Much Ado About Expensive Compact Cameras

^This photo was taken with a favorite composition of mine by using the foreground and background to sandwich the primary subject, highlighting it.

With much ado about the gossips over the past week surrounding the E-P2, GZ-1 and Pany's GF-1, I've still got the deja vu feelings of the April Fools’ Day. These wolf-crying-style calculated leakages by the manufacturers could lose its appeal when running to the excess. Or could they?

The most traffic you can see on almost any photographic sites and blogs is on the days when a leakage is cooked up or a new camera review is made. Yes, we photographers, mostly men, are overly obsessed about every single new camera, much like most women are excited at the sight of a new handbag or high heels even though there are already dozens of them in the shoe cabinets at home.

Some months ago, a poll was put up in this blog gauging the number of cameras most readers have. The result was 6 cameras on average.

6 cameras! What are we going to do with all 6 of them. We can pick them each on a daily basis, in the fashion of the emperor chosing different concubines for one night and the other.

We don't really need so many camera. However, having seen the logic in this arguement, I just bought the CX1. Why is the frenzy?

If this is not about the number of camers or our "lust" for it, there must be another explanation for the phenomenon. Probably, the answer lies in the impeccably all-round camera which each photographer dreams of.

Will this dream ever materialises? That's the question. For those who think positively, please raise your hand.

I will be the one who stay my hand. How come?

In the film era, several hundred bucks (bucks, I mean US dollars) could buy you a real good camera. Take for example, for the money I spent on the then state-of-the-art Minolta Dynax 7 film camera plus a quality 24-105mm lens, I can get a E-P1 with the pencake. Not that I am saying the Minolta gear has an edge over the E-P1 (but it does), but that the return of the investment is now shorter.

"Shorter" is in the sense of the life cycle of the camera, of which the arguement shall not require making.

Well, do I miss the point that the camera of today is about technology which is destined to be expensive and short-lived? No. Certianly photographers are paying for technology rather than a light box of yore. But in the good old days, the focus of the photographic gear was heavily on the essence of photography: optical quality, focusing speed, brightness of the viewfinder, ergonomics, etcetra, etcetra.

Nowadays, the focus is half on the same points but half on marketing. The preponderance of marketing is seemingly taking over the other half. Take the E-P1 for example, the calculated steps of leakages prior to the sales was hugely successful. The stop-motion ad conjured up the primitive lust of photographers to own a camera with history and supposedly the treasurbale quality of its historical predecessor.

Honestly, the E-P1 charges not cheaply. It just seems that most of us have been used to the short life cycle of digital cameras and the high prices the manufacturers charge us for them. They do deliver great novel features unbeliveable in the film era. But first things first, we are talking about photography. So, adequate focusing speed, a viewable LCD or a decent viewfinder should be made available in the E-P1 for the price level it is on.

As far as that is concerned, there are many photographers tolerating the E-P1. There are testers approving it too. Yes, Oly deserves praises for pioneering into the new territory of photographic tools. Yes, just because the camera perform poorly on some check boxes one thing, doesn't mean that we cannot work around them. But, wait, are we saying that we pay dearly for a thing which we work around for what should be fitted therein?

And no, you don't have to try one before you can understand how odd it is for a serious camera to be handicapped in this way.

Now rethink the preponderance of marketing: if the handicapped features are to be added to the rumoured E-P2, shouldn't we feel funny?

Or duped.

For any expensive cameras, what gives when those much needed features are withheld at the material time, provided that they are technically possible with the price asked for? Turn our eyes away from photographic tools and to technology-heavy items from whatyoucallit-POD to computers. The marketing departments are the winners who plan ahead what to offer and withhold in the matter of years. What and when we should get is planned.

If I'm asked, that's where the saving grace of the old serious film cameras (SLR) with technology breakthroughs coming much slower and less revolutionary (but I don't really regret the advent of the digital era). For the new features they'd got, they put them in the film cameras to lure buyers and shift loyalty because the customers' investment on the camera was made at a wider interval of time and on the lenses over a much longer period. And once the loyalty was there, a steady stream of income received for lenses and accessories was ensured.

With the quantum speed of modern digital technology, there are more marketing calculations and holding-backs, on top of that for the profit margins with every penny invested in the fast-outdated technology.

So, the chance of having an all-round dream camera comes true is slim, to say the least.

Okay, do I miss that point again that this is all about technology in one small body than an empty light box? No.

Don't be content with what you are told. I don't know how the manufacuturers can cut back a wee bit profit margins to make things happen like a retro-looking, expensive camera which really auto-focuses in a decent speed, has a essential built-in flash and even a viewfinder (which is essential for photography especially under the bright sky). And, oh, with a less plastic body.

But I do know that they can when I look at the profit margins of my business friends are making. Not exactly comparable. But comparable somewhat.

Back to the 6-camera on average phenomenon. Except for the shopaholics, we always wish for a better camera and therefore keep on buying new ones. In the film era, a good, expensive camera can last many years (like nine years as my Minolta D7 does up to now) since it was just a box. In the digital era, since the same lasts shorter and the technology is coming faster and cheaper, photographers have to ask for full-fledged cameras, especially serious compacts when they are willing to and in fact already pay dearly for them.

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PS: For the record, the M4/3 has a near APS-C size sensor. But it is a wee bit smaller in fact.