A Good Laugh – Fuji GFX100S Leak
We Don’t Negotiate With Hobbyists
It’s Good To Laugh At Yourself
I was in the camera business as a VP for Phase One for 13 years. One of the hardest things to do was to keep the new development of hardware and software confidential. As employees, we were sworn to secrecy and whenever we did share something with the outside world we made sure we had signed NDA’s (Non-Disclosure Agreement). Typically we would have a dealer conference a week or two before a new release and at that time we would share all the information with the dealer network so they could be prepared to launch the new product. Everyone signed NDAs. It usually only took a few hours before all the information was public. Social media, photography site forums, and rumor boards had all the information we had just shared. It was very frustrating.
It was important when releasing a new product it would be kept secret as you didn’t want the competition to know and of course didn’t want to jeopardize sales of the available products. This holds true for all companies camera or otherwise. Apple was famous for keeping things under wrap. There were serious consequences for those that leaked information beforehand. I remember that it was always fun back in the day of Steve Jobs to wait for the end of his announcements as he would say “There is just one more thing” and then out of nowhere, Apple would announce a product that wasn’t leaked or no one knew about.
Well, those days are behind us as we now have rumor sites for just about any product or camera line you can think of. And, most of the time these rumor sites are pretty accurate. I know many times I would think that companies would leak info to the rumors sites as a way to build up the anticipation of a new product or to slow sales of their competitors. It’s kind of different times these days.
This week both Sony and Fuji introduced new products. As a journalist, it was kind of funny on the Fuji side as I was sent an NDA to sign my life away. All the information that they then provided under NDA was already on Fujirumors.com. A lot of the Sony stuff was on Sonyrumors.com. Of course, some of it wasn’t too. Frankly, I am happy not to get caught up in the rumor world. You never know if what you are reading is true or not. Sometimes certain sites jump the gun trying to get views and readers hoping that get it right, only to find out that they didn’t. Such is the case when Tony, of Tony and Chelsea YouTube fame, published a video about curved sensors being part of the new Sony camera only to be wrong.
In the end, all the work to keep things supposedly secret is for naught, intentionally or unintentionally. With the launch of the new Fuji GFX100S Fuji had a good laugh at itself. They released. video “Leaked GFX100S” that I thought was brilliant not to mention pretty funny. I think it is always good for a company to be able to have a good laugh at itself but also turn it into a brilliant marketing piece. So, I present the video below today as a chance for you to have a laugh and get a behind the scenes look at how Fujifilm marketing works. Enjoy!
The Leaked GFX100S Video
Kevin Raber
January 2021
Kevin Raber
Indianapolis, IN
Photography is my passion and has been for 50 plus years. My career in photography has allowed me to travel the world, meet some of the most interesting people on the planet and see things I could never have dreamed of. My goal is to share the passion of picture taking through photographs and teaching with as many people as I can, hoping it brings them as much joy and happiness as it has me. I do this through photoPXL.com, this site, as well as Rockhopper Workshops, and other projects, as well as teaching as Artist In Residence at the Indianapolis Art Center.
