© Pedro Meyer 2001

Attended some lectures today, visited a few stands at MacWorld, bought some video compression software also an upgrade to Vivid Arts test strip, spoke to people at Nikon and Epson, visited the Kodak stand to take a look at their latest cameras and once again was totally disappointed with what Kodak has to offer. They just don't get it, at least not in the professional field, and in the consumer market I see everyone else like miles ahead of them.

I had gone to the Kodak stand with an open mind and the best of intentions of being pleasantly surprised. The demo cameras I tested, one was a Hasselblad camera with the Kodak digital back and the other their adaptation of the Nikon body with their own chip. We (their staff and I) attempted to make some images, but it all came out quite badly. All the ensuing excuses followed blaming the public for playing around with their equipment, like if that had not been the idea to have those cameras there in the first place. The cameras did not feel right, the images fared even worse, it left me with the feeling that the story with Kodak might not have a very happy ending. The staff at their booth was as bored and uninterested in their pro cameras, as it probably deserved to be.

I went back to the Nikon stand, which had stood empty the day before with nothing to show or offer. Today the experience was marginally better, they did have at hand one (only one!) of their new scanners and they also had the new D1x and the Coolpix 995 with a new flash position. However their staff was knowledgeable and pleasant to deal with. At least at Nikon you felt they liked and knew their products, at Kodak one felt like they had to suffer them without even knowing their equipment all that much.

I looked all around and did not find a single camera that came close to all that the G1 from Canon has to offer. The relation of price to performance continues to be unrivaled. At the Canon stand they had all their models on display, duly cabled so that one could take the camera into ones' hands and not run away with it, however they neglected to keep the batteries charged, and so most of the cameras were not functioning at all, most of the time. I don't get it, they spend tens of thousands of dollars to set up a big stand with a fairly large staff, yet no one bothered to look out after the fact that the cameras would be working. Out of curiosity I went back several times over several days, and the story was always the same, the cameras were for the most part not functioning.

Pedro Meyer
July 20, 2001
New York City, USA.

For comments post a message in our forum section at ZoneZero.