was enabled by the small viewing screens of the day.