Revisiting Groupies and the D90

As you may have heard, Nikon leaked/announced the Nikon D90 yesterday. Chase Jarvis had what looks like 3 pre-release sample for a while and loves it. That link is not really a review, but more of a 5 minutes infomercial.

Meanwhile at the ranch:

  • 209 news releases on Google on the Nikon D90 as of 27-August-2008 9:15am1. I'd hate to see what it's going to be at the end of the day.
  • 641 websites indexed by Google as of 27-August-2008 9:15am are giving their opinion on the outstanding, stupendous camera, that does it all including my morning latte. And that's only 4 hours after the announcement.
  1. How many of these 641 web sites/bloggers have received a Nikon D90?
  2. How many of these 641 web sites/bloggers have been in the same room as a Nikon D90?
  3. How many of these 641 web sites/bloggers have seen a real Nikon D90?
  4. How many of these 641 web sites/bloggers have touched a Nikon D90?
  5. How many of these 641 web sites/bloggers have made photos with a Nikon D90?

How many? At least one: Chase Jarvis and everybody is rehashing the very complimentary infomercial. But in total, I think only 1, since everybody that gives their uninformed opinion points to Chase Jarvis and nobody else.

BTW, the Nikon D90 looks like an excellent camera, but:

  • It's missing the VR module. The VR module should be in the camera and then we are done. Smaller lenses and will work with all lenses.
  • The video mode only works with the new SanDisk Extreme III 30MB/s Edition SDHC. The video mode will not work properly or not at all with the regular SDHC class 6 cards. Regular SDHC class 6 cards only provide up to 20MB/s throughput. It also looks like the video mode is JPEG @ 6 Megapixels. Actual testing and/or reading of the detailed technical specs will reveal the truth.

This is my opinion and no actual fact was armed or fabricated in the preparation of this rant.

The same thing happened, again, with Nikon. This time, it was with the D3x in December 2008. Everybody, on the web, was horrified by the $8,000 price for the Nikon D3x2. No photo, no test, no handling just whining. I wrote about it at the time in: Hooligans. If they would have written about how they wouldn't be buying it for business reasons, then it's one thing, $8 000 is a lot of money, especially when you need to buy 2. But that was not what they whined about, they whined about why did Nikon priced their D3x at $8 000.

 

1 the day of the leak/announcement ↑

2 without mentioning that it was the same price as the Canon 1DsMk3, it's direct competition ↑

Tags: Rants