Why it’s in your best interests to support Red cameras.
Years back, I was looking to buy a new camera and had decided on the Canon G6.
Took nice pictures, decent specs, SD media, and saved photos in RAW.
After I had made my decision, Canon released the G7, and removed the RAW support. Talk on the blog’s reckons it was because Canon didn’t want the Compacts competing with their cheapie SLRs. Classic marketing ‘screw the customer’ bull shit (bugger the whole interchangeable lens argument that refuses to die in this Scarlet space.)
Crap I thought, and frantically shopped around for the last of the G6’s. I wasn’t surprised to find that the supply had quickly dried up.
I looked for an alternative from other manufactures that covered my requirements and discovered the Ricoh GX100.
Turned out to be a totally cool little cam. Not only did it support RAW, it saved photos in DNG format. No manufacturer specific programs required. No waiting for Photoshop to support the format. And every program that supports DNG loads output from my Ricoh.
On the day I was picking up my Ricoh, Canon released the G9 (what happened to the G8?)
Suddenly RAW was back in the feature list. Also a wide angle adaptor was released, which had also been previously available for the Ricoh.
Wow, it’s like Canon knew that they were going to lose a sale! I thought about it while I was on route to the camera shop and decided to ‘flip the bird’ at Canon.
I went ahead and bought the Ricoh. Canon lost a sale, and since Red announced the Scarlet, there is a good chance that Canon will never see the colour of my cash ever again.
(Interestingly Pentax have just released the Coolpix P6000 which also reminds me a lot of my Ricoh.)
I have since discovered that a lot of Canon’s cameras can save RAW. Unfortunately Canon has decided to manipulate the customer and disable the function.
This is classic. I remember hearing a story years ago about how all VCR’s had the same internals. Only the casings and the remotes were individual across the range. The manufacturer was locking the customer out of features by leaving buttons off the remotes.
The Canon RAW support can be retrieved using…
http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK
This is the same marketing crap that gave birth to the P2 solid state cards. Why the hell would anyone lock themselves into yet another new format?
Considering the size of the cards, the customer is much better off waiting for SSD to gain some market traction.
I have long refused to buy Sony as they decided to ignore the SD card standard and whipped out Memory Sticks, the specs of which have always lagged behind the SD.
Fuji and Olympus are also ignored as they adhere to the XD format which is a really backward standard.
I can take the Mini SD card out of my Nokia and jam it into a Pentax W10, a Canon TX1, and my beloved Ricoh.
This card can also be stuffed into a Nintendo Wii, and many other devices from a broad range of manufactures.
If the customer doesn’t support companies such as Red, this crap will continue and probably get worse.
What camera would I have bought if the Scarlet hadn’t been announced…
The Casio EX-F1. SD media, DNG RAW, fascinating feature set, and Hi-def video.
Took nice pictures, decent specs, SD media, and saved photos in RAW.
After I had made my decision, Canon released the G7, and removed the RAW support. Talk on the blog’s reckons it was because Canon didn’t want the Compacts competing with their cheapie SLRs. Classic marketing ‘screw the customer’ bull shit (bugger the whole interchangeable lens argument that refuses to die in this Scarlet space.)
Crap I thought, and frantically shopped around for the last of the G6’s. I wasn’t surprised to find that the supply had quickly dried up.
I looked for an alternative from other manufactures that covered my requirements and discovered the Ricoh GX100.
Turned out to be a totally cool little cam. Not only did it support RAW, it saved photos in DNG format. No manufacturer specific programs required. No waiting for Photoshop to support the format. And every program that supports DNG loads output from my Ricoh.
On the day I was picking up my Ricoh, Canon released the G9 (what happened to the G8?)
Suddenly RAW was back in the feature list. Also a wide angle adaptor was released, which had also been previously available for the Ricoh.
Wow, it’s like Canon knew that they were going to lose a sale! I thought about it while I was on route to the camera shop and decided to ‘flip the bird’ at Canon.
I went ahead and bought the Ricoh. Canon lost a sale, and since Red announced the Scarlet, there is a good chance that Canon will never see the colour of my cash ever again.
(Interestingly Pentax have just released the Coolpix P6000 which also reminds me a lot of my Ricoh.)
I have since discovered that a lot of Canon’s cameras can save RAW. Unfortunately Canon has decided to manipulate the customer and disable the function.
This is classic. I remember hearing a story years ago about how all VCR’s had the same internals. Only the casings and the remotes were individual across the range. The manufacturer was locking the customer out of features by leaving buttons off the remotes.
The Canon RAW support can be retrieved using…
http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK
This is the same marketing crap that gave birth to the P2 solid state cards. Why the hell would anyone lock themselves into yet another new format?
Considering the size of the cards, the customer is much better off waiting for SSD to gain some market traction.
I have long refused to buy Sony as they decided to ignore the SD card standard and whipped out Memory Sticks, the specs of which have always lagged behind the SD.
Fuji and Olympus are also ignored as they adhere to the XD format which is a really backward standard.
I can take the Mini SD card out of my Nokia and jam it into a Pentax W10, a Canon TX1, and my beloved Ricoh.
This card can also be stuffed into a Nintendo Wii, and many other devices from a broad range of manufactures.
If the customer doesn’t support companies such as Red, this crap will continue and probably get worse.
What camera would I have bought if the Scarlet hadn’t been announced…
The Casio EX-F1. SD media, DNG RAW, fascinating feature set, and Hi-def video.
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