 |
| Iceland landscape. Made with a Panasonic Lumix LX100. Mirrorless but not an ILC. I call cameras of this type "Fixed Zoom Lens" (FZLC) |
Camera makers have a penchant for strange names.
Witness Nikon calling an entire new camera system the “1 Series”
Or Oly/Pana calling a new imaging system “Micro Four Thirds”.
Or most of them deciding to stick the letter “X” in the name of their cameras thereby confusing many of their actual or potential customers.
Or Panasonic calling all its cameras “Lumix”. This seems very odd to me. Panasonic spent years building global recognition of the “Panasonic” brand name and in 2008 changed the name of the corporation from “Matsushita Electric Industrial” to “Panasonic”.
But Panasonic cameras bear the name “Lumix”, which I suspect many potential buyers would not associate with the Panasonic brand. Maybe they wanted the camera name to suggest the working association which Panasonic has with Leica. Both names begin with “L” and Panasonic uses a stylised [L] logo on its cameras.
I still think that using the name “Lumix” is a bit strange. I imagine a customer choosing between one model labelled “Canon” (high brand recognition) and another model labelled “Lumix” (low or nil brand recognition). Which will they select ?
In 2008 Panasonic and Olympus introduced a new type of camera which allowed lenses to be interchanged but which dispensed with the flipping mirror, focus screen, pentaprism and submirror focus module of the established DSLR type.
But nobody agreed on a name for this new camera type.
It was referred to by some as “Compact System Camera” which made no sense as some of them are not particularly compact and some DSLRs are quite compact.
One well known vendor calls the type “Mirrorless System Camera” which makes more sense.
Other names such as “Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens” (EVIL) have hopefully passed from use.
The two key features of the type are that they take interchangeable lenses and they operate without the mirror and other stuff inside a DSLR.
So I call it Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Camera (MILC).
The Consumer Electronics Association (based in USA) has recently endorsed the terms “Mirrorless” and “Interchangeable Lens Camera”.
Hopefully this simple and logical nomenclature will become widespread.
But Panasonic has yet to get the message.
The company has been calling it a “Digital Single Lens Mirrorless” (DSLM) type.
This makes no sense to me.
* Calling a camera “digital” is a waste of descriptive capability. Panasonic makes no other type.
* The term “single lens” is a reference to the DSLR (digital single lens reflex) type.
The “single lens” descriptor distinguished this type from the twin lens reflex which was popular in the mid part of the 20thCentury but is no longer made, so the description is pointless.
Worse it is confusing, suggesting that maybe the camera has but a single lens when in fact it can accept any one of many.
The term DSLR makes no more sense but is now so entrenched by time that a change would serve no useful purpose. In due course this type will decline in popularity due to image degradation caused by vibration produced by the flipping mirror and mechanical focal plane shutter.
So: the G7 is a MILC.
The discussion is not academic.
It is not possible to effectively market a product unless the people who make, sell and buy it all clearly understand the name of the thing.
Đăng nhận xét