Taking you at your word not to take your post seriously....
All marketing is puffery, and bears about as much truth as a politicians campaign ad. That's why you see so many posts along the lines of "The Gizmo widget I bought for my Nikanolympus SR-70 doesn't work right". As I and others have said in a slightly different context, "caveat emptor" is still the order of the day. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be enough caveat to go around for all the emptors out there. I'm Bill Kahn, and I approve this message.

All marketing is puffery? Sounds like you two take your cues from David Brooks. Using the same kind of twisted logic that is the basis of this assertion, one can say, for instance, that all photographers are egomaniacs and I could go on forever distorting any and every subject. Maybe it is time to inject some objectivity here and add some balance to your thinking.

Frans Waterlander
pixographer/printer

Frans, I really don't need to take cues from anyone. One of the things I've learned in 66 years is that objectivity exists only in the world of science, and sometimes not even there (for example, the two alleged physicists who claimed to have developed cold fusion several years ago.) Everybody has an agenda, and that's especially true in the world of advertising, both commercial and political. You get the good news, never the bad. Oh....yes, I almost forgot the disclaimers required by law, the ones that scroll past on your TV screen at light speed, or are mumbled in near-English on the radio, or are in print so fine at the bottom of the printed ad that you need a loupe to read them. Objectivity? I'll take wariness, thank you.

Castles are sacked in war
Chieftains are scattered far
Truth is a fixed star
Eileen Aroon

(Old Irish folk song)

My real complaint is not with Canon's marketing, let alone its products, but with the bloggers and journalists who uncritically use language that obscures the tradeoffs involved in any format size. Naturally Canon will use language that focuses on the advantages of a larger format (relative to its immediate competitors). However, for us to make objective evaluations of the tradeoffs we need first to remember that they exist; in general, tradeoffs between aspects of image quality as advantages for larger formats and aspects of use (size and speed of lenses, size and speed of manipulation of files) as advantages for smaller formats. I mentioned two of the ways that the words that are commonly used obscure these tradeoffs: "full frame" and "field of view crop". There is another, which is the generally pejorative use of the term "dof", despite the fact that greater dof is beneficial for a great many uses (sports, wildlife, photojournalism, among others).

Bloggers and journalists and marketers, oh my! I'd put the first two slightly up the ethical food chain than the marketers, but I see your point. But, if someone writes a review of a DSLR for, say, Shutterbug, should he really be required to make product comparisons outside the context of similar DSLRs? I think there's a limit to the amount of information we can reasonably expect such a article to contain, and that readers are responsible for doing there own research outside of those limits. A lot of camera owners would benefit from taking a course in basic photography, where they'd learn both the benefits and disadvantages of the various camera types. But you'll still get a shock the first time you scan a 4X5 negative at the resolution you normally use for 6X6, and see the file size that results!

Bill, I'm not suggesting comparisons outside the normal competition. I'm just suggesting that there is some language that is widely used in product reviews, mainly on the web but also in magazines, that is misleading and loaded.

Oh, yes, absolutely. The trick is knowing whether it results from innocent error, ignorance, or deliberate misdirection. Or, quite possible, a lack of a universal reference for a lot of the technical data that gets kicked around. That wouldn't be surprising, given that we're dealing with cutting edge technology that's constantly changing.

Bill,

Being my name was dragged into this I feel compelled to add a few lines. And having the benefit of even a few more years, I'm 73, my perspective is it is sad no one is required in public school to read a word of philosophy any more. If they did they might realize that writing as an individual voice, by definition, your are speaking subjectively. Being objective is not in the realm of possibilities of what an individual can be. The goal of an honest writer is to be DISINTERESTED, and if a bit British, dispassionate.

In other words a report I write is admittedly subjective. How I write is not claimed to be objective but from a position of having no vested interest in any side of the argument. I obtain no advantage by giving any bias to any interested party. Any honest writer accepts no gratuities from the subjects of his or her writing, and with any truly professional publication, a wall is never breached between the advertisers and editorial. With the two photo magazines I've appeared in most I have never received any attempt to influence what I write on behalf of an advertiser, although unhappiness on the part of manufacturer after the fact is not always beyond earshot.

On the other hand, more people should take at least one class in advertising in a business school. One of the first lessons learned is how to misuse language and logic to make unfair and unsupported arguments. In a court of law no one can be legitimately held guilty purely by association, but in advertising association is a primary tool used to acquire advantage to a product. In other words after a hundred years of professional mass media advertising everyday language, logic and thought used by average people has become perverted by the purposes of propagandists.

I'm glad to see David responding, although sad if in some way I led him to feel defensive. It would have been better had I been clearer about SOME writers using these terms uncritically.
As it happens I am not anti-marketing; I'm a business professor for heaven's sake and my wife's a business lawyer. Of course Canon will promote terms like "full frame"; I'd do the same in their shoes. I don't even know that they are responsible for promoting the other two terms (crop and dof as bad).
It's probably natural for some confusion in the language just now, because this is a period of some uncertainty in the marketplace about which formats will endure.

Alex,

Not defensive at all, it is just that there seemed to be a need to bring popular expectations in line with the reality of traditional publishing ethics. Of course I have to admit since most publications are now owned by huge corporate conglomerates, the typical business practices of such organizations have undermined traditional professional publishing standards.

That said, most of the camera industry is on the defensive. The reason is Canon is the only camera manufacturer that divvied up the huge investment required to design and produce their own digital camera sensors, and for that reason is the only one currently offering a camera with a sensor with an area size closely approximating a 35mm film frame. Nikon, Pentax, Olympus, etc. are dependent on companies like Sony and Kodak for sensor chips. That's not an ideal situation considering the history of difficulties Kodak was up against that finally caused them to cease making a "full frame" sensor chip/dSLR camera.

Part of the problem is the fact you get very few full frame chips out of an 8 inch silicon wafer compared to very many more APS-C size chips. When both the chip maker, like Kodak or Sony, and the camera maker has to add a profit margin to the final cost of a full-frame dSLR sensor it is very hard to compete with Canon, which may be swallowing some of the cost initially assuming there will be a sufficient volume of sales to come out ahead over the production run of their pro dSLR cameras. Deep pockets allow making long term business strategies.

In addition, many of the camera companies don't do their own marketing for the US, instead turning the job of crafting competitive hype to specialized marketing/PR/ad agencies. Here Canon is again an exception doing much of their marketing in-house.

David,

There you go again, showing your bias in favor of Canon and bashing others, of course without any hard data or facts to support your assertions. Is that your idea of "traditional professional publishing standards"?

Frans Waterlander
pixographer/printer

I don't know about a pro-Canon "bias" in the case David makes about their competitive advantages. However, I would just add that the most entrenched firms also face liabilities of their dominant positions. Those firms with a large established base of professional photographers (e.g., large collections of lenses) will be much less likely to make frame-breaking (that's BSchool jargon, not photo jargon there) innovations. As I noted, my current investment in Olympus DSLRs (two bodies and seven lenses) is risky and may prove to have been unwise. As I also noted, I think we'll know in the late Fall, as Oly introduces (earlier in the Fall) the next prosumer model followed later by the (rather overdue) pro model. By the way, my field in business schools is entrepreneurship, so you can understand my own bias in favor of Olympus, or rather what I hope Olympus turns out to be.

Frans,

Absolutely nothing I said is a bias in favor of Canon. It is an easily substantiated fact that Canon is one of Japan's largest technology companies and is diversified into many areas of technology products in many markets, and has been the largest producer of consumer and professional cameras in the world for some time.

My statement about Canon strategy is consistent with those made by the business press over the last few years.

Alex,

In the 30 some years I have been covering the photo field as a magazine writer, Olympus has always been something of an enigma. From a design and engineering perspective it has always followed its own path a little off of the mainstream, but in terms of a business, its company culture at least used to be the most austerely disciplined and traditional of all the camera companies. Possibly that rather strange mix of characteristics has contributed to its stability and viability. The fact is it has never followed the main path and has maintained a competitive position and held a strong following, and that has not changed much in 30 years, nor in terms of market share.

Canon beginning in the 50's came from well behind Nikon, which got its big boost during the Korean conflict by acquiring a favorable response from photo journalists covering the war, and for what reason I don't know, an advantageous inroad selling to the US Military PX stores ( where I bought my first and only Nikon). This initial inroad was then parlayed by a very effective and aggressive US distributor, Ehrenreich. In the 50's Nikon was following in the design tradition of Zeiss and Canon was influenced by Leica design. Soon both developed their own character in the 35mm SLR's they produced and Nikon captured a big lead in the US market. While Canon not making much of an inroad in the US put more effort in other markets and applied attention to developing a broader range of camera models and other products. Nikon concentrated on optics and 35mm SLR cameras apparently content to be the #1 name in cameras in the US, and remained a relatively small company while Canon grew in size on the basis of its diversity into more and more different but associated products.

In a way that ties into your theory but says more about Nikon than Canon I'm afraid.

Because of its installed base of pro Canon lenses, it made a lot of sense for Canon to develop a 36 X 24mm sensor. But the same applied to Nikon and they did not do it, so in this sense I see Canon as being ahead of the game. Unfortunately Olympus had given up on their OM customers beforehand, so their options included trying to find a way to get high image quality with smaller sensors, presumably by using multiple chips. Someone will do this if Oly doesn't. As for Canon, they seem to have an opportunity to develop a 36 X 36 sensor, because this would still function with the same lenses, give a larger image size, and the advantages (I think there are advantages) of a square format.

Canon decided to and was able to do their own image sensor chips not so much because of the lenses they had available and developed for 35mm SLRs which would be most usefully supported by a full-frame size sensor, but because the company is large enough and had the capital ($billions) they could invest in R&D and building a chip making plant.

There are very few digital image sensor chip manufacturers because of the extremely large investment needed which has to be offset by having a market penetration sufficient to absorb the production.

Although there is the perception of closeness in market share between Nikon and Canon, there is an enormous difference in the size of the companies. Nikon is a quite small company in overall size and capitalization compared to Canon or Sony.

The Kodak full frame dSLR partnership lasted a number of years, but I think the relationship between the Kodak and Nikon corporate cultures was a significant part of the reason why their full-frame cameras were not sufficiently popular and successful with photographers.

Olympus made a strategic decision early on in the development of the digital camera market to develop cameras designed and built around the processors that were available. They were way ahead of the game in the prosumer segment of the market offering very advantageous designs with their E series cameras. It just may have been they did not have the resources to also develop a dSLR that would utilize existing 35mm lenses. That decision may have been influenced by their past sales of OM lenses. In other words there just weren't all that many Olympus users who had purchased Olympus OM lenses in the past for their to be a sufficient inventory out their to provide a large enough base to support developing and offering an OM mount dSLR camera.

I agree with David. One other thing that inhibited Canon in the begining was that they had Bell and Howell as their distributer--who really dropped the ball and never put the money into promoting the Canon product line. It was only after Canon took over their own distribution that they began to creep up and then surpass Nikon.

David Brooks' Hollywood experience may shed some light on whether Nikon uses movie and TV producers as a kind of sub rosa advertising medium. I can't recall a single film or TV show involving photographers where the camera was not a Nikon, with the label prominently displayed in at least one shot. I think that would produce a subliminal response in buyers, in terms of immediate name recognition. Very smart move by Nikon, if it was in fact deliberate. Or am I totally off base here?

Dave,

If I recall, Bell & Howell was no advantage to a number of very good camera and photo products in the old days, not just Canon.

Bill,

Just one more aspect of the astute and aggressive marketing done by Ehrenreich on behalf of Nikon. The company grew enormously to become almost dominant in high-end pro photo products, including Sinar and Broncolor as well as others. But ambition finally took its toll and the bubble burst rather spectacularly.

I thought it might amuse people to know that I am looking to buy a Canon - albeit a P. That's right, a very old rangefinder - I mentioned that my favorite camera all time was a Nikon S3 (didn't mention that I never liked a Leica IIIg that I also had - both very used even then). There's just something about those old rangefinders, however quixotic it may be to have use one as well as DSLRs!

At least for me a part of my preferences over the years have been dictated by what is a camera that is comfortable in my hands, as well as how it performs. I have wide, thick hands and short fingers so was never comfortable handling the original Hasselblads or the Nikon F. Of course more recent and more ergonomic designs of most makes have largely overcome those distinctions.

Probably the best digital experience I've had is with the Epson RD-1. The best lenses in Leica mount that fit it do make a difference in digital image capture quality. If Epson would just put the Sony 10.2MPX chip in it and lower the price a little I'd be very tempted.

Even after all of the auto everything in SLR's for years now I still prefer manual settings and focus, especially with a good rangefinder. However most of my pro shooting was studio work, so SLR's were the more advantageous camera to use, so I only got to enjoy cameras like the Fuji GS645 rangefinder when I was out having fun.

David, I think you're right - the way the camera feels in your hands is very important. If it's not comfortable, it becomes a distraction and gets in the way of your work. That's why all my SLRs (except the Oly OM-1) have battery grips, and the Hasselblad almost never leaves the tripod. The one or two times I've had to shoot the Hassy handheld, I've had to use the flash grip to make it feel right.

Agreed on both counts: the feel in your hands - a personal thing - is important, and manual focus and controls still have a lot going for them. Feel happens to be why I went with Oly when I first bought a DSLR; I didn't yet know I'd get serious again and wanted to spend only a thousand or so. At that price point the Canon and Nikon competitors felt like toys to me. Remember, I was used to bricks like old Nikons. Only later did I realize that dof is important to most of what I do and hope and pray that Oly, which has the smallest sensor and hence the most dof, would come through with better bodies. (The lenses are not in question, in my view.)

I don't know whether you could consider them a cult.
Heck if you want to give them that status look at how they cheesed off photographers from all levels when they made the change in lenses and no more fd's to fit the new body gear.
I hardly think that made them cult status(IMHO)
That chased some great numbers to Nikon.
I just don't think any manufacturer is really a cult as much as a custom tailered marketing design philosphy(per brand) to their respective products offered.