michaelwatkins Offline Upload & Sell: Off
|
Spyro P. wrote:
I dont know, maybe it's the shops affecting users' perceptions of cameras...
The big DSLR producers have a vested interest in downplaying the rise of more capable mirrorless cameras. There may be something to that.
Just this morning I caught an advertisement from Canon which belittled compact cameras. It displayed folks lugging Canon DSLRs, usually with a big honking white lens attached, climbing up high to get a shot or hanging from a crane or whatever. The message couldn't be more clear: "Why would you use this...." - cutting to a crowd on the ground shooting a bunch of compacts and P&S - "when you could use this" - cutting back to Canon and the rugged iconoclasts who use such gear, floating above all. This commercial got a big belly laugh from me and my first reaction whether accurate or not is that they must really be hurting.
As far as on-line categorization systems, it could be that Amazon and B&H and other on-line retailers simply haven't taken the time to break down their faceted categorization systems to create an appropriate new set of categories, or it may be that they've looked at this can't see the upside in confusing on-line consumers. Eventually they'll sort these things out.
but in my experience this categorisation mirrors exactly the popular belief that I've seen everywhere on the internet: if a camera doesnt change lenses it's a p&s, period.
I disagree. It isn't interchangeable lenses but how the camera is aimed at subjects which causes most to feel the shooter is using something superior to what they may have experience with. It is how the camera is used to compose. Arms extended = point and shoot / implied lesser quality. Anything else, subject to interpretation by the observer.
Case in point: I was at a skate park yesterday trying to capture the motion and colour there on what is for November here an unusually brilliant day. I overheard one of the kids asking another if I was a "photographer" which in that context means somehow good or professional.
From his distance, or any distance, there's no way he'd be able to tell if the camera I was using was an interchangeable lens camera. I wasn't using a CaNikon DSLR or a DSLR of any sort. No white lenses or red lines, no visual cue to make the observer believe I was using a serious photographic tool and a camera he'd never before had seen.
It wasn't the interchangeability of lenses which triggered his belief but the fact that I raised the camera to my eye - my GXR was equipped then with its external viewfinder.
Granted it may have also been the way that I carried myself, finding interesting viewpoints, getting low and high and scouting the area for locations rather than just sitting at the edge, taking a few snaps, and walking away.
But... I do believe there is something to the raising of a camera to ones eye - to look through a viewfinder - which causes the general public's radar to ring "photographer" (in their minds meaning serious or paid).
Recently I'd been shooting what could be a sensitive subject on the street involving fire and police and very deliberately chose to shoot using the rear LCD of the fairly diminutive GXR to frame the subject. No one took notice of me. I swear the second I put the viewfinder on and raised the camera to my eye, a passer-by started to glare and scowl at me, and one authority very deliberately headed my way and asked me who I worked for.
I've long experienced this same type of reaction - relative anonymity when framing and exposing using the rear LCD - *like the masses do with their phones and p&s cameras* - changing to subjects being more alert and wary the second I raise a finder-equipped camera to my eye.
Fixed lens makes a camera a point and shoot? Can't go along with that. Doubt any TLR user would either. Or the lovely SWC... maybe this very specialized version was Hassy's fixed lens point and shoot for outer space:
I'll take one!
|