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Much ado about nothing

The more sophisticated photo companies have realised that the corollary of photo websites running absolutely anything which arrives in their in trays, is that they can belt out absolutely anything and – it will be run.

So from today’s offerings in Petapixel we have this gem: Google Buys Photographer’s Shot of Seagull Chomping on a Fry. We didn’t make this up!

Gordon Laing’s absurdist ‘hands-off’ review of what might be a block of wood for all we know! (Source: YouTube/CameraLabs.)

This has led to the technique of drip-feeding information about major new releases, thus getting multiple bites of the publicity cherry and keeping the new release top-of-mind for longer. Beats spending money on advertising! (No criticism implied here – why would you spend your company’s money when you can achieve your marketing communications objectives exploiting the gullibility and laziness of the specialist media?)

And so last week Canon put out a press release stating roughly two-fifths of nothing about its new Canon EOS R3.

The fact that virtually nothing was revealed didn’t hold back a range of alleged pundits from sharing their deep insights into a camera they had yet to lay eyes, let alone hands, on.

This was taken to its truly absurdist conclusion when the well-known, highly respected camera reviewer, Gordon Laing (Cameralabs), spent six minutes in a podcast ogling the R3 and reciting its (known) specs while a dummy version of the camera was on screen slowly rotating on a tripod. In a forest, for some reason. The reviewer wasn’t even allowed to touch the ‘R3’, but nonetheless DPReview claimed it ‘provides a thorough overview of the camera’, while conceding that ‘we don’t see the camera in action, as Laing wasn’t allowed to interact with the EOS R3 on camera.’ This is a bit like reviewing a movie from a ‘thorough overview’ of the movie poster! To his credit, Gordon did look a tad embarrassed by the whole thing.

Anyways, Canon claims the R3 can: shoot at 30fps (presumably at full resolution); has low-light shooting capability ‘down to’ -7EV (fineprint:  ‘still photos only, and only with an f1.2 lens, except RF lenses with a Defocus Smoothing coating, using center AF point and One-Shot AF used at room temperature and ISO 100’ – got that?); and can offer up to 8-stops of camera shake (using a Canon RF 25-105mm F4 L IS USM, yaw and pitch only). 

Here’s the full, not very nourishing, enchilada: https://www.canon.com.au/about-canon/news-and-press-releases/more-details-of-eos-r3-revealed
– Keith Shipton

 

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