"Provencher, Paul M." wrote:
> It's too bad you feel that way - I always found it worthwhile to help people
> understand what they were doing and what their options were. But don't
> count on having less explaining to do...
In my days of consumer-oriented photographic retail, my experience
gelled with Bill's: maybe 15% of people actually have a clue as to what
the film speed means or even that there are differences. It's endlessly
frustrating to explain to someone why they should use a 400 speed film
in their situation only to have them finally say, 'No, I always buy the
100 speed, it's normal' and buy that.
In our place now I've carefully positioned myself to avoid that
situation by not having any way of developing and printing a roll of
film in an hour and by not stocking much in the way of consumer films.
I still have to occassional customer who'll become frustrated when I ask
them a series of questions about what they're shooting to help them pick
a film because they just want "normal film". What the hell is normal
film? To most of them it means a high contrast, low speed, colour
inaccurate film that's cheap and looks awful when they use the flash on
their p&s.
I swear, this was a real conversation...
GUY: I need some film.
ME: What kind?
GUY (like I'm stupid): What do you mean, what kind? Film, to go in a
camera! Duh!
ME: Well, I have thirty or so kinds of film here. I'm going to ask you
a couple of questions to figure out what you need. Do you want prints or slides?
GUY: Neither of those, just for normal pictures!
ME: Colour?
GUY: Why the hell would I want film that wasn't colour?
ME: Are you shooting inside or outside?
GUY: What does it matter? Just give me some film.
ME: Well, if you're shooting inside, a higher...
GUY: What is this, some kind of joke? This place is stupid, where I
usually go they just have one kind of film and I buy it.
...and with that he walked out.
Hey, when I sold p&s cameras, large numbers of people would come back
and want to return their cameras because the cameras took such bad
pictures...when the problem was clearly one of film selection. People
don't want to hear that they need to spend more than $2 on film if they
want to get ideal results in a given situation.
Kodak's move is, I believe, a smart one. How else do you get the
customer who really needs 400 or 800 speed film but resists buying
anything aside from 'normal' film to buy them, other than by renaming
them "zoom" or "low light" film? Obviously they're not doing this to
their pro films.
Kodak have a very low opinion of the average consumer's intelligence
(you should read some of their industrial advertising), but I think that
on the whole they're pretty much on the ball. People don't WANT to know
the technical side unless they're into it as a hobby or professionally.
-Aaron
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