A Little rant on Nikon Marketing...

[Eye-level]

Without the marketing and sales of Coolpix point and shoot cams and D3000's, there would be no research and development for such models as D800's and D4's. I see the big picture.

Marketing is a necessary evil sir (it sure helps when your cameras are known to be indestructible by everyone or conversely it sure hurts when many of your most recent models seem to have all kinds of minor issues!)...without marketing there wouldn't be Coolpix or D anythings...this reminds me of those where's the beef commercials...to bad Nikon couldn't have got that old grandma instead of Ashton...lol

I'm curious...what is the big picture that you see?

 

[Photowyzard]

Back when pops used a Nikon you could drag, drop, and stomp them into the mud...pick up the camera, clean off the lens and viewfinder, and continue shooting...THAT is what made Nikon what it is AND the F Mount...screw a bunch of marketeers performance is where it is at! (that's a redneck derisive term for them by the way kind)

THAT is what I remember. Although, I don' think that holds true as much any more. Digital, in my opinion, is substantially more fragile.

In regards to the comment on the Nikon 1 not doing well here....

1) the Asian market isn't the same as the North American market, you can't compare
2) many people feel this system missed the mark with small sensor, slow lenses, lack of controls
3) slow to get to market and didn't have the "uumph" that the Panasonic, Sony and the x100 cameras had.

I saw it when it first came out and was underwhelmed even though I have seen some people do amazing things with it.

As much as I like small, for $800, I would prefer to put it towards a D-SLR.

 

[Eye-level]

I think a silent shutter, supermanfast AF, and tiny size with interchangeable lenses available in different colors is a pretty darn novel idea...it is a streetshooter's dream...who else has such a rig?...and people the world over will lay out all the chili for that Nikon name...I personally think they just completely dropped the ball on the 1 in the USA. Yeah yeah it also has that stupid tiny sensor...which shoots just as good at any ISO as any 15MP micro sensor on the market currently. I don't know...maybe the next generation unit will provide the "uumph"...

It is Fuji and Olympus and all of those guys who need to be the innovators as their worldwide market share is so much smaller than Nikon and Canon's...look at the latest effort from Olympus - the OM-D...their marketing folks are capitalizing on the legendary OM Series from the 70's...I hope Nikon will someday try to do the same thing and capitalize on the old F cameras in the form of a mirrorless interchangeable lens system...wouldn't that be cool!