A post in the DSLR forum got me thinking. The original post referred to a relatively new manufacturer and the statement was made that the person did not feel comfortable "doing R&D for a new company" -- the implication being that he was leery of buying a product from a new manufacturer without an established track record. However, it caused me to think of times when I've received things from well established brands that were a bit less than I'd hoped and examples of where I'd given feedback to companies, both old and new, that has been adopted. I thought that this separate topic might make a good thread in its own right.
Here is my story from the other thread:
Any manufacturer that released a housing that routinely leaked would be laughed out of the industry quite quickly so I don't necessarily see floods as the most likely point of contention. However, I would submit that many of us here have, wittingly or unwittingly, been doing R&D for ALL of the manufacturers for years. Allow me an anecdote:
When I bought my first digital camera, a state-of-the-art Olympus C-2020z, I also, on a whim, bought an Olympus housing to go with it. Worked pretty well but I wished it could be a bit more robust so I sent a note to Ike Brigham wondering if Ikelite was thinking of housing digicams. I got a typically curt response about why would anyone want to do that, was this digital thing ever going to really catch on, etc. I dropped it. Sure enough, Ikelite released an Ike-branded setup within a year or so to test the waters. When I upgraded my C-2020z to a C-4040z, I bought one of the very first Ikelite housings for it. The housing arrived and I was a bit horrified. Ikelite, a manufacturer who was NOT a startup, had sent me a housing with a cracked port ring, buttons that didn't line up and furthermore, all the buttons around the menu button were all the same height making it all but impossible to push any of them without pushing the others. To make matters worse, I had already sort of volunteered to review the housing and post the review here and on Digital Diver. So I got on the horn to Ike and told he he might want a mulligan on this one. I sent the housing back and it was determined that the button alignment issue had to do with how the camera had to be mounted in the housing. They fixed that. They added in buttons of different heights around the menu button. I got it back -- the port ring crack was still there! Had to take pictures of it and send it to Ike to convince him. I sent it back again and finally all was fixed. So, what's the point of my little story? Here an established vendor, whose reputation was backed up fervently by thousands of users, had designed a housing poorly and not been able to fix a fairly obvious flaw the first time around. But you know what, they made it right and just about every housing they've made since then has used the "different button height" idea I provided (or at least certainly passionately supported). Was the issue the fact that Ikelite was a new company? Hardly. The issue was that this was a new model and like any company producing a new model, there were bugs that needed to be worked out. It would be great if manufacturers could think of everything, but they often can't. And, even if they can, it may not be worth it to them to do it (having worked in the auto industry, I can attest to this as well -- car manufacturers have to decide what they can and can't afford to offer all the time).
I'm sure others can attest to times that they gave housing manufacturers good ideas and saw them appear on new models. Another example -- Ikelite started offering 90-degree synch cord bulkhead fittings. Why? Not because they had a light bulb appear over their heads one day. Rather, many people got sick of having the regular one poke them in the face and suggested something needed to be different.
Finally, I want to say I'm not picking on Ike here. Just giving two examples I know something about.
Anyone else have a story (or two)?
Mike
