Olympus has hired a bunch of stinkin liars...

[sabbath999]

I am talking about their ad agency, not necessarily company employees.

I find the Olympus E-510 Ad that is circulating in the various magazines over the last couple months entirely offensive and I think it is worth sharing why.

If you haven't seen it, the photo is funny, showing a bicycle racer going up a mountain pass delayed by some unhappy beef-on-hoof. But... here is where I have a BIG problem with this ad. The ad STRONGLY implies that the picture was taken by the E-510.

It wasn't.

I have no idea what camera WAS used, but it certainly wasn't a brand new DSLR.

There are at least two versions of this ad, and I am going to talk about the one page version that appears on Page 27 of the July 2007 issue of Popular Photography.

I am an avid cycling fan, and even the most casual glance at the picture tells me that it was taken, at the LATEST, in 2003, and most likely it was taken years earlier. Here's how I know this. First, the rider delayed is a member of Team Once (pronounced on-say), and the race is the Tour De France. The team name is written clearly on the shorts, and the jerseys are pink... Team Once only wore the pink jerseys in the Tour De France (their standard yellow jerseys looked too much like the leader's jersey, so they couldn't wear them in the race). Additionally, none of the riders are wearing helmet. Helmets were made mandatory for UCI racing in 2003, with the exception that riders could take them off before the last climb of the day if it was a high mountain finish. That means that this rider could not have been riding any later than 2003 (especially since team Once folded at the end of 2003), assuming this was the last climb of the day. Since 2004, riders are required to wear helmets at all times during the race. Once (the Spanish lottery organization for the blind) ended it's cycling sponsorship in 2003, and those pink jerseys have not been seen on the roads of the Tour De France since.

Not only does Team Once no longer exist, the team that replaced them, Liberty Seguros no longer exists either. You don't have to take my word on any of this, here are some reference sources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Seguros-Würth_team

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/other_sports/cycling/3123051.stm

http://www.iht.com/articles/2003/09/30/bike_ed3__0.php

I am guessing this picture is actually much older than 2003. In the picture, several of the riders are wearing cycling caps... which are very uncomfortable to wear under helmets... so it looks like this is the pre-helmet era of 2002 or earlier. Additionally (ok, this part is bike-geek and not very obvious), the last cyclist appears to be riding an old bike (since TDF riders only ride the best equipment, this makes the picture old... not the bike). In 2002 and 2001 Team Once bikes were Yellow. They were black in 2003, but the bar tape was not silver/white, and there are other technical and boring details to lead me to believe this bike is is circa 1999ish AT the very latest, and actually likely earlier... but those are guesses..

Now, about the other pictures. If you look at the other pictures on the page, the one in the bottom left hand corners shows brake levers with cables sticking out the top. This style of brake levers (where the wires are sticking out of the tops of the brake hoods) has not been used in racing in about 20 years... certainly pre-1990, at the latest. The next picture over shows a the last rider in the green and blue team kit of Team Kelme, which changed sponsors (i.e. the Kelme colors left the world of road cycling) in 2004.

I know this all sounds a bit geeky, but it proves beyond a doubt that this ad is complete and utter rubbish. It offends me that a company is trying to pass of a film-shot photo series as digital. I find it obnoxious in the extreme.

While the ad does not specifically state that "every single picture on this page was taken by the camera we are advertising", it certainly leaves the impression that they WERE taken by the E-510.

They most assuredly were not.

Which makes the ad agency that put this together a bunch of stinkin liars.

 

[Alex_B]

welcome to the world of advertising ...

oh, and advertising is probably outsourced to external agencies, so it might not even be done by Olympus.

And such agencies are not payed for journalism or telling the truth, but for advertising!

If you see the before and after images they use to advertise detergents, it is actually after and before ... to produce the ad there was never any washing done with that detergent. The same happens in all other branches.

This is the world we live in.

(being a photographer, I understand however why you are upset )

 

[fmw]

Calm down. Why let a petty thing like that stir you up into a frenzy? Wouldn't the new camera make a comparable image? Who cares?

Looks like the Tour won't be won by an American this year for a change. Who do think will be on the podium in Paris? My main decision today will be whether I ride my Litespeed or my Basso this evening.

 

[Garbz]

http://www.print.duncans.tv/2007/05/ there's a very low-re version of the advertisement here. But yeah welcome to the industry. It does stop short of being false advertisement though, it's just a picture.

 

[sabbath999]

I can be calm about everything except for cycling... I was a trueblood Team Once fan for years, back to the days of Ja Ja. This particular ad was just like fingernails on the chalkboard.

Tonight I will be riding my custom hand-made Bilenky road bike... both of my carbon fiber Specialized Roubaix's have flat tires and I am out of tubes until my order gets here by UPS (tomorrow at the earliest)... and I can't steal tubes from my wife since her Madone is the WSD version with 650's.

 

[ksmattfish]

Don't look to closely at any advertising then. I think you'll find that 99% of it is smoke, mirrors, and snake oil.

Doesn't the old saying go something like "build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door"? The flipside of this is that if you are building the same old mousetrap as everyone else is building then you'll have to hire an ad agency. Look at all the hoo-haa over Nikon vs. Canon; they've been building virtually identical gear for over 50 years now. And what about the supernatural mystique surrounding Leica and Hasselblad? I mean they are very nice cameras, but they are still mere metal and glass. For a mind blowing (at least to me) example of irrational camera cults check out www.lomography.com. They've managed to convince a legion of photogs that slow sync and cross processing is secret Soviet technology, and are selling $50 point-n-shoots for $250+.

 

[Peniole]

Did you consider that they might have been using a prototype, since it takes years to develop these cameras from the ground up, the new NMOS sensor alone probably took some time. The camera didn't just spring this year in 2007. Not that I'm defending them just being the devils advocate, I couldn't care less for the ad company or Olympus ad practice.

 

[ksmattfish]

Cycling is a lot like photography in that it seems to foster an idea that the ability is in the gear rather than the gear operator. I have a beautiful, custom hand built, $4000+ Ibis Hakkalugi that is a joy to ride, but so is my $500, factory stock Trek, and I'm just as slow on either.

 

[fmw]

Cycling is a lot like photography in that it seems to foster an idea that the ability is in the gear rather than the gear operator. I have a beautiful, custom hand built, $4000+ Ibis Hakkalugi that is a joy to ride, but so is my $500, factory stock Trek, and I'm just as slow on either.

I hear you. I tend to be slightly faster on my Basso which is a triple. I think when I'm attacking a hill I tend to leave it in the 42 ring and grunt and struggle. I'm actually moving a little faster than when I'm climbing with the double. I assume that's reason. Either way I'm not very fast on any of my bikes either but I do get 100-150 miles per week on the saddle and enjoy it a lot. Here's a link to stable of bikes. http://www.foodieforums.com/otherimages/stable.htm

 

[Alex_B]

Calm down, it is just .... bicycles !

*hides on a tree* :mrgreen:

 

[sabbath999]

I hear you. I tend to be slightly faster on my Basso which is a triple. I think when I'm attacking a hill I tend to leave it in the 42 ring and grunt and struggle. I'm actually moving a little faster than when I'm climbing with the double. I assume that's reason. Either way I'm not very fast on any of my bikes either but I do get 100-150 miles per week on the saddle and enjoy it a lot. Here's a link to stable of bikes. http://www.foodieforums.com/otherimages/stable.htm

I bet I can ride older, slower and fatter than any other cyclist here

I have two roubaix because they happen to fit me perfectly, but they are set up totally different... one for flatter rides (trails and such) and one for my normal 20 mile daily ride that has a lot of climbing... (compact crank, pie plate in back, etc).

Even though I have the same bike that pro teams have ridden to victory, I am old, fat and slow... and not one bit of hardware can help me on that...

 

[sabbath999]

Here's a link to stable of bikes. http://www.foodieforums.com/otherimages/stable.htm

I would marry you for your bikes, but they are not my size

I don't actually have pictures of my bikes, but if you like I can take some

 

[sabbath999]

Actually, since I was home typing this on my lunch break, I just went and shot whatever was in the back of the bike shed at the house... here are a couple of pix to show a few of our kiddies...

The pink bike is my S&S coupled Bilenky bike I travel with, on the left is my wife's touring bike... you see a couple of ONCE colored Giant TCR's, a Trek 7200, a pair of Motobecane fixies (the orange bikes), my silver Giant hardtail and my wife's Kona hardtail, plus various other bikes in the background. In the house is the other roubaix, her madone, the Vision recumbent I use for the trainer, etc.

Click on the thumbs to make them bigger.

 

[fmw]

Looks like you have a pretty good stable too. I appreciate the comments about the bikes. I've built all of them myself (except for the mountain bike and the Garlatti.) You can probably tell from the descriptions. Whenever I find a neat frame on Ebay for a song, I build up a new bike. It is a bad habit and a hard one to break. I've been meaning to build one up with the new Sram stuff. Maybe I'll do it.

 

[rmh159]

Ok since I took the time to read the post I feel I've earned the right to voice my opinion.

Who gives a frig? First and foremost... if you're foolish enough to believe all you have to do is buy that camera and you'll be snapping those types of shots, you deserve to have your money taken.

Also as a business guy myself I usually side with the company. They're not breaking any laws. Is it unethical? Who knows, that's pretty gray... but I know every other company is doing the exact same thing and so much Olympus to stay competitive.

Look through any magazine and I'd be surprised if you find any ads for cameras where the pic is taken by the camera in the ad. It's business. Buyer beware.

Also in reading your post I can't help but think if you weren't an avid cyclist you would've never known the difference (which would probably be 95% of the population) and only seen a dude on a bike with some extra-raw beef behind him.