Glen Barrington
Forum Pro
We need to stop worrying about the survival of the Olympus company's legacy of OMDS, and start thinking about the marketing of the whole m43s idea. There is a LOT of there, there!
The Camera Market is Shrinking? So what? Don't SELL to the camera market!
Great cameras will accrue once the marketplace of ideas truly open to m43s. And maybe some of them will carry the OMD logo.
I recall when 4/3s was announced, the whole world was focused on "We gotta get to FF!" NOTHING could be allowed to short circuit the effort to drive Canon & Nikon into creating consumer grade FF DSLRs. So the general consensus was any goal of less than FF was heresy and bad photography.
APS suffered from that a bit, but 4/3s took the brunt of this bias, I think. If you doubt me, just go back and read some of the flame wars in DPR itself. Much of it reads like the start of a religious war.
Well now, I think we are in a sort of post FF era. We all know that FF cameras don't make anyone better or worse photographer, Nikon is struggling in a manner similar to that of Olympus, and it seems even that bland corporate entity that is Canon, is willing to think of the possibility of trying new things in the face of the Smartphone camera.
m43s can offer a lot to the photographic community. Big cameras and little cameras all have their place in the world. The m43s consortium (whatever that actually is any more), needs to start marketing the IDEA of m43s, position it as an alternative to grandpa's clickety-clackety camera and that big white lens he uses to spy on teen-aged girls with. (use whatever separates the current crop of young people from grandma's Elvis infatuation and grandad's stupid jokes).
I'm a grandfather myself. But I recall what it was like to be 19 and wanting 'be different' just like all of my friends were. m43s could be that difference if handled correctly.
Sell the IDEA of m43s to young people who want to impress their friends. Smartphones are utterly losing their cache as the technology of the hip. We know this by the poor sales performance of the 'flagship phones' and Google kind of refusing to compete with hardware tech.
Photography is relatively easy to talk about, with enough tech buzz words to confuse and confound the uninitiated, and a really impressive looking camera can be set to full auto and anyone can get fairly good results.
What is needed are social media 'influencers' concentrating on fashion and culture, not photography influencers. Photography influencers are a bunch of old guys with bad teeth, who smell of pipe tobacco, and who use words like "copacetic".
Sorry guys, but this has GOT to be done.
By the way, there is only ONE "Recliner of Infinite Wisdom", and you aren't allowed to sit in it. You will have to make do with something else, Like "the glider of goofy ideas" ;-)
--
I'm no genius, but I play one on the internet.
http://glenbarrington.blogspot.com/
http://glenbarringtonphotos.blogspot.com/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/130525321@N05/
The Camera Market is Shrinking? So what? Don't SELL to the camera market!
Great cameras will accrue once the marketplace of ideas truly open to m43s. And maybe some of them will carry the OMD logo.
I recall when 4/3s was announced, the whole world was focused on "We gotta get to FF!" NOTHING could be allowed to short circuit the effort to drive Canon & Nikon into creating consumer grade FF DSLRs. So the general consensus was any goal of less than FF was heresy and bad photography.
APS suffered from that a bit, but 4/3s took the brunt of this bias, I think. If you doubt me, just go back and read some of the flame wars in DPR itself. Much of it reads like the start of a religious war.
Well now, I think we are in a sort of post FF era. We all know that FF cameras don't make anyone better or worse photographer, Nikon is struggling in a manner similar to that of Olympus, and it seems even that bland corporate entity that is Canon, is willing to think of the possibility of trying new things in the face of the Smartphone camera.
m43s can offer a lot to the photographic community. Big cameras and little cameras all have their place in the world. The m43s consortium (whatever that actually is any more), needs to start marketing the IDEA of m43s, position it as an alternative to grandpa's clickety-clackety camera and that big white lens he uses to spy on teen-aged girls with. (use whatever separates the current crop of young people from grandma's Elvis infatuation and grandad's stupid jokes).
I'm a grandfather myself. But I recall what it was like to be 19 and wanting 'be different' just like all of my friends were. m43s could be that difference if handled correctly.
Sell the IDEA of m43s to young people who want to impress their friends. Smartphones are utterly losing their cache as the technology of the hip. We know this by the poor sales performance of the 'flagship phones' and Google kind of refusing to compete with hardware tech.
Photography is relatively easy to talk about, with enough tech buzz words to confuse and confound the uninitiated, and a really impressive looking camera can be set to full auto and anyone can get fairly good results.
What is needed are social media 'influencers' concentrating on fashion and culture, not photography influencers. Photography influencers are a bunch of old guys with bad teeth, who smell of pipe tobacco, and who use words like "copacetic".
Sorry guys, but this has GOT to be done.
By the way, there is only ONE "Recliner of Infinite Wisdom", and you aren't allowed to sit in it. You will have to make do with something else, Like "the glider of goofy ideas" ;-)
--
I'm no genius, but I play one on the internet.
http://glenbarrington.blogspot.com/
http://glenbarringtonphotos.blogspot.com/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/130525321@N05/
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