Guy Mancuso
Administrator, Instructor
Guy, Erik,
Why should i, as an amateur, give more thrust to a pro, like you Guy for instance (no pun intended), than to a famous person like seal? Not all pro's are like you describe, nor does that give me an indication whether that particular system is ok for me.
At the end of the day i believe it is about what suits one selves. Just like you said in earlier posts: give me some raw to start with, explain how test was done, above all take the time to test for yourself before engage in a system with its support. Indeed one buys a system and the support backing it up, regardless of what brand or model you buy.
So i do believe from a marketing point of view, which in essence about getting awareness, Seal is as good as any other well known person, not necessarely a famous photographer. For me personally the choice to buy or not is based on my own as objective as possible evaluations, with a touch of bias towards Leica.
Forums like these give me value in those evaluations, as do certain review sites, simply because the contributos/reviewers focus more on arguments (facts as they perceive it) than on unfunded opinions. Sites like the Jono also as it gives his experience and the results to accompany his findings.
Lookin forward to yours and others findings regarding the Leica paradigm.
Jan R. Smit
www.janrsmit.com
It's a great question and does relate to what i said earlier as well but it comes down to a trust issue when a new system is introduced. Let's take the M8 for example people like me found immediate issues and tried to work them out with Leica. The thing here is the experience to find those issues within days instead of someone that may not know better or is not paying attention to it or simply does not see it because they may not know what to look for in a file or in the camera itself. Seal maybe a great shooter and all that but his mind may not be on the technical side to find things wrong . Not saying he is or is not but just a example per say. If someone jumps on the podium that has vast experience the trust factor comes into play in that guy went through the whole system and found it is working as it should and more importantly he trust it under the scrutiny and neck stretching eyes of his clients. This is not the same as a actor doing a makeup commercial, that sells those type of products. This is different with multitude of electronics , optics , mechanical parts that has more effect on is it working as advertised.