Brand Loyalty?

City-Exile · 03-05-2007 10:00am #1

I'm new to this forum and lazy by nature, when it comes to reading, so sue me, if this has been discussed before.

Brand loyalty is common to many products, but particularly those where the cost requires some serious decision making, before the expenditure can be sanctioned.
For example, people with a Ford car, will often replace it with another Ford car.
With regard to camera equipment, my first SLR was a Canon EOS 300. There was something about the simple branding & the red on white colour scheme that attracted me initially. From there, I test drove quite a few cameras but in the back of my mind, I was always going to buy a Canon.

I've since replaced the 300 with a 300D and more recently a 400D and would be very reluctant to switch brands.

Am I simply buying into the marketing and depriving myself of other experiences, by having a closed mind to rival brands, or is it like football, where you're with one team for life?

P.s. I once had a Sigma 70-300 Canon fit.

Eirebear · 03-05-2007 10:11am

I reckon theres a few factors involved with this, if you have a bunch of canon lenses, then chances are your gonna go and plump for another canon camera because it saves you a bit of money.

Secondly i think you really need a camera that you know and love, in order to get the best work out of it. if your spending all your time grappling with a camera you dont know any more, it can quickly put you off using it.
related to that is my third point, if you have a good experience with one camera (your 300 being the first) then your going to gravitate towards the same brand knowing that they gave you something you liked before.

buying a different brand for me would mean extensively testing and researching ti before handing over my money, whereas im more likely to trust the brand that iv already used.

Paulw · 03-05-2007 10:23am

I do think it's more than brand loyalty.

If someone asks me what camera to buy (not an SLR) then I would tell them to look at Olympus, Fuji, Canon etc.

But, if someone is looking for an SLR I'd say for them to check out Canon, Nikon and Olympus.

For me, I have a Canon, and can't see myself changing. I like the camera, the functions and I have invested my time and money in it, especially when buying lenses. I see it as investment as well as brand loyalty.

Calina · 03-05-2007 10:24am

well I feel there's a lot more freedom on the lens side of things but that once you've bought one particular brand of SLR, it's a little trapping because well, you don't want to be getting rid of all those lenses....

that said, I use a Canon body with mainly Sigma lenses. Wonder what that says about me...

Mind you I started off life as an Olympus fan girl in my fully manual days.

Alun · 03-05-2007 10:37am

Comparing it to cars or other things isn't really fair IMO. Usually for SLR cameras you have a considerable investment in lenses, a flash and other accessories that makes it difficult or just uneconomical to change the brand of the body. FWIW I've never owned the same make of car in a row in my life, and that's a lot of cars, believe me.

magicbastarder · 03-05-2007 10:50am

there's a particular design feature of olympus film SLRs which i prefer, and that's the shutter speed ring being located on the lens throat.
my DSLR is an olympus, too - and the main reason i bought olympus was that i have the adapter ring which allows me to use my MF lenses on the camera (albeit with a 2x conversion factor).
essentially, the reason i went for olympus in the first place was because my dad was an olympus user, and i coudl use his lenses, and i'm still olympus on 35mm and 120 because of those lenses.

elven · 03-05-2007 10:59am

With SLR/DSLRs it is, as said above down to two things: investment in lenses and other related kit, and also familiarity with the functionality of the camera. I went from an old EOS 600 to a 350D and all the controls work the same way, the buttons are mostly in the same place and have the same functions, as well as having a couple of lenses that I wanted to be able to carry over to the new body. If I had changed manufacturer then I would have been stuck with just a kit lens for, well, possibly years.

I originally chose the canon because I was buying (well my dad was buying for me

) second hand and it was the only electronic-ish looking camera there, and buttons and an LCD seemed more intuitive to me than lots of dials and levers. If it'd been a Nikon I'd be none the wiser these days.

I don't think there's a huge amount between the main brands to make you heavily regret going with one or the other, and nobody can judge any of them an all out winner, there are pros and cons of each. That gives you little reason to switch after making that initial outlay, and that's probably why it seems people are so disinclined to do so.

I wouldn't say there's a chance you're missing out on any huge thing for the sake ofsticking to one brand. It means - hopefully - that you'll get to know its functionality and be able to use it more intuitively, and an upgrade won't ruin that for you...

City-Exile · 03-05-2007 11:00am

My very first camera was very similar to this...
Boy am I glad I didn't stay brand loyal to them!

digitalbeginner · 03-05-2007 11:13am

City-Exile wrote:

My very first camera was very similar to this...
Boy am I glad I didn't stay brand loyal to them!

How many mega pixels was in that:)

My first film SLR was a Nikon EM (thanks mammy!) and I had an FM and FE and and F1. I've used (and loved) an Olympus OM1n and an OM2n, then had a Minolta 7000.

My first Digital camera was a Sony F707 (liked it), but my first Digital SLR? You guessed it, Nikon, a D70S in fact. I was so far away in time from my film Nikons that I don't know why I returned, but as elven said, now that I've upgraded to a Nikon D200 everything is exactly where I'd expect it to be. The fact that I've since made a significant investment in Nikon lenses and flashes obviously is part of the equation, but I don't feel 'trapped' or 'manipulated' by that. Come to think of it, true love is like that

Dave

Alun · 03-05-2007 11:50am

Actually thinking about it there can come a stage when brand loyalty can be broken, in my case by the manufacturer. In my film SLR days I was always a Minolta man ... SRT-101, SRT-303, XE, Dynax 7000i and finally Dynax 9000i. I loved the older cameras, sturdily built and easy to use, but as time went on someone in the Minolta ergonomics department (if they even have one!) lost the plot, and the last camera I had was such a PITA to use that when I went digital I sold the whole shebang inlcuding 4 lenses and a dedicated flash and switched to Nikon. I had a brief look at the Dynax 5D, but it seemed they hadn't learned their lesson by then.

sineadw · 03-05-2007 12:02pm

I just moved from a film Cosina (pentax lenses) to a Canon DSLR. I did think about sticking with Pentax, but experience has shown how difficult it can be to get their stuff these days. Canon is everywhere, I can borrow (:D ) and the kit is so much more widely available. Which means I have more latitude with price too. I can see myself sticking with Canon now though, for all the above reasons. Its like mobiles - I know where all the buttons are

I don't think sticking with one brand is limiting yourself. If anything, switching now would limit me severely in that I wouldn't be able to afford anything!

ThOnda · 03-05-2007 4:20pm

Splitter!!! Pentax rulezzz :-)
I really like dials of Pentax cameras. However I have only analogue experience so far. We will see in about one year...

sineadw · 04-05-2007 12:20am

Thonda you didn't see my Pentax - when you press the shutter release button early relatives of monkeys bang rocks together to get it to go. I'm still using it though

Roen · 04-05-2007 7:50am

Unless you know other pepole who have made similar levels of investment in gear as yourself with other brands it's difficult to find out what you are missing (if anything).

As for myself, I'm in up to my nuts in Canon lenses and bodies so there's no going back. I also don't know anyone with similar gear in a different brand so I'll probably never find out what it's like to shoot with another brand.
And even if I did know someone, there's no way that person would loan me 10k plus worth of stuff for a month or two to find out what that brand would be like to use extensively.

Benster · 04-05-2007 1:26pm

Just out of curiosity, is there a converter that lets you fit one brand of lens on a different brand camera, eg. Nikon body with Canon lenses?

I know it's in the interest of each manufacturer to keep a person buying their lenses/flashes etc, but that sort of converter would break that grip or open up many other possibilities, depending on you viewpoint.

Having said that, as well perhaps having no motivation to create such a gadget that might lose them market share, there are probably valid technical reasons why it can't be done for some brands.

B.

Roen · 04-05-2007 1:31pm

Benster, you can shove a wide variety of different makes of lenses onto Canon bodies via adapters, the mount and throat is quite wide and so accommodates several makes.
Getting Canon lenses onto other bodies would be more awkward as a lot of them do not have manual aperture rings to adjust.
I was trying to get a Pentax SMC 85mm f1.4 for my Canons but in the end went for the Canon 1.2 as the pentaxes are rare and expensive.

pete4130 · 04-05-2007 1:54pm

When I went digital I stuck with Nikon going from my F100 to a D200, mainly for the sake of being able to use the lenses I already had. In saying that, It did mean I had to buy a new fisheye for my D200 and have bought another few lenses (Sigma ones). In hindsight I wish I had have made the change to Canon as I ended up buying lenses anyway which I could have bought for Canon. I have no problems with Nikon and love the D200. I feel that with Canon having FF sensors and having much better noise control at higher ISO's gives them a slight edge over Nikon's for what I would shoot.

So some of my decision to stick with Nikon was brand loyalty to a certain extent and most of it was financial in being able to use what lenses I already had.

Brand Loyalty?

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