Nikon - Kissing ASS with the best of them.

It's no secret that Nikon has aggresively taken over market share as far as photography goes. Pro's world wide have been switching, or have been lured to switch to the mighty N and almost weekly people are making the switch. Just look at any photography classifieds page and see how much second hand Canon equipment is for sale these days.

Being a Nikon shooter myself I think it's great that Nikon, once scorned and mocked by the photographic community, is now leader of the pack BUT it saddens me somewhat that those photographers who scorned, mocked and belittled Nikon users at every opportunity have done much ass-kissing and have had their asses kissed by Nikon in order to switch over.

Nikon seems to think that word does not get around but the photography industry is REAL small and people do get to know whose ass was kissed and by whom. I know of several Canon professionals in South Africa who were approached by Nikon and were "given" equipment running into hundreds of thousands of Rands. Of course Nikon has a sting in their tail and these togs have to breathe, sleep and poop Nikon ...... they seem to be trained like little puppy dogs to make the first word ouf of their mouth Nikon and lets not forget all the shirts and hats they have to wear if they happen to be in public.

Nikon then likes to share little industry "secrets" with these photographers who have not actually spent much money with Nikon and customers who've spent BIG bucks with them may not know or are not told such "secrets". For instance there's already rumours about a new Nikon body to take over from the D3 which will be 2 years old this year, this "secret" was told to me by one of these lured-switchers with the message that I must NEVER tell anyone ... BIG SECRET !!!! ... yeah right ... come on I am not a dumb ass. The only difference is that when this new body comes out I have to pay FULL price for it and these guys "get" one for next to nothing ... just to keep blurting Nikon out of their mouths.

If Nikon is purposefully trying to piss off customers who've spent huge sums of money with them, they sure are going about it the right way.