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Photography Culture

The Camera Manufacturers Have to Learn This Important Lesson

Chris Gampat
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04/04/2022
3 Mins read
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Canon EOS R5 product images 2.51-640s160 1

I’ve always been fascinated by the small amount of hype the photo world can produce, and camera manufacturers still don’t seem to understand its value. Not long ago, we witnessed the Watch world basically turn into chaos with the Omega x Swatch collaboration. For years, this has made me wonder why the photo world couldn’t create this much hype. Apple can do it, and many other brands can too. But for some odd reason, the camera world just doesn’t understand that they can produce an affordable luxury that everyone will flock to.

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If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s some backstory. Swatch, which owns Omega, did a collaboration product to make an Omega Speedmaster for less than $300. TheSpeedmaster came in a variety of colors and satisfied most people’s needs. Sure, it’s not a $5,000 Omega Speedmaster, but it’s close enough. For that price, it’s a complete steal. Then, Swatch only made a few pieces available at their stores. The lines across the world were insane. In the Middle East, the line was incredibly long. London had to shut down their event, and NY and Toronto’s events were nuts. In the watch world, it created an insane amount of hype for a product everyone wants.

But camera manufacturers have often failed to garner this kind of press. I sort of understand why. Watch brands have a lot of their own stores. Now, let’s run this down for NYC:

  • Leica: two stores (one coming soon)
  • Canon: No stores
  • Nikon: No stores
  • Sony: One store
  • Fujifilm: No stores, but they used to have the Fujifilm Wonder Shop
  • Ricoh: Not really a store
  • OM-System: No stores
  • Panasonic: No stores
  • Hasselblad: They call DJI their “strategic partner.”

If you look at that list, the only one of the manufacturers that could possibly pull this off would be Leica. Leica could do one of the following things:

  • Bring back the Leica M6 at an insanely affordable price to undercut the used market
  • Bring back the 35mm f2.4 at an insanely low price
  • Shove a full-frame sensor in the body of a Leica XE and mark the price down significantly
  • Bring back a Leica film point and shoot at an insanely affordable price to undercut the used market

Of course, Sony could do something similar that would be available only at their store. Otherwise, they could tell the NY Photo retailers to only make the product available in-store. The lines outside would generate insane hype, get reported on by all the outlets, etc. 

But the photo industry and camera manufacturers don’t get it. People would line up to buy this product and then try to flip it online for more money. More importantly, Leica could do this and make an absolute killing for a long time. 

Camera manufacturers, read the room. Cameras aren’t essential pieces of our lives; they’re luxury products for most of us. Professional photographers are a small niche of camera buyers. A while lot of us care about higher-end products, to say consumers don’t care about compact cameras and lower-priced products is insane. People will flock if manufacturers make them available, give users what they want, and create hype. Consumers would create a lot of their own hype and love. And social media influencers and the press would eat it up. 

camera manufacturers collaboration film camera leica omega swatch
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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