Originally posted by Kunzite My bad, I thought I was on your ignore list; but that's easily corrected. If you must have such a dismissing, arrogant attitude, click on my name then on the 'Ignore' link on the top-right corner of the little popup window. Thank you.
The images stuff is a red herring, given the nature of our discussions they can only serve as an appeal to false authority on one side, and ad hominem on the other. They're irrelevant to the idea of being able to raise sales by an order of magnitude to cope with a 50,000+ euro expense, in 6 months.
Besides, to my knowledge Adam is fine with gearheads being around. You don't get to overrule that.
Me being arrogant? With you? Why would I be arrogant with you? Photographers talk through images. Saying this to you makes me arrogant in a photography forum? You keep saying that images are irrelevant if you want to raise sales due to heavy processing of the images, etc... Yet, a review of a camera or a lens without any picture would be relevant to anyone? I see a note under the images from reviews who specify that the images had been edited.
I post images like these from below when I want to tell people what kind of images we can take at the photo meetings that I organise from time to time. I use cheap lenses and often cheap cameras in order to make people understand that for certain images you don't need expensive gear and all you need is to take care of how to combine the 3 elements (the subject, the light, the background) for getting a pleasing image. I'm not writting them and describe the scene, the model, etc. Photographers who organise workshops post images in order for people to see what they can photograph at a workshop. And with images they manage to attract participants and also with images they grow up their workshop business. They don't promote the brand, they don't promote certain cameras or lenses.
As I said, I know that posting images is not an obligation, but we can all learn through images more than we learn by writting 10 pages of words.
Originally posted by Kunzite No surviving business goes randomly spending money, hoping it would work - by the way.
Who said something about spending money randomly? If attracting known photographers by providing them some gear means that this are waisted money... You know why I have lots of requests to organise photo tours? Because:
- I invested in flashes
- I invested in triggers that work with any camera
- I pay the models rather than working with TFCD models that doesn't know how to pose or can give me surprises and don't show up
- I invite always a known photographer that can provide tips and tricks
- I propose themes that attract people; for example, from 10 to 12 Jully I will be in Danube Delta with another 6 photographers shooting nudes and fashion, but we will be in small fishing boats, on watter, in the middle of the lake (people are responding to ideas that are hard to implement due to conditions); They got tired of shooting a model in a studio under the advice of a photographers who set up for them the flashes, the model, etc.
I didn't know if spending money will work, but I wanted to try rather than make planes only on paper. Don't tell me that if I can invest 2-3.000$ in flashes to see if these photo tours worth the effort of organising them, the Pentax dealer can't invest 4000$ to see if they can improve their sales by organising photo tours or give the camera for tests to some known photographers. You (not you in particular) rather move the discussion to Pentax is doomed because of us who try and offer suggestions that you like to interpret in the wrong way just for animating a topic with some inflamatory discussions. I didn't say Pentax is doomed in my entire life. I expressed an opinion or two based on what works on every business company (getting involved in online marketing which is easier than people may think and you don't need tons of money to do some ads and promoting some ambassadors).
Originally posted by Kunzite 1 K-1 and 3 zoom lenses are on a different scale than 10-15 K-1 and a matching set of lenses. I believe it would've failed or even backfired - Bezergheanu gave up on Nikon because Nikon didn't support him "properly" (or something);
Bezergheanu recieved from Olympus just one camera and 3 lenses. After 2 months and one review that made waves even on DPreview forum he recieved another 5 cameras and some lenses so that he can attract easier photographers to Olympus. Why don't you say what Bezergheanu said regarding why he abandoned Nikon? His words were: Nikon didn't offer me a discount for Nikon 105mm f1.4 lens and this got me analise the relationship with them. Now Nikon hired 5 ambassadors that combined don't do what Bezergheanu did for the brand. They lost him over a discount for a lens.
Originally posted by Kunzite was there any chance of him being satisfied with Pentax?
If no one from Pentax approached him, how would we know? Olympus made the first move. Now Sony and Fuji tries to steal him from Olympus. I wonder why?!
Originally posted by Kunzite And the support Olympus is providing him with is on a higher level (or so he claims).
But spending the money is not everything: remember that one of the things he praised Olympus for was it's fast frame rate? That's one of the "easy" things I was talking about before. Or the lenses - the top-notch primes he had from Nikon, the long lenses... IMHO Pentax just doesn't have equipment suitable for him.
Yes, they did provided him lots of gear after they saw what he can do with just an Olympus E-M1 Mark II and 4 lenses. If someone will generate with one camera and 4 lenses that many sales, wouldn't you have done the same? Olympus has the frame rate, Pentax has other advantages that he could talk about. You know that he can write even about a Pentax K7 and make it look through his images and through his words that it as a better camera than D7200 or 80D for example.
The same thing did Heye (the military guy) with just a short clip on Youtube in which he risked his gear by putting it under shower and covering it with sand. He made Pentax known all over the world as very well build cameras that you can rely on. Just for this free advertise I would have tried to help him promote Pentax. There are others who post on youtube Pentax cameras under shower, but this guy is credible beying a military guy who takes photographs under very difficult conditions. It would have been nice to read on the internet about a guy who chosed to work with Pentax cameras when he goes to missions due to the build quality of Pentax cameras, due to the excelent image quality, due to the lots of functions and so on.
By the way, why Kenspo is not listed as an ambassador on Pentax website? I see only 4 ambassadors on Pentax website: Kerrick James, Chris Knight, Joey Skibel, Ricardo Serpa.
Originally posted by Kunzite That being said, I support the idea of finding a good (but less pretentious) photographer or two to promote the brand.
Let's see it. Let's see how you make some noise in our market. I will be the first to share all the interesting articles/reviews you post with the help of a known photographer in the next 1-2 years. I found a known photographer to come to my photo tours. It's not that hard as you may think. You can involve our Pentax dealer also... Lots of things can be done if you take a break from writting on forums and implement the things that you agree with from these discussions.