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Canon Inc. takes down video by Vincent Laforet

Canon: You Can't

Canon USA has asked photographer Vincent Laforet to take down his video titled ‘Nocturne‘ based on orders coming from their headquarters at Canon Inc. in Japan. Laforet used Canon’s recently announced 1D Mark IV camera body to shoot the video. The video did an excellent job showing the technical capabilities of the 1D4 in low light situations, so I was surprised to find out that Canon would want to take it down.

And when I found out about what the reasons were, I wasn’t surprised at all. I’ve written numerous posts here on this blog about various issues at Canon and especially their arrogant attitude towards customers. This time Canon Inc. is taking it a step further by bullying one of their own subsidiaries. Photographer John Harrington has some of the details on his blog:

Instead of Canon Inc saying “hey, good job Canon USA for making Canon look good”, Canon Inc is mired in the antiquated notion of that by Canon USA doing so good, Canon Japan looks bad because either that don’t have the talent to make the same type of content, or people in Japan are now looking bad because it looks like they’re not doing their job.

Fake Chuck Westfall has also written about this on his blog, and there’s an interesting update in one of the comments in that post:

@Brad, I have it under good authority that Fake Chuck Westfall’s blog is spot on, and this is held up by internal politics and a power struggle between Canon USA and Canon Japan…and the video’s being pulled has nothing to do with the quality of video from the camera or the content of the video. Japan is embarrassed that Canon USA has shown them up once again (after the same thing happened with Reverie), and bruised egos are causing orders to be handed to Canon USA preventing this video from being distributed.

Northlight Images is now reporting that sample images taken with the 1D4 are also being pulled from the web:

It seems that Canon have taken exception to unauthorised sample images – all the ones we found have been pulled from sites.

It becomes really easy to understand all the issues Canon has had in recent years when you see things like this happening. Like Fake Chuck said on his blog, having clueless, conservative and arrogant management running the company will cause issues. And this seems like a worldwide problem for Canon.

Just recently I was talking to a friend of mine, a professional photographer from the Netherlands, and he mentioned how difficult it was dealing with Canon Netherlands, and how in comparison, things were so much easier with Nikon even though he is currently primarily using Canon equipment. Just look at what another photographer from the Netherlands, who was having issues with the EOS 7D, recently had to say about Canon on his blog:

My good friend and journalist Bill Hewlett contacted Canon (Netherlands) on friday on my behalf. Their exotic response: “we are not in the position to comment on this”. Huh?! Are we politicians here?! I am a customer with a problem!

I think Canon has to change it’s attitude (at least Canon Netherlands) and come up with a solution QUICK.

This arrogant attitude of not caring about customers is very familiar to me, as I have been dealing with it for a long time now too. I’ve written about it numerous times here on my blog, just check out my Canon posts in the archives. It’s a worldwide issue with Canon. These days I don’t even get any replies when I send email to Canon USA or Canon Europe. Noud van den Boer from Canon Netherlands even deletes my emails without reading them as a standard procedure (I know because I’m tracking it). At least I know Canon USA’s Chuck Westfall reads my emails, but after seeing what kind of issues they’re dealing with at Canon USA, I’m getting a different perspective on why he may not be able to comment on certain things. Take the issues with the EF 50mm f/1.2L lens for example, of which Canon, up to this day, has failed to comment on (Fake Chuck has more on this here).

I recommend reading at least the first part of this interview with Fake Chuck Westfall, as it highlights some of the important issues with Canon.

Pingbacks

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  2. Aut-O’-Focus « Fake Chuck Westfall (29/10/2009)
  3. Wassup Canon? « DavidGallery (09/11/2009)

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