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13.8MP Kodak Tops Previously Leaked Canon
MadCow42 writes "With the professional imaging trade show Photokina opening this week in Koln Germany, digital camera manufacturers are announcing a stunning new lineup of professional digital cameras. These include a 13.8 megapixel monster from Kodak, and a 11.1 megapixel camera from Canon. I'm sure Nikon isn't too far behind, but no news yet on their offerings. These cameras are positioned for the professional photographer, but with list prices from under $4k to $6k, they're not out of reach for the 'pro-sumer' market either. The best news is that new products like this will push prices down on the 4-6MP cameras at the high end of the consumer level." We mentioned the premature release giving Canon's hand away; like MadCow42, I want to see what Nikon has to say.
I think the "pro-sumer" market is becoming increasingly important nowadays--to the HUGE advantage of electronic-gizmo and software companies, and seemingly to the disadvantage of the very un-pro "pro-sumer." (As opposed to the yes-pro "pro-sumer"--there is a difference, which I'll explain briefly.)
First, this is because there are a lot of self-proclaimed "experts of everything" out there who follow marketing hype like a dog on a leash. That's what I mean by "un-pro 'pro-sumer.'" You probably know a few in your own neighborhood: They're the kind of person who will state "facts" about any subject, and sound real-darn-confident that their "facts" are as correct as the fabric of space. They're the kind of person who has a copy of every single high-end program there is, don't know how to use it, but convince everybody they know that each of those programs is a critical necessity for enormous success in business (success, that is, that they just don't have, and never will). They're the kind of person who reads PC-World, decides there's some evil sub-organic-half-cyberbeing virus swimming through the Internet, so they install a virus protection program that doesn't work and subsequently firmly believe that they're 100% protected from any and all possible dangers, including blackouts and such. And they read magazines like Entrepreneur and Esquire and consider themselves the world's leading expert on all matters of business, et cetera.
Think I'm making all this up? I happen to know such a person. About five years ago, he tried to convince us that we MUST be on "the Internet" in order to keep our business successful. He went on and on about how our website would advertise our customers and how, by promoting their business, we'd be promoting our own. And he described a system for searching the Internet whereby these dogs run out and fetch the information you're looking for. Yeah. We seated him in front of a computer running Netscape Navigator and asked him to research the subject. He didn't know what to do. So we asked him if he knows how to operate a web browser. He had no idea. In fact, he had never operated any kind of program that communicated with the outside world. Not even gopher, or FTP, or anything! But his lecture sounded SO convincing.
Back to my original point: The "pro-sumer" market is increasingly important for business, especially with the enormous recent growth of the "un-pro expert" high-tech user market (high-tech users, that is, who don't know a "that black screen" from a C-shell).
Another case in point: There are lots of people out there with expensive digital cameras like that Minolta 5.0 megapixel one, who don't know a damn thing about photography and wonder why their pictures of God-knows-what in poor lighting conditions come out fuzzy, or why it's important to prevent shadows from overtaking half of some female's face in a photograph. (Shadows, properly placed on a male's face, and in the proper situation, make him look more masculine, whereas shadows on a female's face always make her look horrible. You don't have to go far to solve this problem--in a sunny outdoor situation, you can even use your camera's built-in flash, at the proper distance, of course. It looks funny, using flash in broad daylight, but it gets rid of the shadows and there's no evidence of flash in the photograph.) They're afraid to "mess up the camera's settings" in fear that all their future pictures will come out weird, and can't figure out why the shutter seemingly clicks twice for a single exposure. And yet, they proudly own the most expensive camera that's in their financial reach. READ: I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH THIS! But at least, if you're going to spend $1,000 on Adobe's pro-collection, or $1,200 on a camera, or $999,999,999,999.00 on a Lamborghini Diablo, at least LEARN HOW TO PROPERLY USE WHAT YOU PAID FOR! (On a side note, relating to expensive cameras again: I have an uncle who specified in exacting detail exactly what kind of Nikon camera he needed and which accessories, to open his professional photography business. (Sound familiar?) He dropped something like $4,000 on all the junk, and probably went through two rolls of film in four years.)
I keep digressing from my main point: That the "pro-sumer" market is growing larger with each passing day, because among the five or so real pro-sumers, there are a zillion self-proclaimed experts. That's why companies should continue to make these expensive toys for these folks. So I can laugh when the photographs I take are crystal clear and contain shadows only where I want them, and so I can laugh even more when their "100% protected" computers with Microsoft Outlook on the monitor and angry bulldogs defending the ports (and fetching data) get h4x0rd and my FreeBSD box with the few crappy ipfw rules I slopped together in 30 minutes remains untouched.
Sex is in the mind...you only think your penis is important.
Appendage...orifice...they all provide pleasure in one way or another, and they all serve our libido. Don't fret over the lose of one or more...the brain will certainly pick up the slack.
This is the first "beowulf-cluster" joke that has made me laugh in a long time.
bp