Off Target, Overloaded, and Overpriced

Do any of you have similar views of Thom Hogan's assessment of Nikon? He makes some very interesting points regarding the array of products and features. Your thoughts.

Off Target, Overloaded, and Overpriced | byThom | Thom Hogan

Seems Hogan can't understand why Nikon doesn't come ask him about every decision.

WayneF said:

Seems Hogan can't understand why Nikon doesn't come ask him about every decision.

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LOL. Hogan does make some good assessments and points though. I heard heard from many photographers in the recent past complain about Nikons lack of replacement/ upgrade of the D300s and D700. In addition, I spoke with a D5200 owner just last week that recently purchased a D5200 and felt the additional funds for a D5300 didn't seem worth the extra cash. There may be many that have very similar views regarding the current product lines.

If you gave Thom a hundred-dollar bill, he'd bitch it's not five twenties.

He's right, Nikon is behaving like quite manic in their need to produce newer model cameras that have little to differentiate them from the earlier models. The 600/610 fiasco is a classic example. Upgrading the fps from 5.5 to 6.0 and calling it a "much needed improvement" is plain old nonsense. If you ever watch Gordon Ramsey's show, the first thing he does with a failing restaurant is to revise their menu to far fewer choices but those choices are made extremely well. That's exactly what Nikon should do. Reduce the number of camera bodies and insure the cameras you keep are made extremely well.

I think you'll find it's an "effing menu"!

I enjoy it from the standpoint that today's "minor tweak" of models makes the "older model" much more affordable. Let 'em fix this marketing approach after the 7200 releases please! LOL

On a side note: Maybe they should switch to the Apple approach and label it with an "S", as they do the same thing with the iPhone, but the world jumps all over it. WAIT... never mind, they just did do that with the D4s... but according to some, it was a definite jump in quality.

A overloaded Market! Type in Nikon on E-Bay and today you will get 197,00 Nikon products on sale, and 269,000 World-wide. Then you have 35-50,000 on Craigslist, plus add store inventory to the list. Then add Canon, Sony, Panasonic, and other third party photo gear to the mix.

I agree with a lot of what has been said. To many cameras in to short of a time. D5100, D5200 and a D5300? Why? I have the D7000 and the D7100 and I can see the jump there but There are rumors of a D7300 already. No. And the Coolpix line is impossible to keep up with. Forget the low end, Phones do the job there and that is what people are using. Admit it, almost all of us shoot with out phones a lot. Concentrate on a few high end CoolPix that will bridge the gap between phones and our beloved DSLR. The D3XXX is a great starter camera for a lot of people. The D5XXX is a great camera for those who want a little more and the D7100 is as close to a pro camera as a lot of people ever want. I love mine and I get great results from it. I can't speak for the FX line but really a good, better Best should be what is needed.

jrleo33 said:

A overloaded Market! Type in Nikon on E-Bay and today you will get 197,00 Nikon products on sale, and 269,000 World-wide. Then you have 35-50,000 on Craigslist, plus add store inventory to the list. Then add Canon, Sony, Panasonic, and other third party photo gear to the mix.

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How many of those items are being sold new by retailers as items being sold by used as retailers and private sellers? ;-)

Reading Thom's article very carefully, he makes a lot of valid points, and I dare say he's right on all of them. Seems to me, Nikon is just playing games with Canon, so see who comes out with the most bells and whistles in their top line models, while not really changing anything of substance. And I totally agree that Nikon's prices are way out of line...especially on their accessories.

Having said that, I'm still a die hard Nikon fan. Hopefully their marketing strategy changes to reflect the real needs of their customers some day.

carguy said:

How many of those items are being sold new by retailers as items being sold by used as retailers and private sellers? ;-)

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A person could go through each ad, and list new, used, and refurbs, but it would take months to calculate sales for one day. One day on E-Bay, I typed in Nikon, and there were 323,000 listings in the U.S.A alone.

Just because you type in Nikon to ebay's search, and get 323,000 responses, doesn't mean there's 323,000 Nikon cameras for sale.

The vast majority of those will be batteries, lenses, grips, memory cards, remotes, filters, etc. FOR Nikon. And even a large portion of those will not be genuine Nikon products.

jrleo33 said:

A person could go through each ad, and list new, used, and refurbs, but it would take months to calculate sales for one day. One day on E-Bay, I typed in Nikon, and there were 323,000 listings in the U.S.A alone.

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Not sure how that is even relevant to the discussion.

An excellent article in my opinion. Having gone through the decision of "which Camera to buy" recently I can only agree that the choices are too many and too confusing.
At the time of purchasing my D5100 I originally purchased the D3200. They were the same price and members here advised me to "flick a coin" and I would be happy with either result.
That was sound advice and I am sure either would have been more than satisfactory. But …
At the same time my flatmate bought the D3200 with the extra mega pixels. My quick research showed the D5100 had a few extra features (swivel screen, HDR capability, higher FPS etc.) and as I had no intention of printing large prints the extra features were a bigger attraction. I have since discovered that the D5100 has a whole lot more than the short list mentioned above.
So Thom's point of "who would buy the newer model with minor/less benefits?" is a very valid one.
Less is more!

[h=2]What Nikon Has Taught Us[/h]What Nikon Has Taught Us | byThom | Thom Hogan

(commentary)
This came from a site reader:
"Here's what Nikon has taught us in the past couple years.

1. Never pre-order anything. Wait at least three months to see what's wrong with the first production run.
2. Never buy anything before the first price drop.
3. Wait to buy until there's a sale (like the current lens sale).
4. Buy the camera/kit lens combo only during one of those promotions when the kit lens is free or close to it.
5. If Nikon screws up quality control, mount a class action suit against them."

Can’t say that I disagree. Nikon’s current tactics seem to be conditioning all us loyal owners to act differently in our purchase decisions.
Consumers aren’t stupid. They learn from repeated company practices how to deal with that company. Thus, at this point I’d say that most longer term Nikon users know that:

• Most Nikon cameras will go on fire sale when Nikon eventually produces too many of them and needs to clear out inventory. If you’re at all price sensitive, buying early in a production run is not smart (and this is amplified in Europe lately).
• Nikon’s urge to “make numbers” means that we tend not to see rebates and promotions in the first month of a quarter, and in the last two months of the fiscal year we often see more widespread rebates amongst lenses (February/March).
• Refurbished cameras are a gambler’s bet. We’ve seen some wild pricing on refurbs lately (US$1300 D600’s, for example), but the 90-day warranty and the high likelihood that “refurb” really means “repackaged” means that you’re gambling on there not being anything wrong. D600 refurb purchasers won the bet, as Nikon has now agreed to repair them out of warranty. Others may not be so lucky.
• Accessories never ship with the products, a let go out of stock, and there’s a never-ending stream of new ones when there’s no real reason why there should be.

I can’t help but note that Nikon has conditioned customers in a way that is circular: since there’s a reason to wait to buy, this causes Nikon to overproduce, which lowers price, which gives the customer the reason they waited to buy.
To some degree, all companies that sell at retail have a version of this pattern. Auto makers, for instance, instituted model years so that there is a predictable cycle for both customer and them. Most plants shut down production and move to the next year model long prior to switch at retail, and it becomes a marketing/sales/accounting game trying to dial inventory just right so that it dissipates properly into the new cycle.
Still, the problem with Nikon (and Canon and others) is that there are no predictable cycles, the inventory is actually jammed more than generation old in many dealers shelves, and they’ve continually conditioned customers to wait for price drops.
To Nikon’s credit, they have spent a lot of time addressing one of the ways you deal with this situation: reduce costs and increase gross profit margin. However, there are limits to which you can do that, and the push back from that dealer base is getting tougher, because ultimately it’s the dealers that suffer from lower or delayed inventory turns.



Mar 21, 2014, 10:01 AM

The problem is that today the camera has become just another "electronics" item. When they were mechanical, the production runs were long and the model spread low. As pointed out today cameras are just another consumer durable, with minor and at times cosmetic changes introduced at regular intervals. In contrast the lenses see far lesser turn around in model upgrades.

What I would like to see is
. Maximum 5 Coolpix models
. 3 DX, 3FX models in the low to medium duty range
. 1 each of DX & FX pro grade models with all the bells and whistles.

In my opinion as the sensor costs come down the rationale for DX cameras will disappear, and finally only FX should remain. As it is most of the good glass is FX and in higher cost range only FX.

Like many MF offerings, I would like to see the emergence of the FX "modular" camera
. Sensor
. View finder
. AF module
. Burst speed depending on the processor
. Rear LCD - normal, high res, touch sensitive

In that case the user can choose to change what they want as newer and better products are introduced. This will also affect the resale market as fewer old camera systems will be sold,

aroy said:

In my opinion as the sensor costs come down the rationale for DX cameras will disappear, and finally only FX should remain. As it is most of the good glass is FX and in higher cost range only FX.

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I completely agree with you. I see both Canon and Nikon moving completely away from the point and shoots and concentrating on their core DSLR products. However, Nikon seems to have a soft spot for their "legacy" products (CF cards are a great example) and I imagine they'll keep at least one DX line alive (especially their lens products) but will attempt to push even the casual user into the FX world with prices competitive with DX models.