Nikon too stingey to give out proper brochures

Brilliant contribution, David! Best nightcap (sp.?) I could've wished for.

 

And yes, some camera's are so 'iconic' that the accompanying brochure is treasured too. I only have a few. The one of the late eighties with the whole line-up right up to the F501 is treasured. Nostalgia.

One thing that's nice about printed brochures is that they contain fairly nicely done images. Nikon's PDF versions online

have such low resolution that they're useless for this purpose, and irritating even for monitor viewing. The web based non-

PDF content is better for obtaining technical data.

 

Typically Nikon's advertising pictures at least have been made by photographers, while online images on test

sites typically are taken by tech geeks who have no idea about how to take a nice photograph. E.g. dpreview.com samples

- take any 15 year old kid who has never used an SLR and you'll get more attractive images.

Yes David, thank you for the great idea!

Andrew, I think you misunderstood my sense of humor. I'm entirely sympathetic to your position.

 

I like paper stuff. It appeals to my peculiar aesthetic. My first jobs as a kid including delivering newspapers and running a hand-cranked printing press in a tiny print shop, mostly making business cards, invitations, announcements and, yes, brochures. I later studied graphic design and the related subject - typography, page design and layout. When you've been elbow deep in hot wax during pasteups, you develop a peculiar passion for this sorta thing.

 

The rest of ya are a buncha heathens and tree huggers. Y'all should be real cozy with your cuddly locust trees and poison ivy.

 

David GN: That's the funniest thing I've read all day. I hate it when people are funnier than I am. You're on my list. I'll be sending you a nice packet of freeze dried bokeh for the next thread about the "b" word.

Wow! If I'd have known that the brochure for the D700 was so hard to come by I would have grabbed 10 of them yesterday at my local camera store... They only had 80 or so left... wonder if they still have 1 or if I'll have to pay a premium for it on E-Bay.

 

Dave

"As an avid collector of silly threads, I'll be printing a copy of this one."

 

Use a small font and you can get it onto one page. Or, better yer, take a screen shot and save it as a pdf!

I used to get the full Nikon brochures from my dealer every year, and every year I'd put it on the trash after looking at the pretty pictures. If I wanted more info on the camera/lens, I'd visit the store and touch them and use them in person. --Rich

For me, I prefer less wastage. For every person that keeps a brochure for ever (like Andrew), 99.99 percent will throw it away within a week. Frankly, even the CD-Rom is a waste...99.99 percent of them will end up in the landfill. It would be nice if Nikon would provide high rez photos/brochures for those who want quality images.

I worked for a major distributor of cameras from Europe, and we burned through tens of thousands of dollars in brochures in just a two or three day show. Then there's the issue of lost or delayed shipment of items. I doubt it's a matter of being cheap; probably they had some other reason. I have to admit I'm a sucker for equipment portrayed well in a nice brochure. If you talk to the guys at the show, they can often "come up with one" for you. Probably not so much if you're carrying a few bags filled with other brochures though.

I clarify, I meant it would be nice of Nikon posts hi rez DIGITAL brochures equivalent to their high quality print versions of the past.

To all those that advocate that money would be better spent on R&D, do you really think that the cost of the brochure is going to make a diffrence ? Are you going to spent MILLIONS on developing a world leading product, then skimp on the cost of the brochure, the shop window of your product ?

 

Robert: "they were pobably just out of them". No, the visit was on the first and second days.

 

Albin: "some cameras are so iconic that the accompanying brochure is treasured as well". I cound't of put it better Albin. Thanks for understanding.

 

Ken: "That is the most pompass, ridiculous, and not to mention marrow minded statement I've heard on here in awhile... " - Ken, I'm talking about those that cut their photographic teeth/knowledge from the days of SLR's and film as oppossed to those that went straight into digital photography. I stand by that. You can start a separate depate on that. The results will be interesting.

Nikon was however the champion in handing out bags at Photokina. A small fleet of young women were giving them away -- empty -- as you left the Messe/Deutz train station, some 300 meters from the expo hall. Other companies' bag dispensers were stationed closer to the building. Canon had a special window for brochure dispensation. With the Internet, however, there was very little new information at Photokina, brochures or no brochures. You've seen it all before. You could touch, You could talk to a company employee. You could eat a € 13 steak (vegetables extra at €3.50 each legume). But Photokina isn't much of a consumer show, although I suspect most of the tens of thousands there were consumers. It still seems to function as a medieval-style trade fair. In the basement were the Chinese lens-makers and the Indian software-vendors. Watch that space. If Nikon got its camera start imitating Contax, what will the Chinese imitate to get theirs? Will these forums 10 years from now be debating which Chinese camera system is the best?

Lex (perpendicularity consultant) Jenkins , Sep 27, 2008; 06:27 a.m.

And just in case anyone thinks Andrew's request is odd, this is a sample of what I collect...

 

I started collecting QSL cards from A.M. broadcast stations back in the early 1960's. It was a fun hobby. I recently

moved from a suburban home to a small apartment, and divested myself of 95% of everything I ever owned, including

old cameras and brochures. It's amazing what we don't need. Let's give the planet a break.

 

Bill P.

This planet is heating up fast. Go green. More papers = Less Trees. :)

More paper = More trees. Trees used for making paper are raised like any farm crop. They're continually replanted.

 

Digital isn't any more green. It just shifts the eco-burden to where most folks can't see it.

 

None of which has anything to do with Andrew's complaint. Where marketing anything is concerned, including cameras, paper is still a key element in an overall marketing scheme. It's human nature to appreciate tangible tokens of desired objects. It's linked to the very reason why many of us take photographs in the first place.

Nikon did have printed brocures at Photokina, but not camera specific brocures that I'm aware of.

 

I'm looking at the Total Digital Imaging System brocure and Digital Imaging Technology brocure right now. Of course both are in German, which is exactly what I would expect for a convention held in Germany, although I think they also had English versions as well.

 

The issuing of CDs isn't something that was specific to only Nikon, it was done by several manufacturers, including Epson, who provided CDs only and had no printed brocures.

 

Nothing wrong with it in my view. If I want to upgrade a camera, I don't base my decision on the brocure, I get down to a store and try the real thing. The value of a printed brocure as a mechanism to decide on a purchase is pretty small in the photographic industry and the ease of distributing multimedia marketing information over the internet really reduces the value of static printed material even further.

 

Just a sign of the times and certainly not Nikon being stingy, just them moving with the rest of the industry.

Andrew, just got back from closing day of Photokina and I checked again on the D700 brochure but no luck. I asked if there was a reason as to why they had a brochure for the D90 but not the D700 and the lady behind the counter said that their focus is to push the D90 with the HD video capabilities (as an upgraded D80) over the D700 which she state some people were looking at as a stepped down D3.

they can be stingey all they want in terms of PR for all I care. What *matters* to me is quality products at an affordable price. The latter criteria, obviously, being open to interpretation (unfortunately for me)

Gordo, you've got to laugh. What kind of sorry excuse is "their focus is to push the D90 with the HD video capabilities (as an upgraded D80) over the D700 which she state some people were looking at as a stepped down D3" ? (LOL) . Sounds like " you WILL look at the D90, you WILL forget about the D700 & others !).

I admit Nikon has always produced nice brochures.

 

It seems it is no longer about marketing to sell the product since, most people have made up their minds to purchase by way of research online or physical demonstration of the product at retail outlets/shows.

 

Now it seems people have gotten used to these brochures and that somehow feel it is their right to have one. If Nikon had started out giving away for free 50 page editions, people would now be complaining why Nikon has chosen to cheap out and give away only 15 page versions instead.

 

IMHO for the amount that ends up in the garbage, I would prefer abbreviated versions or downloadable versions.

I found a camera store in central London that had Nikon brochures in a rack by the front door. I asked if I could take a couple and they said sure go ahead! I got the D300 and D700 brochures, but as they only had one D3 brochure left on the rack, I left that one for someone else.

"As far as I'm concerned, if anyone wasn't around in the old days of photography, they don't understand photography."

 

Wooow, man, you must be really old if you were around the days of Daguerre, Niépce and the others! :D

 

Or maybe Talbot, Archer, etc? :P

 

Ok, ok... Maddox & Eastman? :D

 

 

hehehe, Well I would go back to hug my tree ;)

 

Luis

@Andrew: "As far as I'm concerned, if anyone wasn't around in the old days of photography, they don't understand

photography."

 

In the introduction to The Photographer's Eye, John Szarkowski included a quote from an English writer (E. E.

Cohen) who

complained that the invention of the dry plate had "created an army of photographers who run rampant over the

globe, photographing objects of all sorts, sizes, and shapes, under almost every condition, without ever pausing

to ask themselves, is this or that artistic?... They spy a view, it seems to please, the camera is focussed, the

shot taken! There is no pause, why should there be? For art may err but nature cannot miss, says the poet, and

they listen to the dictum. To them, composition, light, shade, form and texture are so many catch phrases...."

 

The quote is from 1893. Had the writer been writing a few years later after the Kodak camera came out, by

comparison he might well have had a stoke in the process. The same tired arguments come up time and again in the

film v digital debate.

 

So irrespective of your own position, you really are in the same group as the rest of us. There is always someone

who, as the quote demonstrates, was around earlier and who can take the same self elevated position that you have

taken. By their standards, you like the rest of us, may be just a snap-shooter with has no regard to aesthetics

as it was

applied to the days of the wet plate.

 

Harbouring negative opinions about other people you don't even know doesn't help anything and certainly won't do

anything to change their approach to the medium or encourage them to look at things from a different perspective.

In the end the only person it affects is you. People can't help when they were born or when they began

photography. By dismissing a large group of people, you are only closing yourself off to the possibility of

seeing something in a new way that you hadn't thought of before.

 

As Bryan Peterson (and others) indicates in his articles on this site and his books, the essence of a camera

hasn't changed. It's a light proof box with a lens on one end and a light sensitive medium on the other. The laws

and physics of light haven't changed, so in terms of producing compelling images that communicate strongly to

their viewers, surely someone who began with digital has just as much chance as someone who started with film.

The light and compositional guidelines are the same in both cases, even if there are differences the tangible

qualities of the medium.

 

Regards,

 

Peter

@ Andrew -- I certainly will not waste any more bandwidth with another Film vs. Digital debate...They are pointless... and you are certainly welcome to stand by your OPINION ' cause that's all it really is... there nothing factual about it. Furthermore I think the above post by Peter is the most eloquent response to that statement and I cannot do any better... So I shall leave it at that.

When I was a boy I collected every brochure I could find, Nikon Minolta Pentax Mamiya Vivitar Bogen et al and tons of companies that don't exist anymore. I could tell you every spec about, say, a Minolta's 3000i even though I never owned one and never would. It was so much fun. I always dreamed about having an Nikon F4 or FM2, now I dream of a D3... There is something about brochures that are great for enthusiasts, even though they are environmentally wasteful and prob not worth Nikon's $.

 

Ofer