Why the camera press need to grow a pair of balls

[tomsemiterrific]

8 hours ago, jonpais said:

@Andrew Reid That was precisely the feeling I got watching Chris and Rishi in their hotel room - like they were almost afraid to be perfectly candid. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but that could also be why Jordan decided not to give his impressions of the video performance.

Exactly, Jon. Jordan decided to follow his mother's advise while in Hawaii: if you have nothing good to say don't say anything at all.

But what will we hear from him once he's back in the land of polar bears and hockey players?

@Andrew Reid--

Congratulations Andrew, on your candor. IMO this roll out is, for every reason you mentioned, an EPIC FAIL---and utterly consistent with Canon's recent efforts at frustrating and disappointing their faithful---which are understandably shrinking in number.

The only video centric camera they've gotten right in recent years has been the XC15--a remarkable camera IMO. If they simply produced that style camera in APS-C with interchangeable lenses they would sell tens of thousands of them---but, alas, I'm sure there would still be some pencil neck at the top of their bureaucratic policy making food chain  who would manage to ruin it for us. 

[IronFilm]

10 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

Hell if a review sells 2 new cameras it is a Win Win for Canon, Nikon. Those 2 cameras probably pay for the one they get for free, and the trip and food.

 The profit margin on a camera is nowhere near that big. 

 

[webrunner5]

10 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

 The profit margin on a camera is nowhere near that big. 

 

It's a Tax write off. 2 cameras will cover it. When you are Incorporated you can take a 3 year Rapid Deprecation and write the whole thing off. I have had two businesses Incorporated. Easy Peezy. Same with the Rental properity's I owned. You can write them off quick. Countries give Company's, Corporations every chance there is to succeed. It is what drives the economy and creates jobs.

[IronFilm]

8 hours ago, ntblowz said:

Well they get paid from YouTube too and through affiliate links so not for free in a sense.

YouTube earnings have turned into a pittance. Affiliates and their own products/merch would be their main ways. 

 

8 hours ago, Lenscamera said:

My only issue is who it paying for them to be there? I am pretty sure us the consumers are paying for it. I am pretty sure these camera companies factor in that extra cost in the final cost of the camera. 

 

"No Such Thing as a Free Lunch"

 

8 hours ago, Trek of Joy said:

My degree is in journalism and I now work in marketing as well.

It is a common theme that as the supply of jobs for journalists tries up, they've shifted to marketing instead. 

 

14 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

It's a Tax write off. 2 cameras will cover it. When you are Incorporated you can take a 3 year Rapid Deprecation and write the whole thing off. I have had two businesses Incorporated. Easy Peezy. Same with the Rental properity's I owned. You can write them off quick. Countries give Company's, Corporations every chance there is to succeed. It is what drives the economy and creates jobs.

If the threshold to inviting people was "would they sell two cameras?"  then even nobodies like me would get an invite! But of course that would never happen. 

Canon's threshold of how much influence a person has over sales is much higher than that. 

 

[Mattias Burling]

1 hour ago, IronFilm said:

YouTube earnings have turned into a pittance. Affiliates and their own products/merch would be their main ways. 

Depends on the channel. For me affiliate links is hardly worth the time copy pasting them into the description.

1 hour ago, IronFilm said:

It is a common theme that as the supply of jobs for journalists tries up, they've shifted to marketing instead. 

Depends on the county.

[TheRealOG]

I appreciate your article Andrew! I also purchased your EOSHD profile for my a7iii, I love it! I am a big fan of the all of the hoopla behind cameras. I LOOOVVVVEEEE watching all of the reviews and keeping up with tech! However, I am also a professional ENG operator for about 8 years... What they provide is entertainment and definitely not journalism. This would be equivalent to payola plugola... Getting your hands on something early on and knowing it's faults is what keeps me loyal to certain folk. Not many folk will ever know what it's like to have to depend 100% on ur gear to get the mission critical shot. As a photojournalist, you're pretty much at the mercy of your gear. I lug a 20lb+ 2/3 ENG Panny, shooting 720P 60FPS for hours on end. I know that i'll probably keel over before my camera ever does. Knowing "Will my camera turn into a paperweight if I go backpacking for a couple of days" is so important, especially if you want to go out and create in less than ideal environments is crucial. I'll follow them for entertainment, and keep getting the scoop here!

[TheRealOG]

7 minutes ago, Mattias Burling said:

Depends on the channel. For me affiliate links is hardly worth the time copy pasting them into the description.

Depends on the county.

Yes... There are still a lot of us who respect the visual storytelling craft! (as long as they keep us staffed! LOL)

[kaylee]

Who influences The Influencers?

[IronFilm]

48 minutes ago, kaylee said:

Who influences The Influencers?

Canon.

 

[Mattias Burling]

The biggest influencers of influencers is other influencers.

The camera company that's been most aggressive with using influencers on YouTube and Instagram the last couple of years is without any doubt Sony. And it looks like its paying off.

[wernst]

It’s a law of nature of marketing a new product: the less quality you are offering the more noise you have to make. It’s as simple as this.

The Pharmaceutical Industrie is the best proof for this law. New drugs, being as ineffective as the previous generation, have to pushed hard,

e.g. on one week events for the  so called oppinion leaders in the Carribean, Hawaii and locations like this, of course with spouses.           

An invitation to Hawaii for the so called "camera journalists" (unfortunately only 2 days, no spouses) tells me that the new product is not worth considering at all.

Industrial Products Sales Manager, Germany  

[Orangenz]

Quote

Rishi is a doctor in biophysics. He should know that in the medical industry it’s illegal for doctors to go on sponsored trips arranged by pharmaceutical companies. It’s not his responsibility to apply the same rule to the camera industry, but maybe if we had the same rule, we would have had a more entertaining on-camera show from him.

I think you make a good point in the article about the responsibility of reviewers to be honest and critical in all reviews. The above throwaway point about the medical industry is, however, false. Doctors do get sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. In the UK there is a code of practice that everyone has to adhere to and that limits how much they can sponsor them and what class of travel and what air class. Sometimes it’ll just be paying for the entry fee and sometimes it’s travel. 

[Michael Steiner]

I agree with the general message of this article. But I also think it's kind of ironic this criticism comes after a series of articles on the EOS R that arguably aren't demonstrations of professional journalism either. Mr. Reid seems to take the release of this camera personally, as if canon created the EOS R only to offend him. To me the EOSHD articles about the EOS R are more rants or subjective opinion pieces than sober journalistic reports of what was released. 

To give an example Mr. Reid wrote this about the HDMI-out signal on the EOS R: 

Quote

10bit is only via HDMI. Some may see this as progressive. I don’t. It’s a hangover from the past that pleases nobody but the external monitor manufacturers. HDMI is the worse connector known to man. (...) HDMI is not really an uncompressed signal. It isn’t like having 14bit RAW data or real 10bit ProRes 4444. It is crippled 10bit and looking at the image might not even be real 4:2:2. On top of that the shitty cable can fall out at any moment.

Regarding the same feature on Nikons mirrorless offerings only a few days earlier he wrote this:

Quote

On the Z6 and Z7 they have a 10bit 4:2:2 HDMI output which offers only a very slight increase in quality from the internal 8bit 4:2:0 with Nikon Flat Profile. Don’t worry, that internal image is wonderful as it is on the D850. It will almost certainly be enough for 99% of people and a lot easier to grade. The 10bit can be considered a non-essential bonus feature, thrown in for free if you plan to use an external monitor anyway for more critical manual focus. 

For Nikon it's a non essential "nice-to-have" feature, for Canon it's a stupid thing to do and maybe – based on no facts at all – even a scam. Same feature, two completely different conclusions. Unbiased reporting looks different. 

There's no need to write positive about the EOS R but it would not be a bad thing for EOSHD to report at least a little bit less emotional and more down-to-earth. It's a camera release, not the end of the world. 

And the 4K-crop at least lets me use my beloved Sigma f1.8 Zooms on this camera, although it surely would have been nicer if it was not the only option...   

 

[Mokara]

4 hours ago, kaylee said:

Who influences The Influencers?

The Fascinators.

3 hours ago, Mattias Burling said:

The biggest influencers of influencers is other influencers.

The camera company that's been most aggressive with using influencers on YouTube and Instagram the last couple of years is without any doubt Sony. And it looks like its paying off.

No. What is paying off is making better products.

[jonpais]

@Mokara You nailed it.

[Mokara]

2 hours ago, wernst said:

It’s a law of nature of marketing a new product: the less quality you are offering the more noise you have to make. It’s as simple as this.

The Pharmaceutical Industrie is the best proof for this law. New drugs, being as ineffective as the previous generation, have to pushed hard,

e.g. on one week events for the  so called oppinion leaders in the Carribean, Hawaii and locations like this, of course with spouses.           

An invitation to Hawaii for the so called "camera journalists" (unfortunately only 2 days, no spouses) tells me that the new product is not worth considering at all.

Industrial Products Sales Manager, Germany  

New drugs are not as ineffective as older ones. If they were they would not be approved. There is constant improvement happening. Just because you are ignorant about changes that have happened over the decades does not mean they have not happened.

You may not be aware of this but right now there is a pharmaceutical revolution underway, and it is being driven by rapid advances in the understanding of biochemistry that have largely happened in this millennium. Much of that advance is a consequence of the advent of desktop computing that is powerful enough to deal with vast amounts of data. These things sort of go together, and it those same computing advances that make all our fancy modern photography toys possible. Decoding the code of life and understanding how it all works, then developing very specific tailored drugs to intervene when things go wrong (this is actually very difficult, but it is happening now). Pharmaceutical development not all that long ago metaphorically was like using a shotgun and hoping you hit something, now it is like using a sniper rifle. We are not shooting in the dark any more like they did in the old days.

[Andrew Reid]

4 hours ago, Michi said:

For Nikon it's a non essential "nice-to-have" feature, for Canon it's a stupid thing to do and maybe – based on no facts at all – even a scam. Same feature, two completely different conclusions. Unbiased reporting looks different. 

It's not the same feature though, is it Mr Ignore The Crop Factor.

On the Nikon it is full frame 10bit out.

On the Canon it is crippled 1.8x crop 10bit out.

So on the Nikon it is a bonus feature, I personally, won't be using it. Like I said in the article.

And on the Canon it is a pointless waste of everybody's time, just like the internal recording.

4 hours ago, Michi said:

And the 4K-crop at least lets me use my beloved Sigma f1.8 Zooms on this camera, although it surely would have been nicer if it was not the only option...   

You shouldn't make so many excuses for it.

You can use the beloved Sigma F1.8 on any APS-C camera or in S35 crop mode on the full frame Sonys.

It is designed for 1.5x crop not 1.8x by the way.

[jonpais]

They seriously need to replace the bean counters at Canon living in the 19th century with innovators like Fuji’s got.

[neon]

any review with an "affiliate link" for the product getting reviewed is immediately purged from my browser.

[Michael Steiner]

40 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

It's not the same feature though, is it Mr Ignore The Crop Factor.

On the Nikon it is full frame 10bit out.

On the Canon it is crippled 1.8x crop 10bit out.

So on the Nikon it is a bonus feature, I personally, won't be using it. Like I said in the article.

And on the Canon it is a pointless waste of everybody's time, just like the internal recording.

Yes it is. The technical specs of the HDMI-signal have nothing to do with the crop factor of the sensor. You of course know that too.

Now I won't argue about the fact that the HDMI-signal might be useless for some users when another crucial feature is missing on that camera. I can agree with that.

But my point was about the editorial differences in covering that one specific feature. 

54 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

You shouldn't make so many excuses for it.

You can use the beloved Sigma F1.8 on any APS-C camera or in S35 crop mode on the full frame Sonys.

It is designed for 1.5x crop not 1.8x by the way.

Not trying to make excuses for Canons decisions. Take it as a cheap joke in a tense environment. It is an underwhelming release, that's for sure.

Take my other comment this way Mr. Reid: I do enjoy reading your articles and I do learn a lot doing so. Your knowledge about camera tech is way bigger than mine and your perspective often refreshingly more critical than that of other camera related sites. But please just keep a healthy professional distance to the topics of your reporting (as every journalist should) no matter if the news are good or bad. For me your articles about the EOS R lacked that distance. They were unnecessarily emotional and furious. And that's something I do not associate to professional journalism. You're better than the people in the dpreview comments-section!