Thom Hogan is exempt from the rules of the forum and has permission to promote his stuff here? Really?
Yes, as are the majority of other folks here - some even more talented.
I trust this is tongue-in-cheek. Thom's just a person with opinions and experiences. Just like everyone else.
Lets be perfectly clear here. Thom never "promotes" his stuff here, he replies to people who have questions about his stuff (which is different). Also, his credentials in his signature or no different from any professional photographer having a link to their webpage (as many do).
Perhaps, but few are better informed about Nikon's corporate activities or more versed in the intricacies of Nikon's cameras.
Not exactly like everyone else. Almost nobody in these forums has as many credentials or as extensive a background in digital photography (or photography in general for that matter) as does Thom. I for one, give him for more deference than I do 99% of the people in these forums.
This was sarcasm. I know better.
No argument from me about his technical knowledge. I simply question the logic that his status as a 'photographer' affords him greater credibility than any other of the legion of 'photographers' active on these forums, many more capable in that regard.
I respect Thom's credentials, as well as his right to his own point of view, but I've never been much for hero-worship, so will not afford him a preponderance of deference simply because of the esteem in which others choose to hold him. Rather, I will consider on a case-by-case basis what he has to contribute, and determine then its value to the discussion at hand. Very often I find Thom to be unbiased, cogent, lucid and an invaluable source of truly useful information (the same can be said for a great many other forum members). But, there are also times when I disagree, and find he may be subject to the bias of his own experiences and preferences, just as we all are from time to time. Either way, I prefer to think critically about his contribution the same way I would that of anyone else.
To some degree, I believe that's true. If we were in an era of constant growth or an era of no growth and no new competitors, time wouldn't be a big factor in what you do. But I've watched this play out in so many markets before, from the original radio to most recently the DSC market, and the same thing happens time and again. We're at a critical juncture with DSLRs. Growth is rapidly tapering while competition is rapidly ratcheting up. Only a couple of companies will emerge clear winners from that. Right now the betting would be on Canon and Nikon, in that order. But a timely strategic announcement from Sony without one from Nikon could easily change that. At issue is economies of scale at a time when companies are literally taking pennies out of products. It's difficult to recover from lost momentum at the top of the hockey stick...
I'd want to see proof of that. Nikon (and other SLR) camera gear has always been easily liquidatable. I'm not convinced that eBay, et.al., have radically changed anything in that respect.
A temporary issue, I suspect. Do you really think that people will be replacing their DSLRs every two years when we go from 16mp to 20, 20 to 24, 24 to 28? I don't. Not for the bulk of the market.
True. One of the things that other tech industries have figured out that the camera companies have yet to embrace.
I'll grant you that. I agree that brand loyalty in cameras is decidedly lower than it was with film (ironically, I think, as with film you could pretty much keep the image quality constant while switching brands, but you can't with digital). But it's not a Canon/Nikon game any more. Sony, and to a smaller degree Oly and Pentax, have an opportunity because of the lack of brand loyalty. The point I'm trying to make is that this is the historical time in an emerging market that the ultimate market winners get pegged, and usually because it's clear where they are and where they're going. Nikon has a mid-30's market share at present. Given that there will be no real growth in unit volumes within a couple of years, they can't afford to let that "temporarily" slip to 20 percent and think that they can make it up with "switchers" by introducing some blockbuster product down the line.
This statement is hard to dispute... If you need to or have to, then you must do it.
Agreed. But if Nikon announced they would NEVER build a FF dslr, I'd start liquidating my Nikon gear immediately which is a long list.
Okay, I'll pick right up on your point, because I agree with it (and I'll still stick to my comment ;
As you know from my newsletter, if we're talking absolute equivalents, I'd agree. You need the focal length equivalent with a stop advantage in aperture to be absolutely equivalent in DX. But from the standpoint of compromising usability, size, cost, etc., Nikon could cover 90% of the demand with those quasi-equivalents, and we'd get them faster since they'd be easier to design and produce.
I have a 135mm f/2.0 manual focus Nikkor and I bet it has over 600 grams of glass in it... (while the overall weight is around 860 grams - ca. 1.8 pounds, give or take) The new AF version weighs even more.
I said I give Thom more deference than 99% of the people in this forum, and I stand by that. It's not about "hero-worship"; but rather, precisely about what you state below.
Maybe I just share his biases; after all, I find myself nearly always agreeing with his opinions. I treat everyone's posts with the same critical analysis; and well some are right some of the time, and some are right most of the time, I find Thom to be right more often than 99% of the people in these forums.
Practically I still see one limitation to these f/2 lenses giving us equivalents in DOF isolation and that is sync speed. In many cases where professional strobes are mixed with ambient light if you can only sync at 1/250 you would still have more DOF options with full frame.
That's one of the advantages from having a 2x crop sensor. Look at full frame users - they can only dream of a 100-300 f/2.8 lens, which the Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 effectively is.
Uh, he's not "just another photographer," nor just another "author." Spend some time on his website, and you'll see that he is actively engagede in some primary market research. Right now, he's soliciting comments on his Nikon roadmap predictions here:
It's not hero-worship. If people respected Ken Rockwell as much, that would either be hero worship or mass dementia, whichever is worse. it's a respect based on Tom's hard-won and truly earned expertise. Read some of his books, and you'll see. And unlike Ken, he's not a Nikon fanboy.
Except that few people have invested as much time and effort as he does to form his opinions and ideas.
By putting the info in his signature he is promoting it; again he has permission to do so, but let's call it what it is. It's no different than the URLs many of us put in our signature. We are promoting our work. The only difference is that Thom has the potential to make money from his promoting. But again, he has permission to do so.
Actually; Jeff-C is much more in tune with what Nikon has going on. His predictions are nearly flawless.
credentials and awards are for scrap books. Now that said I do tend to take what Thom has to say much more seriously than others; but that doesn't mean I just say "well Thom says X so he must be right." No one is above that.
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You seem to be implying that a full-frame camera would somehow change a photographer's workflow, which I don't see. It wouldn't change the shooting workflow because most photographers learned to shoot SLRs with "full frame" film cameras originally. In fact it seems like a desire to return to a known shooting workflow (lens selection, DOF, etc) is the main reason people are demanding full frame in the first place.
Again I'll make the point that as customers we are used to having products changed on us without warning. It's the reason we all recommend that photographers buy the best camera they can now, rather than wait for what's just over the horizon. There's always something just over the horizon and it's very rare that we're given a hint or peek. Nikon hardly seems alone in that respect to me.
That seems a little like a grab for the moral high ground to me. I'm a consumer myself and I'm only sticking up for myself. But I'm also an employee and stockholder (not of Nikon or anything in the photo field though). And as such I can see the value in a company holding its strategy close until it's ready to move tactically. And while it would be nice to get a clear road map so I could plan and budget my camera purchases for the next 10 years, I don't really expect it because I don't get that from ANY company that manufacturers products I buy.
Why? Because people are more likely to move from brand to brand than before. The very fact that Sony has any chance at all against Nikon, to me, is living proof that it's not as hard as it used to be to get people to switch brands when they buy a new camera.
I don't have statistical proof and I'm not sure how one would go about getting it, short of a massive survey of photographers.
I'd say that your ebook business is a testament by itself--that's a much harder business model to pull off without the Web.I do, at least for the near future. I'm thinking of a lot more than mp, for one. Consider computers, where the GHz war is over yet the product release cycle continues. Now the competition grounds are form factor (portables), number of cores and power consumption.
