Alpha7 to Omega

Sparrow said:
Why do people react to these new (rumoured) cameras as they do ... the manufactures plant a story on the inter-web months before thing is going to be available and people go off in this polarised extrinsically motivated Pavlovian frenzy ... I'm surprised each time it happens

... what would you say will be wrong with this one, when we get an impartial review (apart from the unsightly hump on the top)
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People like getting excited about things, myself included. I used to get excited about new computers, and maybe new cameras a little bit, but now I get more excited about the old ones.

I think people are looking for a holy grail that will make their photographing lives complete, and be the final tool they need to turn into a good photographer.

I think suspension of disbelief sometimes is a nice thing, but it becomes a bit unhealthy if the only thing that can do it is new electronics.

What's wrong with the Sony? I think it looks like a good camera at a very interesting price, but I'd expect use of manual lenses to be pretty grim. Wide angles especially. And although the price is good for a full frame digital camera, the film options for the same money are far more tempting. I could get a brand new Ebony for not much more, a new GF670 for less, a ready to go used Alpa SLR...

So on balance, I'm actually very impressed with what Sony has, and the price especially is very competitive with other FF models, but there is just too much other good stuff out there for this to interest me.
 
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We are trained consumers. We think new products will make us happier - new cars, new cameras, new clothes, etc.

With cameras, we constantly want the perfect camera that reads our mind and captures exactly what we were hoping we saw.

The fact is, most of us don't really benefit from a new camera. Short of a camera that has fundamental flaws, most cameras are good enough for the work that I see 99% of the time. If you're shooting billboards, or sports, then, yeah, you might have specific needs.
 
much of the frenzy (all?) is simply because we CAN.
before the 'net, all we had were a few magazines, then possibly a visit to a shop, or shops in a big city, to actually handle new products, then a letter to a magazine.
now, there are more new products at a much faster rate, the 'net to pique interest, and the anonymity of the 'net to promote anyone's view, whether polite and learned - or not ...
 
Figured out why the wide base of the viewfinder was necessary. So they could fit "HASSELBLAD" on the front.

PF
 
Murchu said:
Something I've also noticed is the very sharp practice of company reps disguised as ordinary users, deployed to defuse negative comment about their company's product, whilst denying any sort of affiliation with said company.
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Yes, I spotted one already ... joined August this year first post was a justification for that fake prism cover on the new sony ... including graphics and a m9 size comparison
 
nonuniform said:
We are trained consumers. We think new products will make us happier - new cars, new cameras, new clothes, etc.
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Are we ?
I`m certainly not nor do I subscribe to the notion that things will make me happy, of themselves.

Let me moderate that statement .
I appreciate a well thought out gear review but they are hard to find amongst all the must have regardless knee jerking we see .

What do I think is a good gear review ?
I`m thinking of the latest contributions by Stella and XRay.

Thats what I love about this forum .

I find that much of the rest is just noise.
Orchestrated in part by the suppliers themselves.
 
I'm a Graphic designer by trade but I work in a marketing environment. I forget that many people are unaware of how structured and pervasive modern marketing techniques are. The planted PR stuff is absolutely endemic - once you learn how to spot it you will see it everywhere - most worryingly under the guise of journalism; which I think barely exists in it's pure form any more.

The uninitiated should read 'Everything Now' by Steve McKevitt. It is an excellent read and can be consumed from Amazon
"If stuff made us happy, we'd be the happiest people in history."







.
 
hmm this is rather curious, perhaps there's something in the air as I've been involved in a similar discussion on another site ...

I think I've observed that most of these excited debates about new cameras are couched in terms of "picture quality" (or "IQ") while at the same time the aesthetic virtue of photographs don't enter into the discussion.

My suggestion was that its the activity of buying using and talking about cameras and their technical specifications that has become the primary goal, while the photographs that the cameras are capable of taking become more or less irrelevant.

I wasn't even saying that that this is a bad thing, i was just observing it as a thing. People do the same with cars and kitchens after all, it's very typically 1st-world-capitalist/consumerist approach to material goods when people have the leisure and money not to have to worry about scrabbling around for food and shelter.

From my point of view, there's definitely something to be said for the points made by some in this thread that the frenzy for "good, better, best", and endless discussions and comparisons of sensors, specifications, menus, buttons, "sharpness", noise, ISO and whatnot is driven by uncritical absorption of clanging marketing spiel; and it is very hard to think clearly and critically when the spiel is so loudly ubiquitous. Which is not to say that that is the whole story.

People of course also have a perfect right to endlessly buy new cameras, talk about new cameras, argue about new cameras and so on ... but I do wonder how many people pause to wonder why these issues seem to matter so much to them and take up so much time and energy in their lives?
 
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=137318

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=137318

No equipment is actually gonna make those special images.
It needs direction.Cost is no measure of capability.
Manufacturers can promise, freedom, security, stability.disease free,
environmentally safe and a long life.
The last is querulous.
Auto builders release a better vehicle every year..
Cameras every few weeks..
Electronics, i.e PC's every few hours..
so what is a lifetime in the scope of economics?

Get real.
Get simple. Stop lusting.

Go outside and see the sun coming up on a new day.
Make that day and everyone special.
 
Not being a user of digital image capture devices, my interest in this Sanyo gadget is somewhat muted, not to say non-existent.

However, my hat is doffed in admiration for Japanese marketing strategy and psychology, the success of which is clearly evident in the multimillion-fold sales (and repeated repeat sales... ) of these devices to photographers who didn't know they needed them until craftily ''nudged'' into the certain conviction that they did by insidious marketing hype.

Such cleverness in parting a punter from his money is awesome !

I'm damned glad I've developed immunity...
 
Yes "we" are. Perhaps not you, but then 1 is a statistically insignificant number.

Michael Markey said:
Are we ?
I`m certainly not nor do I subscribe to the notion that things will make me happy, of themselves.

Let me moderate that statement .
I appreciate a well thought out gear review but they are hard to find amongst all the must have regardless knee jerking we see .

What do I think is a good gear review ?
I`m thinking of the latest contributions by Stella and XRay.

Thats what I love about this forum .

I find that much of the rest is just noise.
Orchestrated in part by the suppliers themselves.
Click to expand...
 
I've been a bystander on any new digital that came along in the last 3 years.
So all I can say is... carry on.

:D
 
pdh said:
hmm this is rather curious, perhaps there's something in the air as I've been involved in a similar discussion on another site ...

I think I've observed that most of these excited debates about new cameras are couched in terms of "picture quality" (or "IQ") while at the same time the aesthetic virtue of photographs don't enter into the discussion.

My suggestion was that its the activity of buying using and talking about cameras and their technical specifications that has become the primary goal, while the photographs that the cameras are capable of taking become more or less irrelevant.

I wasn't even saying that that this is a bad thing, i was just observing it as a thing. People do the same with cars and kitchens after all, it's very typically 1st-world-capitalist/consumerist approach to material goods when people have the leisure and money not to have to worry about scrabbling around for food and shelter.

From my point of view, there's definitely something to be said for the points made by some in this thread that the frenzy for "good, better, best", and endless discussions and comparisons of sensors, specifications, menus, buttons, "sharpness", noise, ISO and whatnot is driven by uncritical absorption of clanging marketing spiel; and it is very hard to think clearly and critically when the spiel is so loudly ubiquitous. Which is not to say that that is the whole story.

People of course also have a perfect right to endlessly buy new cameras, talk about new cameras, argue about new cameras and so on ... but I do wonder how many people pause to wonder why these issues seem to matter so much to them and take up so much time and energy in their lives?
Click to expand...

I posted this in another thread but if I had seen this thread earlier, I would have posted first here:

While translating an extremely interesting dialogue between Ai Weiwei and Sam Hsieh (Hsieh Tehching) in 1993, I came across this tidbit from Ai Weiwei, a great contemporary artist, that seems especially pertinent to this thread. Ai says:

"The emergence of new things in every field every hour and every minute, as well as the restlessness and tension that comes from this, have combined to give people fewer and fewer opportunities to think and to find a reasonable position on a spiritual level."

Restlessness and tension that prevent people from thinking and acquiring spiritual balance... Hmmm, I think that there is no doubt that this emotional state is being manufactured, and quite deliberately so. Not in some kind of conspiratorial brain-washing way (although I'm sure that side exists too, as Stephen and others suggest), but in much more diffuse and generalized systemic way. Cognitive capitalism is producing the emotional and affective states that are conducive to the one and only value by which all other values are judged today: the money commodity. The thing is, it doesn't work unless people are really and truly emotionally invested in all of it.

There'd be much to say about why that emotional investment really has to happen in and around images, but that would take the conversation in a whole other direction.
 
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