The dumbest ad ever.

http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/06/01/theDumbestAdEver.html

by gr366 • 16 years ago

10 24 16 years ago

I'm not really sure if the author is correct about what's happening. That all depends on exactly how much of Panasonic's revenue comes from selling professional quality SLR cameras versus its cheaper point-and-shoot models. Anyway, I don't think that sales of the former are in any kind of jeopardy because of cell phone cameras.

potatolicious2• 16 years ago

Even point and shoots aren't really threatened by cell phone cameras - they cover two completely separate contexts. In fact, there are few use cases where the cell phone has really stolen the show from point and shoots.

Don't get me wrong, imaging capabilities on cell phones are important and useful - but IMHO they've largely carved out brand new use cases for themselves rather than stealing from other camera products.

I think Panasonic's positioning isn't too bad. They're saying "we're not your crappy, blurry cell phone camera. If you want memories that last, buy our stuff" - which seems like a wise enough stance to differentiate themselves. After all, the really cheap point and shoots do resemble cell phone cameras in terms of quality - being above that certainly helps.

bartl• 16 years ago

But a slogan that boils down to "That is not a real camera, look, it has a ringtone" is pure unadultered nonsense. Whether a camera has or doesn't have a ringtone is no quality to decide whether something is, or is not, a camera!

julius_geezer• 16 years ago

I trust my friends to organize an intervention if they ever find me sending them pictures of pizza joints (especially real time) or calling them "peeps".

sbierwagen3• 16 years ago

It's always nice to see Dave speaking knowledgeably on a topic which he knows nothing about.

You'll never see an interchangeable lens camera with a cell phone in it, simply because high quality lenses have big elements, which gather lots of light. As I am sure you will be surprised to hear, big pieces of glass result in big lenses.

Optics is, more or less, a solved problem. We hit hard physical limits long ago. You'll never see a compact full frame 35mm sensor digital camera. It just can't happen.

Can you imagine talking into a pro DSLR? Using it as a every day carry phone? The D700 masses 995 grams, and that's just the body! Add another 500 grams for the lens; is that something you're just going to slip into a pocket? How are you going to use it, by holding it to your head by the lens barrel, then terminating a call by pressing the shutter release?

It's generally a good idea in consumer electronics design to not make your users look like fools. Nokia forgot this when they made the N-Gage, to their detriment.

(And, of course, he misspells Lumix as Lunix. That's pretty funny, though, I'll give him that.)

abstractbill• 16 years ago

Certainly I agree pro cameras won't have actual cellphones in them, but I'm pretty sure they will soon all have data modems that connect to the existing cellphone network. I think that was the point the article was trying to make.

potatolicious2• 16 years ago

But what would be the point?

Pro cameras - where you shoot in RAW mode, and do post-processing later at home on your gorgeous widescreen IPS display, curate it, and then upload to your favourite hobbyist sharing site (Flickr, SmugMug, etc). That doesn't really lend itself to requiring a wireless modem.

I can see integration of GPSes into DSLRs - geocoding is a hotly requested feature particularly by hobbyists, but modems?

The absolute top-end Canon cameras have WiFi dongles that can wireless upload photos as they are shot to a storage unit. This is really to facilitate quick review in a studio setting - you aren't tethered by a wire, but can review the photo on a big screen very quickly after a picture without popping the memory card.

But while you're out and about? It seems pointless. The uses of a pro camera do not include "hey guys I'm at a pizza place. Look at the size of this sucker!", which is really where a 3G modem seems useful.

sbierwagen3• 16 years ago

The Eye-fi (wifi radio in a SD card) is cool, I've got a couple, but that isn't the point.

Dave was specifically calling out a line from their ad campaign, saying that real cameras don't have ringtones. He then argues about an entirely unrelated point, that cameras without data connections won't be terribly enticing.

Except that his original point is still there, and still is pretty dumb. Real cameras won't have ringtones, because placing a call to a camera is a bad feature, that nobody wants.

A camera that has a wifi radio, though, is a cool feature, which everyone wants, which is why Nikon made a wifi attachment for their pro DSLR line. It's called the WT-4/4a, and they released it in 2007.

(Of course, being Nikon, they charge $700 for it, but that's another matter.)

jacobolus2• 16 years ago

[First off, you’re absolutely right that Winer is obnoxious and in this case pretty clueless. That said...]

> Optics is, more or less, a solved problem. We hit hard physical limits long ago.

This is only true for cameras which are designed around a principle of light passing through a “generalized pinhole” (i.e. go through a lens and are collected as a two-dimensional image in a single frame at the back, without doing any fancy math; the kind of set-up required by, for instance, a process based around film or our current types of digital sensors).

Look to biology though for inspiration and it quickly becomes clear that visual information can be captured in all kinds of ways, with all kind of crazy “eye” designs.

There’s a huge amount of information stored in the light rays passing through a camera which is currently not captured, and the cameras of a few decades from now will blast through all of those “hard physical limits”. We’re going to get much better approximations of actual light spectra coming in, along with information about polarization and distance to the subject; simulate any lens, any aperture, any focal length in software because all of the relevant data will be captured. (In my dreams, anyway, or even maybe my somewhat-informed guesses; we’ll see how well technology actually advances.)

Anyway though, our typical current digital cameras don’t even hit the limits given the traditional/obvious camera design approach: for instance, we currently have three different colors of pixels each of which filters out a different set of wavelengths, meaning we are only capturing a “third” of the information we need to make a metameric match from each point, and just tossing out a bunch of the other photons. That right there is worth a something like 2x improvement in data captured per area.

One last thing: even before we get crazier camera designs, improvements in computer processing speed are going to make it possible to create high-resolution images out of an image captured over time (i.e. a movie processed into a still): we can see the beginnings of this already with those panoramic cameras I’ve been seeing TV commercials for.

sbierwagen3• 16 years ago

Optics is a solved problem. Optics. I said optics, not "cameras", or "photography".

Plenoptic cameras are cool, and have a bunch of neat features, but each camera element still uses traditional lenses, made of specially shaped transparent materials, whose fundamental design has not changed in four hundred years. There's been a lot of neat hacks on the basic idea (achromatic lenses, etc) but nothing new. Except superlenses, but you'll never see a macroscopic superlens, so it's useless for photography.

bigiain• 16 years ago

Optics may well be a solved problem, but I wonder whether cheap sensors and smart software might one day equal or better the image quality performance of traditional optics/sensor technology?

natemartin3• 16 years ago

I don't think anyone is arguing that cameraphones will replace SLRs though.

The ad was advertising point and shoot cameras. Most of which have tiny sensors. They might be good quality, but only marginally better than the best of the cameraphones right now.

Do you really think the quality of a point of shoot is so much better than a cameraphone that you would carry one around all the time?

Or would you rather carry a phone with a decent camera, and take out your DSLR when you need better photos?

idiginous• 16 years ago

You'd have a point if they had said "If it has a ringtone, it probably doesn't have an interchangeable lens."

IOW you aren't "speaking knowledgeably". :-)

ams6110• 16 years ago

All in one gadgets are convenient but will never replace single-purpose devices for serious use.

starkfist• 16 years ago

He could have at least taken a picture of the ad...

gr366• 16 years ago

This looks like an LA billboard version of the campaign...

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GIchwvJ-aNk/S_xoQsYK1kI/AAAAAAAAQ6...

Note to another comment thread on this post that they are advertising a point-and-shoot camera.

Edit: and I noticed the copy along the bottom advertises a touchscreen — that's getting very close to smartphone territory, no?

handelaar• 16 years ago

Dave seems to have kneejerked his way into misunderstanding the ad.

Their sale point is "phone cameras are shit and our camera is better". They're not saying that cameras are bad if they're connected to the world. They're saying that cameras are bad if they take shit pictures.

Having held an HTC Hero and an iPhone, I'm here to say that they're not wrong. Those cameras suck as cameras.

MrRage• 16 years ago

> Having held an HTC Hero and an iPhone, I'm here to say that they're not wrong. Those cameras suck as cameras.

I disagree. There are two sayings about photography I've heard a few times. 1) The best camera is the one that you have with you. 2) The novice photographer wishes he/she had a better camera, but the experienced photograph wishes he/she had better lighting.

Re #1, I have a high end point and shoot that's really nice. But I almost never use it now because my iPhone 3GS is always with me. I find that some of the best photograph opportunities come when you least expect it.

Re: #2, most of photography is lighting and and composition. If you have crappy light (that includes using a flash) it doesn't matter if you have some $10,000 camera and lens. If you take photos with good light and have an eye for composition it won't matter to much which camera you use.

Now saying that, some phone cameras really do lack in resolution. My iPhone 3GS has decent resolution, but iPhones before that take washed out looking photos. Of course there's other limitations like no zoom, you can't print out a huge poster version of your photos, and it can't do more "advaced" things like long exposures. But I and many others have taken decent looking photos on iPhones. It's Good Enough.

Edit: One more thing. I like the challenge of taking photos on a simple camera. You don't get distracted by messing with features and have to kinda learn what makes a photo good.

natemartin3• 16 years ago

I think you made the same points as me, but put it much better.

The purchasing jump for consumers is going to be cameraphone -> dslr, not cameraphone -> point and shoot

silvestrov• 16 years ago

Problem is: soon the phone cameras will be good enough for most people. They don't need to get as good as real cameras to replace them.

The ad campaign targets average consumers and not the professionals.

Digital cameras replaced a lot of film cameras before the digital cameras were just as good. Geeks overestimate the required quality level: mp3 became popular at 128 kbs (didn't wait for 256 kbs). YouTube became popular while having worse quality than normal TV. (and this is even without considering the quality of the "photographer")

So yeah, today it means it. But Dave talks about the future.

natemartin3• 16 years ago

I saw this ad in SF a few days ago, and had similar thoughts.

The ad is specifically showing a point-and-shoot camera, not an SLR.

Point-And-Shoot cameras might be better than most cell phone cameras now, but I'm not convinced they are better enough to justify carrying around an extra device. For most people a cameraphone is good enough, and if you want better quality, the step up to a point-and-shoot isn't really worth it. If you want better quality, go for an SLR.

There's a saying among photographers that "The best camera is the one you have with you." I have an iPhone, a point-and-shoot, and an SLR. I can't remember the last time I took out the point-and-shoot. I use the SLR when I know I'm going to be taking a lot of photos. And I use the iPhone camera constantly.

I think panasonic is mistaken if they think cameraphones are a fad, or that this advertising will make people jump to using their point-and-shoots.

Instead, why don't they embrace the trend, and work with the phone manufacturers? Why not talk to Nokia, or HTC, and say "You guys concentrate on the phone part, leave the camera to us." Put in quality optics, and advertise the phone with "Camera by Panasonic"

The dumbest ad ever.

Related Stories