Camera Store - The Hell of Retail

What Kind Of Sony Do You Have? "A Cybershot". Grrr...

Here's another one of my pet peeves: I ask someone whay kind of camera they have - or even what kind of [some camera manufacturer] they have - and they reply "A Cybershot" or "A Coolpix" or "a Finepix". Do they not realize that EVERY Sony is called "Cybershot [something]", EVERY Nikon is a "Coolpix [something]", EVERY Fuji is a "Finepix [something]", EVERY Casio is an "Exilim [something]"? Clearly not. At least some other manufacturers have a FEW families of digital cameras, but still the family name is way too broad to be useful. For example, Fuji Finepixes go from small $150 fit-in-your-pocket point-n-shoots with minimal features and minimal price all the way up to $2500 digital SLRs. If I ask you "What kind of car do you drive" and you said "A Ford", you could drive a Focus or a pick-up truck, and so you didn't really answer my question.

This comes up when someone needs a battery, or a charger, or a memory card, or a bag, or some kind of accessory. The kind of bag that would fit a tiny Finepix 303 is VERY different from the backpack you would need to haul a Finepix S3 around.

Why does that bother me? It comes down to that issue of how much research one ought to do before buying a camera. If you did not look at enough Sonys to figure out that they're ALL called "Cybershot", then you clearly did not do enough research to figure out that your camera is the best you could get. Say you got a Cybershot P120. Can you really buy one with confidence without having looked at the similar P100 (cheaper, as it does not come with a leather case or with an extra battery) and P150 (a tad more expensive, but much higher image quality), and without having considered the P93 (same features, but cheaper as it is bigger and a little older) or the W1 (same price, same features, but different form factor)? They're ALL called Cybershot, and you really should look at all of them before you get any of them, because of how similar-yet-different they are. When I ask what kind of camera a customer has, and he looks down at it and very decisively tells me "A 'Cybershot'", that just says "I did not bother to do any research at all, and just bought the first camera I saw in front of me".

How can you be truly happy (or, for that matter, truly unhappy) with the camera you have, if you don't know what's out there? I am VERY hapy with my big-lens Fujis and Panasonics because I KNOW there is no camera out there quite like them, with all the features I want. It was those two afternoons of research that allow me to think "Wow, my camera is AWESOME!" every time I use my Panasonic. It's a good feeling. I know for a fact that the only comparable cameras the the Canon Pro1, the Minolta A1 and A2, and a couple Olympus and Sony cameras, all of which cost half again as much. I also know that the comparable Fujis don't have image stabilization OR that much zoom, that the Canon S1-IS only has 3MP and only 10x zoom, and that the Minolta Z3 has a much slower lens, so mine is the only one with all the features I want. It feels great to think about that, to know I own an exceptional machine in the ways that are important to me.

In any case... even more infuriating is when I ask a customer what camera they have, and they say "A Canon, the 5-MegaPixel one" or "A Nikon, the one with the swiveling screen". Did you seriously not do enough research to realize there is more than one 5MP Canon, and that most high-end Nikons (I can think of 4) have the swivel-screen? Getting back to the "What kind of car do you drive?" analogy, I hope you realize that "That Ford one with four doors" or "The Subaru with all-wheel-drive" is only slightly more informative than "You know, the kind with four wheels, the one with the engine in the front and the trunk in the back. The steering wheel is on the left... it's got all these lights at the very front and the very back... you know the one...".

Given what price range you're willing to restrict yourself to, there IS a camera out there with the features YOU want and NOT with the features you don't care about. Yes, there IS that much variety out there, as the combinations of different features are endless (big or small screen, big or small lens, how many megapixels, manual or auto exposure, compact or not, AA power or Li-ion, 3x or 12x zoom...). Do so many people not care that they get a camera that they are as happy with as is possible given their budget? All it takes is a couple hours on Froogle and/or Steve's Digicams and/or DP Review and/or Consumer Report. Would you buy a car that is not EXACTLY what you want, or JUST as close to that as possible given your budget? A camera is an extension of your senses, practially a part of you, so if something about it is clumsy or uncomfortable or not as powerful as you'd like, then, well, that sucks. It's an annoyance no one has to put up with, but people seem to be happy to buy whatever is in front of them, and then complain later.

You can get the camera that is right for you! And it will feel great when you do! Why skip the research, and then get a crappy camera you will hate and never use, and then make your camera salesman all mad when he sees you have no idea of how varied digicams are?

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PS: For the sake of completeness, I should say Sony also makes a series of digicams called Mavicas. They write pictures straight to disks, which are physically huge, and used to hold a lot more data than memory cards way back when. So Mavicas are huge, bigger than many camcorders, and kinda obsolete in the days when MicroDrive memory cards can hold more data than a whole DVD. They do take great pictures, though.

posted by Remus