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[OM] Re: EOS 400D

Subject: [OM] Re: EOS 400D
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 05 Sep 2006 21:37:58 -0700
khen lim wrote:
> Moose
>
> I appreciate the detail that you got into to explain what you feel is right
> and good about Canon. But I have to come to the defence of Olympus only
> because through the years, it has been anything but what you believe Canon
> has been, behind closed doors and out there yonder.
>   
Lets get this straight. I don't like "Canon", the company, nor do I 
dislike it. I don't like or dislike folks who shoot with C, or O, or N, 
or whatever, based on their choice of camera.

For you, and many others, this is apparently something like sports 
affiliations, an emotional connection. C*nonites say bad things about 
Oly and about those who use their products. Then Olyites yell "Nyah, 
nyah, nyah, you can't even control your own dust!", and go off to have 
beer and pizza and chuckle about it.

That's fine, and the basis of huge industries and a major source of 
support for major universities. It is simply not what I am talking 
about. In this mode, I am simply a buyer and user of photographic 
equipment commenting on the strengths and weaknesses of the products of 
various makers as they relate to my buying behavior.

Since actual sales of this stuff will determine which companies succeed 
and which fail, I thought it might be of interest to those who care 
whether Oly survives to hear what a fairly knowledgeable person has to 
say about all that. I am not touting "Canon". Nor do I care for the 
purpose at hand whether Oly is a maverick, or any other appellation; all 
I care about is their products.

 From this standpoint (and I am not denying the importance of your 
different viewpoint, just proposing another way to look at what is 
happening) all this history, who pulled who's pants down back in the 70s 
and so on, means absolutely nothing. And it doesn't matter one yen's 
worth on the net profit line whether "Canon has very little respect - 
perhaps only grudgingly so - for what we do at Olympus." is true or not. 
You are the only ones who care - and you aren't the ones who buy your 
cameras.

And tearing apart the competition's products in an internal process is 
simply useless, for the simple reason that it tells you nothing 
whatsoever about what the people buying these things value. You can all 
sit around an laugh yourselves silly about some foolishness you find in 
a C or N or whatever product. But you are asking the wrong questions. 
The question needs to be who is selling the most, and if it isn't you, 
why are people buying somebody else's products, flawed as they are. It's 
sort of like Abe Lincoln's answer when asked what he thought about 
Grant's drinking. (In case you don't know US history, Grant was at the 
time the only US general winning battles.) Lincoln asked what brand 
Grant was drinking and said he wanted to send a case to each of his 
other generals.

I spent over 30 years in the corporate office of a very large company. I 
was never a big cheese, not even close, but I worked closely with a lot 
of them. I've done a LOT of financial analysis. I've worked with 
actually competent, high powered international consultants (and some not 
so good). I did all the financial analysis for an international joint 
venture that was, and is, very successful. I know just a little about 
this stuff.

I also watched the slow decline of a huge company, among the world's 
largest in a couple of areas. There was lots of denial, lots of hand 
wringing, lots of analysis, lots of analysis of the competition. Lots of 
the kind of emotional attitude towards the competition that you have 
posted here. Lots of plans that didn't actually change anything that the 
customer would notice. There was also lots of looking the other way at 
the results of consumer and market research. I should know, I ran part 
of it for a while. When the guy on top got tired of the stuff we sent 
up, he outsourced the research to people eager to tell clients what they 
want to know. Yup, I survived that too, tough bugger.

Finally, the company was worth more dead, as assets to sell,  than alive 
as an ongoing concern. With much noise and dust, a white knight was 
found, an LBO arranged and many people with nothing to do with the 
business itself made a great deal of money out of it. and a lot of 
people not at fault at all were hurt financially. However, nothing got 
any better. Eventually, before things could collapse, the folks who now 
had financial control brought in their own top man.

What a revelation! He had research done, both inside and outside the 
company, to find out where things weren't working. And he read it. And 
he devised plans to change the things that weren't working. and he set 
them in motion. Some were so innovative that they have become industry 
standard practices. He changed a whole industry! Simply by asking 
customers, ex-customers, employees and ex-employees to tell what they 
know about what was going on, listening and acting.

Can you imagine asking employees to rate their supervisors - through an 
outside firm with complete confidentialliy? Then actually requiring the 
supervisors with poor scores to take training and counseling? Then if 
their ratings don't go up, firing them for cause? Can you imagine what 
that does for employee morale, commitment, productivity and loyalty? I 
can; I've seen it. He did other equally impossible things that 
transformed a company. He also made a lot of people, including himself, 
very wealthy. And, bless him, enough trickled down for me to manage a 
modest retirement at 55. And boy, do I love that!

So when I say the things about Oly that you seem to find hurtful, it is 
with a love in my heart that hopes they will wake up and with the eye 
and mind of a financial analyst trying to define the problems they have.

And let me make clear that I do not share the opinion of some that the 
E-1 is/was some kind of failure because it didn't address the needs of 
all kinds of pros. I recognize that Oly is a small company and can't do 
everything at once. And I happen to think that the E-1 was a perfect 
shot at a rather important pro market, event and portrait photography. 
I'll bet a lot of them are still happily, and profitably, being used for 
that purpose. On the other hand, it's getting long in the tooth and even 
the toughest businesspeople sometimes surrender to the siren song of 
megapixels, instant on, etc.

Also, that market alone won't support a whole system without flagship 
"Pro" products.
>  
> <big snip>
>
> OM T32 flash
> What an ingenious design. Metz followed but no one else. It was super
> compact in size and yet packed GN32. You really couldn't go wrong here.
> Canon was nowhere insight.
>   
Here, I must say something. The T32 TTL system, power, coverage, etc. 
are all wonderful and it's the only flash I used for many years. But you 
could go wrong. The flash tube/reflector is too close to the lens axis. 
It is simply more prone to red-eye than the boring, stupid, prosaic 
flashes everybody else was making. Obviously, somebody at Oly figured 
this out, as the F280, T18 (what a great little flash!) and all 
subsequent Oly flashes went back to the conventional shape.
> <snip>
> My time spend at Olympus had revealed Canon to be ignorant when they largely
> choose to be. After all when you're the king of the hill, you kinda think
> you can afford to be. Why should they respond to the E-1's SSWF? They didn't
> for almost four years so why now? The answer is not Olympus because they had
> ignored us and they would continue to ignore us. 
Why in heaven's name should they listen to Oly? Is Oly buying their cameras?
> The answer lies in their customers 
Exactly, that's who you have to please, nobody else. (Well, shareholders 
too, but if you serve the customers, the shareholders will be happy.)
> whom they have not been sensitive to. Customers have shouted and
> screamed enough to them over the years and this is their way to get them off
> their backs.
>   
I can't comment about that. I'm rather new to Canon, have had virtually 
no trouble with dust so far and found their warranty service when my 
little S110 failed to be exemplary. Other than that, every Canon thing I 
have has performed up to or beyond my expectations.
> One question begs to be asked, "Would Canon come up with this dust removal
> system on their own and without customer pressure?" I don't think so. It's
> always customer pressure that does it. 
Who knows. The point is, no one camera company has come up with all the 
important innovations. You might as well ask if Oly would have come up 
with TTL flash control on their own. It doesn't matter. Every body comes 
up with new ideas. If they work, everybody else tries to copy or improve 
on them and the users are the winner, as they should be.
> If you think that Olympus aren't nice
> and can't be bothered to help customers, I think that if you knew Canon
> deeper and beneath the skin, you won't like their arrogance also.
>   
I do not attribute such personal emotions to such large entities. I 
simply said that Canon responded in a through, well thought out, systems 
way to a problem. At the same time, Oly appears to have sat back, so 
proud of their technical achievement that they didn't think anything 
about how it could be implemented in such a way as to minimize its 
negative impact on other aspects of camera use.
> And I think that with so much lesser resources to work with, we've done far
> more in outright terms of technological innovations than Canon. 
And the personna I have adopted here, the un-affiliated buyer who only 
cares about his own needs, couldn't care less.
> If we at Olympus have half as much the kind of resources that Canon boasts 
> of, I am
> deeply convinced that we would have done far more than they have.
>   
And the way to get those resources is to deliver what the customer wants 
to buy.
> I remain unswayed by the strong belief that when it comes to innovation, we
> are streets ahead especially when such innovations improve photography,
> solves common photographic issues or opens up new photographic
> possibilities.
>
> We may not be there to match the EOS1D Mark "whatever," but we're not
> interested. Our OM-3 and OM-4 were more than enough a collective statement
> that we play our own game, and we do it right. And as long as Canon ignores
> Olympus, they only do so at their own peril.
>   
OK, enough, back to the prep rally. Let's burn Canon, whoever that is, 
in effigy on the spirit pyre! Rah, Rah, Sis, boom bah.
> Wow. Didn't realise I could come out with so much drivel. 
Hey, I'll meet thta and raise you some claptrap and a case of mumbo-jumbo!
> Anyway, I didn't mean to get so vitriolic or emotional. Just that I needed to 
> come defending 
> Olympus. Sorry Moose....nothing personal.
>   
Never thought so.

Moose

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