I've written about this before, but while working recently with a press release image from a highly regarded lens maker, I just have to wonder about what the heck lens and process they use to capture their marketing materials.
The case in point had:
- Completely mismanaged white balance, that made their lens look brown.
- Was lit with inconsistent side to side lighting, and harsh lighting, at that.
- Missed focus point.
- Considerable edge artifacts that indicated it had been over sharpened. A bit of moire, too.
- Terrible JPEG artifacts that indicated that they had used massive JPEG compression on it.
Now I would have thought that if you're trying to get people to buy an expensive, high quality lens, you'd want to show it off, not make it look like someone had snuck into their basement and spend all of five minutes taking and processing the image with compromised process.
And so, here we have someone who is writing about that company's lenses who has to spend significant time to make the materials that the manufacturer supplied look at all decent (yes, I was able to "fix" all of those things using tools and talent).
Yes, I know that every company in the world just likes to figure out how to save money, all the time. However, some savings actually will result in fewer sales, as you don't manage to make the product look good in the first place.
I sort of expect this these days from the proliferation of Chinese lens makers that have appeared recently. They clearly haven't figured out marketing yet (other than to get rumor sites to serve as their marketing engine by offering affiliate income deals). But a traditional, well-established, well-known, well-regarded, and (formerly) well managed company that produces top-end lenses? What are they thinking? That they can mail it in?
