FORUMS, OPINIONS and NUT-CASES
We are all followers of creative advertising, and basically we also tend to follow what we were first weaned on, like our religion, political leanings, car brands, but more recently we tend to be manipulated by strong advertising, belongsmanship, endorsemen-ship, blogsman-ship, horsemanure-ship and mine is bigger than your ship. Here is the classic most often argued question on the web. I'm about to clear the air.
HOW DID CANON GET BIGGER THAN NIKON ?
Simple answer, CANON is bigger: Canon being the larger of the two companies spent more on advertising, and didn't split the revenue lines. Canon dealers sold amateur and PRO gear side by side. Nikon split into amateur and PRO dealers. This was a critical mistake, one of two major ones.
In addition, whereas Nikon was into glass for lenses and microscopes, Canon and the "Canon print engine" is the world leader in copy machine elements, that arena alone exceeds Nikon. They supply cartridges for laser printers for most of the greater manufacturers like HP, Toshiba and Mitsubishi.
Nikon made a decision to split PRO dealers from amateur big box store status for the independents, only the PRO dealers could sell the PRO cameras. This drove many buyers eventually to internet sales. This screwed the last independent dealers instead of protection for them and cost Nikon later on.
In genesis, of the 35mm camera business, Canon went after the beginners with user friendly Point & Shoot’s which developed them into the DSLR users of today. They had a simple market share and a more appealing voice to be heard. "Professional" scared some beginners, “easy to use” appeals to the masses. The masses grew up.
Nikon took the ARK approach ( like the ARK, things were selective) and worked from the top down, selectively preaching pro, pro pro. Canon simply went for the Consumer and numbers till they had their own PRO lineup. Nikon never saw it coming. And Canon was very aggressive. They simply out smarted Nikon and a new buzzword in business was born. Market Share...
When I was covering the TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS, we were approached with “all our gear could be replaced with Canon FREE. Upgraded, with the latest and greatest. Many names took advantage, of that once in a lifetime deal, so Canon went after the top end and the consumer. Nikon simply got outpaced, out priced and out distanced. In numbers it was Survivor.
Canon did the mass media and Nikon went in niche mode. Again Canon makes internal products for almost every print engine made and Nikon makes chips for microscopes. Lots more laser cartridges sold than microscopes.
"WHY I SHOOT WITH NIKON - CANON" (Explanation of Rational Excuses)
So often we (I, You) get asked by the village idiot, "What do I shoot with or the more common expression, "thats a great shot, what camera did you use? You have all heard it one time or another. I have three or four standard answers for those who are rated low on the IQ scale. After all they just insulted your talent. Try them, they work...
• Take your index or even better the middle finger and point to your eye and tell them you used the Mark One Custom Eyeball Assembly.
• I always have a throw away camera in the bag, a disposable, for gifting occasions on site, sometimes a kids thing and you want to gift the parents and make their day, and a great way to make good corporate friends, I explain it in my SURVIVAL GUIDE. I got film versions for three dollars each on close outs. I grabbed twenty of them, so I pull one out and showing them I shoot with an Instamatic.
• "Sorry, the equipment we use is not available to the general public, it's owned by NASA and we are testing it for the Cranston-Frugels Institute for possible use in Mars Exploration". Take a short piece of electrical tape and cover the brand name on the prism. That really gets them with the brand hidden.
• "It's a halfbreed", actually at one time I borrowed a Minolta Mirror 250mm @5.6 lens which had bee fitted with a custom Nikon Mount. So when you showed the front of the camera, It said Nikon and the lens said Minolta. I told them A) I just left them in the bag and they mated B) You should see the wrench I used .
• "It's a SKI-LL 40". Took me forty years to do this and develop the skill. Basically they all work, I can shoot with anything and have, brands mean little to me, I look for quality. and my first love might be tabletop with a 4x5 SINAR and the Black line of studio lights, but I am getting older and lazier. The only thing Golden about the Golden years are the color of the credit cards for all those pills you take.
I SHOOT NIKON and CANON
• I grew up with Nikon, being a neighbor of Joe Ehrenreich of E.P.O.I. and I worked in the camera district stores in lower Manhattan (17th Street) selling Nikon. I liked their optics, I've been using Nikkor Optics for many years, we're talking about 50+ years of optical engineering, and refinement. Different tools for different jobs.
Product familiarity and usage: I was a dealer, I had choices but I was familiar with Nikon. I used my F3’s for PJ for 23 years. I use my D3-D300 for the more casual relaxed work. They still feel the same. And slightly smaller size, but still they are "familiar" and I liked the Nikon Flash System when you get it tuned in. Everything has a learning curve which makes them all about equal.
These bias are mine and I guess I have a certain comfort level using Nikon. It's not a branding fallout. I see it in many things in this world, we all grew up with Chevy vs. Ford, my first new car was a Chevy, Piper low wing pilots vs. Cessna high wing pilots, my first plane was a Piper, S&W vs. Colt and so forth, my backup was a S & W model 36.
We like what we learned on. My walk around camera is now a G11 Canon because it does well in low light and has PRO features that in a grab situation will give me results I can use if traveling light. I think it's one of the better pro-alighned point and shoots. So I shoot Nikon and Canon.
WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?
I have a favorite expression about forum chatter, "Take things with a few grains of salt, two shots of tequila and a twist of lemon". Chill out, you learned/ absorbed/ heard it on a forum. A collection of opinions written by many who might not be qualified to be opinionated. After all if they are spending their life on the forum "we call them forum heros", when do they work at their trade?
Thats because it's might not be their trade and they would starve to death if they had to make a living at this. I deal mostly with those who want to financially survive in this game.
In one of the Forums; A fellow wrote as a topic header, “I'm interested in rationalized opinions why someone chose a particular system over another. I'm angered by people who feel the need to bash others who have different opinions than their own” . In other words why do people flip out on forums?
THE OPINIONATED TRUTH:
This writer understands and believes there are legitimate reasons for selecting one brand over another because of a feature or option offered by one and not the other.
Common sense dictates that if your work entails shooting TSE-TSE fly larva at a 400% enlargement to be shown on billboards as part of a public awareness campaign in South Africa and only a 8 x10 SINAR with a Schnieder-Kreuznack Super Angulon Classic and swings and tilts, makes the gear that can do that, then the selection is made. Kids pool parties and the only proper gear is a disposable, you don't want to swim with gear, tasking determines the usage and product preference.
But what the questioner or myself at times is really asking or doesn’t understand, where does the animosity prevalent in a few come from? Maybe they need help. It is not civil. I will try to explain the composite of the triggers inherent in provoking a reaction. This is what intelligent people do, the smart ones of course ignore belligerent people, belligerents seek confrontation. They won't waste or spend their time studying idiots. Well, if there were no idiots, this page wouldn't be here.
REASONS PEOPLE SAY WEIRD THINGS:
√ NON-INTELLIGENCE: Little has to be said about the non-intelligent. Just as in prophecy "the meek shall inherit the earth', "the morons and idiots on some websites blinded by personal ambition, a lack of recognition, and stupidity shall sometimes prevail as they chase away the many".
This is normal on the web as the web is alive and is in a constant state of morphing. They tend to start out nice and then the instigators (or Bush's favorite, the "evil-doers") ply their trade in hand and sooner or later as with the older forums, they die in popularity, and then the forum dies as folks shy away. Like the global warming, it runs in cycles.
√ CHOICES: “I guess it is like cars, people tend to see those as status symbols, and even more important,when you made a choice, you are fishing for confirmations that you made the right choice”.
True, we always defend our position and decisions; we do it every day of our lives. It's upsmanship driven by brandsmanship. Only in equipment forums, it's just more prevalent because the product is the topic. It seems on some forums "Not the quality of what we do. But what we do it with" prevails.
Whereas on a topic forum like Wedding Photography it's the image at the center of the universe.
√ SELF CONFIDENCE: “Participants regardless of their success as a photographer, have self-confidence issues”. Photographers who lack confidence feel that if they just had that OTHER piece of equipment, they could create work as good as that other photographer. If you've bought into one brand and someone else says something great about another brand, rather than accepting that each of the choices were valid for each person or the intended use, some see it as a challenge to their expertise and decision-making. hen they start what I call back-thinking or going over each detail of their decision.
√ ANGER AND AVARICE: “This anger goes further than choices or confidence and it has to do with avarice, an insatiable desire for wealth or gain, (recognition) regardless of the amount as we all have levels we live by, or gain from this trip I'm on and the fear of failure if it doesn't work. "I just spent two zillion dollars for the new FLIPTOLIGHT portable studio strobe to do high key reduced backlighting promo shots and this dork on the forum says it's a bad piece".
√ REALITY: The manufacturer starts this cycle in his ads promising great things. Perfection. Did you notice "You never see an ugly woman with bad legs getting out of a Lexus". The Bride, "her hair was "perfect and she had flawless skin and not over 115 pounds wet". Or a Jeep just going down the highway, it's always the badlands or the snow tops, or the jungle. And immediately, the hook is set. "I can do that'.
√ YOUR REALITY: But your Bride is on the north side of 300 ponds, makeup and skin care by KISS products applied by a student graduate of the Tammy Faye School of Cosmetology, and a hairdo by Corn Rows of Downtown Burbank. Not the same thing and you didn't have the five helpers. So the brain says, if I just had that FLIPTOLIGHT.
Award advertising is aimed at the final product (the picture) and not the equipment. When the talent or knowledge is not there, and the results not achieved they tend to go into blamesmanship of a product, and proclaim their allegiance to a new God, and the threat of going to the dark side. These people are not problem solvers, but went hook line and sinker for something that promised a result, with little or no effort. Their inner fear promotes a self fulfilling prophecy.
√ FORUMS and BLOGGERS: A blogger, Ken Rockwell, writes a simple easy to read blog on the new cameras coming out and we share one thing in common, actually two. (1) He says what he thinks or has experienced (2) He is is not afraid to put it out there.
Many of his detractors do not agree with his observations and hide under the anonymity of the web. Many nasty things get said. No reason for it. He likes light, small, easy to use cameras and is very, very, cost conscious and is anti-hype. Thus there are boards and forums where his opinion, may go against the grain of some nutcase, branded loyalist that gets the hate mail going and then some of the morons pile on.
These are people that in days of vigilantes had nothing against hanging the guy as long as you used the correct rope and the noose had the required amount of turns around the bitter end. (see rope terminology if you are a critic of rope theology).
√ SUMMARY: Most of the forum anger you can experience is really not aimed at you for having an opinion, but people who obviously have their own problems or are trying to make a statement for their own positioning in that forum
“All you need is a troll, or a well intentioned, but perhaps over-zealous, poster and voilà, you see "brand hatred" when in fact what you have is personality conflicts.” Yes, any challenge to one's beliefs hits as swift an impact as being slapped by the glove. It is a direct attack on the decision making ability and it seems it cannot go unchallenged because it is reinforced everyday by the manufacturer and our peers. The fuel that feeds the fire is well directed ad campaigns promoting brand loyalty and upmanship.-
DORKS - RULE
"The Irrational , I'm in front of you DORK":
This type of dork is new to the scene and is a wannabe belonger. On equipment forums it is so essential to be recognized for you to have the "correct gear". Usually seen in many forums.
We call it the Announcement: We chase the latest and the greatest because it affords us the "upmanship" and the peer influence “belongs-manship”. And we want the world to know that we have the latest. You see it written in forums as an announcement that starts with the exhilaration when:
"Bobby Dork writes, I just ordered a new D4XRB”.
It is followed by twenty congratulatory follow-ups. Being kind or envious, just remember those close associations between love and hate: Then Bobby sends us the tracking number day by day. God, I hope he doesn't wee-wee in his pants. An account of the shipping schedule and continued excitement of the purchase telling us how excited he is.
Finally the new arrival with descriptions far better than anything Penthouse published in their letters to the editor. It's just Orgasmic and the quire responds with amen’s and amen’s and a rash of jealousy and off to buy one themselves since Bobby just got all the accolades.
Two months later Bobby Dork gets the bill from the credit card and worse...he gets the bill from the four other places he pre-ordered with and now has to dump three of them. What price glory! Oh, the last bill is from his wife's lawyer - Divorce court! She found the shots from the lap dance bar.
"The Impressed by gear DORK":
Just look at the length of some of those equipment lists on your profile like they are "letters of achievement". When they get down to the BKA string lens cap holder and they have two, I want to retch.
This is similar to going into a car dealership and seeing all those placards the salesmen get. You have salesman of the month, day, and year, some it seems down to the minute. It’s true till the next pay period. They say in that industry, you are as good as your last deal. That could have been a minute ago. Lots of dealership adoration and cheap plaques makes up for the long hours, working six or seven days a week, no union in some RTW states, and a sales manager trained by Attila the Hun.
I shot enough in car dealerships to last a lifetime. It's the pressure, most of the stories you hear are because the salesman is following the orders of the manager or owner who just might be the real culprit when you bought your last vehicle.
"The Loyalty Proclamations DORK:
Note: He or she is just switching to the dark side, another brand. But he doesn't want to get all the bashing when he leaves the club. So he starts with his birthright. Pathetic, it goes like this.
Birthrights; I won’t bash (PICK ONE) Canon/ Nikon/ Pentax/ Minolta because XXXX is what I started on when I came in to the photography world. It treated me well and I learned a lot from it. I loved my XXXX cameras and lenses and will miss some of them. But I found what I need and what fits my style the best and that is YYYYY. I am glad I switched, but I will still keep my first love for XXXX.
TRUTH: The idiot never did learn lighting, couldn't get nothing right, never took a class, or worked with a pro and he FAILED, not the gear, not the endless gizmos, just a failure to communicate with common sense. So he switches...again.
This is quite normal and a true expression of loyalty. It is expressed by those in similar situations. by those who fantasize and tend to masturbate a lot. Low wing vs. high wing Pilots, Smith and Wesson vs. Colt in wheel guns, Miller vs. Budweiser in light beers, Beretta vs. Glock in semi-automatic pistols, Epson vs. Hewlett Packard, and so forth. There is also the truth.... another time....