And if they asked others, I’d bet they’d say yes too.

Many top photographers don’t have the time to do as Nikon asked. Many are also not into their “gear” as much as they are into the photography. I’ve interviewed and talked with many pros over the years and some of the best think of the camera as a hammer that gets the job done and they aren’t really into their hammers other than as the tool that gets it done.

Me, I’m a techie geek and love picking apart cameras, lenses, testing and challenging what they will and won’t do, but I often don’t get the time to actually test and play with gear as my writing and other work gets in the way, so I concentrate on the photography and not so much on the equipment. To combine the two…oooh, I’d love that. :D

They have to be pretty sure of themselves to loan a camera that long to a group of bloggers though. Either this is plain nuts or they have a truly amazing product. I think they may have avoided pro photo bloggers intentionally though as part of the marketing strategy. They are trying to brand the d80 as easy to use and get the hang of. It has the in-camera photo editing features that would make it ideal for bloggers to use and just upload.

I will be interested to see the outcome of this particular method of advertising. If anything they may have already achieved their goal of viral marketing through just releasing it to bloggers in the first place.

Laptop anyone?

Nice idea from a marketing perspective though, getting real feedback and publicity for both the camera and Nikon. I look forward to following the program and seeing how the lucky participants get on with their new D80’s.

Perhaps the issue with a project like this (apart from the obvious ethical ones that it raises) is that cameras like the D80, which are at the top end of the “hobby’est” photography market, sometimes require more than an ‘all round’ kit lens to get the most from them.

Someone who spends upwards of £600-£700GBP on a camera is more likely to want to buy high quality accessories and extra lenses to get more out of the camera than someone who has got one ‘on loan’ and is likely to stick to the standard lens supplied. Whether this will be of benefit to Nikon if the users are unwilling to expand the camera’s capabilities by using accessories to get the most out of it, who knows….

Regardless, its interesting as a cultural experiment, if nothing else.

Re: Lack of Pro-Photo Bloggers (so far – I don’t think we know all 50 yet…) I know they had another campaign last year involving Flickr users somehow. So maybe they wanted to try to put the camera into the hands of everyday people to see what we could do with the camera? That is, after the experiment they can run ads saying look at what average people have done with the camera. I dunno yet.

The whole thing is pretty fascinating to me, though, especially the marketing aspect.

As for the camera, it’s come in very handy with my Grassroots Journalism effort here in the Midwest. I think this is part of the reason I’m a participant. Also, I’m pretty sure I’m going to buy the camera after the 6 or 12 months. Nikon will probably also get a lot of my attention as kpaul media expands and buys hardware like this for the citizens (and our paid staff…)

In the interview, I asked Biro what he thought of bloggers being able to ‘pass on’ the camera to other bloggers after the 6 or 12 months and he seemed to like the idea. We’ll see what happens. It sounds like it’s an evolving campaign, which is good.

In any case, thanks for the mention/link!

-kpaul

Also, as I understand it, the Flickr group was not set up by MWW, but by the Picture This participants, on their own.

Do you know what other companies do that, how can we find them ?

PS: good article tho.