I too am impressed by their frequent and patient input on all these fora.
But I am moved to ask, out of curiosity: does a pro Canikon shooter have to resort to their dealer for answers, to the same extent? And if not, why not? What does that say about the manner in which MF companies document their wares?
Ray
Partly chicken and the egg. Since most dealers who sell Canon and Nikon can't answer advanced questions I think many photographers learn to go-it-on-their own.
I know first hand that many of our customers call me with lots of Canon/Nikon questions.
A Canon on an Cambo X-2 begs a lot of questions. What lenses are compatible? What amount of movement can be expected?
When the 5DII was first released the full raw file was compatible in Aperture but not the sRaw reduced-res format - that created questions.
The 5DII can shoot video?? What sort of format, what should I edit in? How do I do manual exposures? What's this I hear about a firmware update for manual control? What's this 29.997 vs 30fps thing?
Want to change the focus button from the shutter to the rear AF button (only)? You can find it in the Janesenglish documentation, but I tell you what - a knowledgable dealer can tell you in seconds. More importantly a knowledgable dealer would know you shot a style in which the AF button on the rear is a much better setup and would therefore suggest it right off the bat.
You can control remote flashes (via ratio settings and A/B/C channel assignment) using a Canon 580EXII, but whats the difference between the 580EX and the 580EXII? O, and did you hear about the PocketWizard branded remote slaves? Why would I want one of those?
You mean my Canon lens won't work on my Canon body? What do you mean smaller sensor?
My image gets dark at the top when I use the rise on my Canon 17TS lens; also there is a slight color cast at the edge that screws up my white ceilings. What do you mean Canon doesn't have a solution for this? I have to use "Capture One"?? What's that?
What do you mean Capture One produces better quality from my Nikon raw file than LightRoom does? It's all raw right - so whats the difference?
You mean this grip doesn't HAVE to use two batteries? But there are two battery slots!
Zeiss makes great lenses for Nikon and Canon - which ones are worth the money. You can google it, ask on forums, but a good dealer would already know. More importantly they'd have been the one to introduce you to the possibility of Zeiss lenses (or conversely a knockoff like Tamaron) because they knew you and knew it would be a good match for you.
Frankly, there just isn't enough money to be made selling Canon/Nikons that many (if any) dealers can go to that level of service. So photographers learn it themselves.
Of course the other part is that medium format is, for sure, more complicated. But part of that is a natural consequence of building a system that can be used in a large variety of situations, rather than the more one-size-fits-all of a dSLR.
Often the most important role a dealer has is to tell you the questions you haven't asked. Google can answer (almost) any question you know to ask and have time/patience/background-knowledge to analyze. Google can't do anything for you if you don't know what question to ask.
Doug Peterson
(e-mail Me)
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