Hi

I wrote this after reading an interview with a Nikon USA manger, here:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000960042753
and while thinking about photography as a business. If there are any mid-price pros who feel the same way I do, feel free to add your two cents. Also, feel free to cut and paste, sign your name instead and send it to Nikon offices all over the world. Let's see if we can get a response.

Steven Lungley

Open Letter to Nikon

May 11, 2005

To whom it may concern.

I’m a photographer. Have been for 15 years. During that whole time I used one brand of 35mm camera - Nikon - and one brand of lens - Nikkor.

For the past two years I haven’t shot a single job for any client on film. The world has moved to digital, and as a businessperson - and an artist - I have to satisfy my client’s wishes. At first I rented digital cameras as the jobs arrived, but with the influx of less expensive cameras, clients aren’t going to pay for that anymore.

So last year I bought a D70, before reading a single review, based on Nikon’s reputation for manufacturing film based cameras and my feelings from years of using Nikon film based equipment.

I got lucky. It was a machine that delivered the goods for the clients I had last year. I even think that I could say that it punched above its’ weight class.

However, the world has moved on. When I was working with film, I always carried two and sometimes three camera bodies. Sometimes with different lenses, but often an FM2 was on hand just as back up.

This year I’m surveying the world and have to go on location again, and I don’t know how confident I am in packing only a single body. I also don’t know if I am all that secure in investing in the wares of a company that seems to be playing me for a stupid fool.

It’s not a question of what I know can be done with a file from a 6 megapixel body, it’s the feeling of an art director about paying for “just six megapixels” when he shoots his kids with eight.

DSLR vs. point-and-shoot technical realities don’t matter. It’s the perception that counts. I sell myself and my gear. Why did I shoot on 2 1/4 and 4x5 for images that were printed on half a magazine page? Perception. The client owns a Nikon, but I have the bigger camera. Ohh, and look at all those lights!

Is a $150.00 salon haircut all that much better than a $20. barber shop? Not really, it’s the salon EXPERIENCE that gets the cash. I sell photographic experiences. I should have all the great professional toys. And 6 mega pixels in this day and age does not get the uninitiated – that would be the paying clients – excited.

As I said earlier, I’m a business person, I have to sell my images, my equipment and myself. I don’t have a huge, client base. I work on modest, local assignments and get paid okay. I might be able to afford a D2X – maybe – but I could never afford two of them. But one camera is not a system. One camera does not allow for a long and a short lens with no dust issues. One camera does not allow for mud and rain and snow and spilt coffee or a tumble out of the passenger seat onto the pavement or any other incident that may occur and probably will with less than 30 seconds before the big picture of the day.

You can’t even get a Nikon Pro Card unless you have two “Pro” bodies.

I look out each New Year and survey the land and draw up a budget for this years’ new gear. Do I want a D70s? Not really. It’s EXACTLY like last years.

What I want is the digital version on an F90X, a mid price-point camera with a vertical booster pack and a PC synch socket. I want a camera that delivers all the resolution – or really, really close – to the top camera of the land, but in a less physically robust package, and I want the ability to buy two of the. Just in case.

So, what can I buy from Nikon to fill that bill? Nothing. What has Nikon informed me about their companies’ future plans that would allow me to plan ahead and grow with them? Nothing.

That OTHER camera company, however, has been making some great gear, and all the pros I know who have switched sure seem happy. They KNOW what their company is planning, and therefore they can plan as well.

Me? I’m sitting here with a half-assed amateur camera wondering why I have any allegiance at all for a company that keeps talking about the great things they USED to build for a format that is 100% obsolete in the real world.

This is my demand: Tell the photographic world what the plan is, now, three months, six months, one year and three years in the future. I have a lot of photos to take this summer, I have a lot of billing I want to do, and at this rate, I won’t be investing in Nikon.

Why should I? It’s a put-up or shut-up world and Nikon’s wall of silence has me wandering into the camera store and trying on the other brand, and if I go, I’m not ever coming back.

Feel like talking?

Steven Lungley
Toronto, Canada