The curse of black

Cameras

I never could fathom this one.

When I was a kid, cameras and stereo gear came in chrome. The engravings were in black and everything could be made out from a distance. Especially useful when trying to make out the settings on your amplifier or what have you.

Then, some time in the 1970s, black was declared cool (that seems to be a renewed trend now, with as little substance as last time) and the sad result for users was that their coolness was accompanied by a general inability to tell what anything was set to without a lot of squinting and eyeglasses on the head.

In their mass market models, some manufacturers bucked the trend and you see all sorts of jolly colors in digital point-and-shoots today and I, for one, love the trend. But there’s little color available in the better gear, a recent exception being the Panasonic G1 which comes in a couple of jolly colors. Now Pentax has joined the movement:

I’ve always liked saddle leather brown. Maybe Canon could be persuaded to do a custom 5D Mark II? Nah!

It was 25 years ago today ….

Macintosh

…. and it’s still the only Superbowl ad anyone remembers.

To this day, this inspired piece of anti-Big Brother propaganda convinces consumers that their PC maker of choice is a struggling start-up fighting the forces of evil, when in reality the company has $28bn in cash, 50% operating margins, a $100bn market capitalization and a presence in just about every country and seemingly on every Main Street on earth. Heck, IBM is smaller than the eponymous fruit company now.

You can fool all of the people all of the time and, no, I will emphatically not be watching the Superbowl with its hopped up, hyper-thyroid, cortisone injected ‘athletes’ any more this year than I did 25 years ago. I will, however, be watching the ads, as usual, to see how consumer trends can benefit investing strategy.

Something’s afoot at Panasonic

Cameras

The new Leica M?

Call me dated. Say I am out of touch. Ridicule my love of the mechanical age.

I have no problem with any of those accusations as all are true.

So when I wrote a while back, not a little intrigued, of the Panasonic G1, it was for no other reason than that this photographer’s schnozzer sensed a possibility in the making.

Revolution? Why, yes. A modern Leica M for the digital set because, whether you like it or not, we are all members. Meaning small, fast, quiet and with large aperture lenses for low light work.

And we all know who designs the lenses for the best Panny designs, don’t we? Can you say Leica?

These thoughts were brought to the fore when DP Review published its analysis of the Panasonic G1. To cut to the chase, it’s not ready for prime time any more than the L1 (which at least looked like a Leica M) was. But you have to respect where Panny is going with this.

Meaning they are inching closer to the Leica ideal – small, quiet, fast, unobtrusive.

Now all they need to do is throw the design book out of the window and …. take a hard look at the form factor of the Leica M – but 33% smaller this time. And it wouldn’t hurt to have a viewfinder that works in something less than California sunshine.