"So horribly sad . . . how is it I feel like laughing?"
Far be it from me to bore you with arcane postings about photography, but this Leica M8 story just gets better and better. One of the little mysteries had been why none of the reviewers who praised the camera to the skies had noticed that it makes a lot of black objects look purple or magenta (not just synthetic textiles, as it turns out). Now there is every indication that Leica executed its own petit mal version of the Challenger launch decision, abetted by leading pre-release reviewers. Those reviewers, who didn't flag problems that numerous users noticed right out of the box, are in unenviable position of appearing either incompetent or disingenuous.
The reviewer who made a fool/ass of himself during l'Affaire Seal (not a good sign for his wisdom generally, it would seem) says he didn't notice, and even if he had noticed he would have just assumed people were wearing a lot of dark magenta and purple. This guy is a wedding photographer (tuxes), by the way, and charges money for his reviews.
Another fellow who published a glowing review on his popular website today appended "a clarification" revealing that he had noticed the image quality problems but removed references to them from his review at Leica's request:
I discovered these during my initial testing and put them in my review. I then sent my draft review to Leica, as I always do with manufacturers, for their comments. The company subsequently requested that I hold off mentioning these latter items because they were looking into them and hoped to have a response in short order. I acquiesced to this request, not wanting to delay my review, and expecting that I would be able to publish a follow-up quickly that not only mentioned these problems but also their potential solution . . . . [I]n the end I would do what I did again, simply because I felt that potential owners needed to know what I had learned in my testing, without delay. And, I would have held back again on the issues that I was requested to because that's the proper way to deal with manufacturers, who one assumes will take their responsibilities to journalists seriously. [emphasis mine]Unbelievable. I published the review with all the bad bits taken out because "I felt that potential owners needed to know what I had learned in my testing." That makes a lot of sense. "The lab rats dosed with the drug grew strong and showed remarkable gains in intelligence. I thought you'd want to know." ("P.S., 35% died of brain cancer.")
What ever happened to the good old-fashioned mea culpa, by the way? Why don't you ever hear anyone say "I took it because I was greedy and didn't think I would get caught"? Honestly. Just once would be so refreshing. My favorite remains the admission of a contestant on one of SCTV's game-show parodies, who had told screeners he was in "medical research" when he actually worked in a warehouse: "I lied . . . I thought it would sound good on TV."
Labels: photography
posted at 10:32 PM
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