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Author Topic: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial  (Read 79126 times)

amolitor

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #60 on: May 24, 2015, 12:21:15 am »

Are you really under the impression that michael's scheme gets perfect exposure every time? Point it at the sun and think through what happens.

Then think about how you'd fix it. Congratulations, you just invented Matrix Metering. Which is available now.

---

"In a shrinking market you must start listening to your customers" is exactly the kind of thing that's obvious, but not even necessarily true.

If you are trapped in a shrinking market, you plan for how to be the dominant surviving player. That means that you need to:

1) survive
2) be dominant when the smoke clears

Survival is hard. Going big at a time when you need to be shrinking your company without destroying it might not be the right choice. Cutting staff cheaply and with minimum pain might involve offering many of your senior people generous severance packages, which is going to interfere a lot with your ability to deliver nifty new features. If you have any sense at all, you're spending a lot of engineering effort cleaning your bills of materials, planning for a simplified product line. You might be
looking at how to cut things back to a smaller number of base platforms, and a smaller number of pluggable modules, while still being able to deliver a sensible
range of products.

You're spending engineering resources on scaling the company down, safely.

USB 3.0? Get serious. Call me when the other guys deliver USB 3.0. In fact, call me when the other guys do it and it moves the needle on their sales. We're busy
trying to figure out how to cut the company in half without killing it.

---

Pile all the features you can think of into one camera? Great idea! How do you price this thing?

Price the camera low, let's say $1700, and now you can never sell a camera for more than that. EVER. Whoops. Where the hell did all my margin go?
Price the camera high, let's say $6000,  and the internet explodes in fury at your stupid pricing model and nobody buys the damn thing.

And what product do you follow it with?

Now it's next year. What are we going to build? Aren't we done? We built the all-singing all-dancing camera, and now, even if we had any money which we don't (see above) what on earth would we spend it developing? Does the armchair/internet businessman answer now change to "well, build some cameras with fewer features. You know, what you were doing before you went broke following my advice?"

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Jeremy Roussak

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #61 on: May 24, 2015, 04:10:30 am »

I'd be willing to bet that lions prefer the taste of lean meat to fat.

I'm willing to bet that they wouldn't run past the obese sluggard to get to the lean sprinter.

Jeremy
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AreBee

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #62 on: May 24, 2015, 04:47:00 am »

Jeremy,

Quote
I'm willing to bet that they wouldn't run past the obese sluggard to get to the lean sprinter.

If they first get the lean sprinter the lion can afford to have its cake and eat it.

Yum.
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graeme

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #63 on: May 24, 2015, 08:21:28 am »

I think, Andrew, that you are overplaying this argument.

Yes, there are those who are "perfectly" satisfied by the smartphone. And yet, there are others, within the same group, who are seeing the limitations of their phone cameras (noisy low-light situations, flash photography with permanently burnt retinas, not just red, etc.). I am actually often bugged by friends, total amateurs, who want to step up, to recommend them a "true" camera. I am trying to persuade them their phones are good enough for their needs, yet they keep coming back, asking for a step-up advice.

I recently attended my niece's 18th birthday party. It was held in the local village hall & had some quite spectacular coloured disco lighting in an otherwise dark room. On a whim I took along my 60D & 17 - 85. That's not a brilliant low light combo & I'm crap at this type of photography - I barely know how to use the built in flash.

The next morning I was sorting the pics I'd taken ( in Lightroom ). My niece walked in & said that '...everyone at the party was taking photos all night'. I thought 'Right I won't bother with these then'. She then said 'But none of them came out'.

Everyone else had been using smartphones.

My poor handheld / lowlight photography skills combined with a real camera produced 140 useable photos for her social media use.

Everyone else's  poor handheld / lowlight photography skills combined with a smartphone produced 0 useable photos.

So I think the death of the real camera industry is a bit overstated. It's contracting massively but that's OK by me. I wouldn't care if all camera / computer / imaging software tech stopped progressing at all - it's good enough for me right now & I just get pissed off learning how to use the 'upgrades'. Maybe they could stick with current tech & concentrate on making it cheaper.

Graeme

PS. Maybe the above story could form the basis of an ad campaign to woo smartphone photographers to try dedicated cameras. If Canikon's marketing dept email me I'll provide my bank details...
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amolitor

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #64 on: May 24, 2015, 09:52:32 am »

The old 'a real camera works in low light' story!

Yes. It's true. There are several relatives. You also can't shoot sports with a phone, e.g.

But the important part of the story is that 'everyone was taking pictures with phones'.

The fact that the pictures didn't work out doesn't matter. Sure, every now and then a cell phone user buys a real camera. Every now and then someone with a real camera lets it gather dust. The markets are a bit fluid, and camera sales are not zero and won't go to zero in the forseeable future.

The larger picture is clear, however.

Billions of photos with phones. Millions with cameras. Every day.
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graeme

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #65 on: May 24, 2015, 10:56:57 am »

The fact that the pictures didn't work out doesn't matter.

Right. OK.
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #66 on: May 24, 2015, 11:18:10 am »

... Billions of photos with phones. Millions with cameras. Every day.

Somewhere along the way, and after four pages of it, I lost your point...what is it? Other this stating the obvious, that is.

ripgriffith

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #67 on: May 24, 2015, 11:22:08 am »

Somewhere along the way, and after four pages of it, I lost your point...what is it? Other this stating the obvious, that is.
Always with the perfect observation... +1
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amolitor

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #68 on: May 24, 2015, 11:25:28 am »

It is that there are, or at any rate one can usefully consider there to be, two markets and Canon et al can compete in only one of them.

You're correct that this is obvious. And yet.

All else I have said is either to demonstrate why this is true, or to discuss consequences of it.



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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #69 on: May 24, 2015, 01:01:47 pm »

...to discuss consequences of it.

Which are simple, really:

1. Run even faster in order to stay in the same (or lower) place... put the sneakers on, so to speak, outrun the competition (i.e. improve technology) - which is what Michael and Thom are saying

or

2. Curl up and cry - which seems to be what you are suggesting
« Last Edit: May 24, 2015, 01:20:03 pm by Slobodan Blagojevic »
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amolitor

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #70 on: May 24, 2015, 01:06:24 pm »

That is, to my eye, not what Michael and Thom are saying.

Thom has explicitly stated in this thread that the larger mass market could be cracked if only camera makers took his advice.

Michael, to my eye, had implied it.

ETA: not sure where you're getting the 'curl up and cry' I've made numerous suggestions for what they might be doing that is constructive. What is annoying people is that I am pointing out that rolling out their pet features isn't.


« Last Edit: May 24, 2015, 01:22:06 pm by amolitor »
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AreBee

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #71 on: May 24, 2015, 02:14:47 pm »

Perhaps Nikon, Canon etc know exactly what they're doing and simply are milking the market through incremental improvements.

Occam's razor, and all that.
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #72 on: May 24, 2015, 02:22:16 pm »

... I've made numerous suggestions for what they might be doing that is constructive...

I must have missed that... like what?

amolitor

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #73 on: May 24, 2015, 02:36:14 pm »

Post #61. Paragraph starting 'survival is hard'
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #74 on: May 24, 2015, 03:00:56 pm »

Post #61. Paragraph starting 'survival is hard'

In other words, to curl up and cry... after you cut the company in half.

After all, you'd have a lot of free time to do that, once you "simplify your product line" and "offer cameras with fewer features." You can then sit and wait for the hordes of customers excited by the "fewer features." The emphasis being on "sit and wait" (= curl up and cry).

Scaling down in a crisis is a palliative, tactical response, not a strategy.

JeanMichel

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #75 on: May 24, 2015, 03:01:28 pm »

Four pages of interesting reading. I do not know too much about marketing strategies and am also one who believes that the definition of "obsolete" is "it works", so I am sticking with what I think is a state of the art Canon 5d2, but am looking at the newest offering from Sony. I also stick with a Leica M9  (with my 40 to 50 years-old lenses) and wishing for the cash to buy their newer bodies. In some ways, Leica does have guts and does get glory, albeit with a rather modest market share. They, Leica, like the programmers of Lightroom and ACR understand photography and their products make it very possible for photographers to make their very best images. I have no idea as to where mass photography is headed -- but I am quite sure that cell phones will be replaced by something else sooner than later and all those images and videos will evaporate. Sa for new technology, perhaps this could be part of camera future: http://engineering.columbia.edu/columbia-engineer-invents-video-camera-runs-without-battery
Jean-Michel
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AreBee

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #76 on: May 24, 2015, 03:08:16 pm »

Slobodan,

Quote
..."simplify your product line"...

Thom Hogan has advocated for a long time that Nikon simplify its product line.
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #77 on: May 24, 2015, 03:15:56 pm »

Slobodan,

Thom Hogan has advocated for a long time that Nikon simplify its product line.

That might as well be, and it might make sense, but in which context? I doubt it is in the same context as Andrew's "simplify your product line AND offer fewer features."

amolitor

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #78 on: May 24, 2015, 03:24:03 pm »

If you want to equate 'run the now smaller business unit' with 'curl up and cry', Slobodan, far be it from me to deny you the opportunity.

Companies shrink and expand business units all the time to fit market needs. It is absolutely strategic. The strategy is 'right-size business units to fit the markets' the tactic is 'shrink/grow this one over the next so and so years'


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AreBee

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Re: "No Guts, No Glory" rantatorial
« Reply #79 on: May 24, 2015, 03:32:01 pm »

Slobodan,

Quote
...in which context?

Thom Hogan considers that there are too many models within Nikon's lineup of camera bodies.
« Last Edit: May 24, 2015, 03:33:44 pm by Rob B. »
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