Difference between revisions of "Talk:Olympus OM system"
(Legends -- are there any?) |
Rebollo fr (talk | contribs) (Good to tone down, but Maitani undeniably more famous than others) |
||
| Line 6: | Line 6: | ||
"Legendary" strikes me as way over the top. Or have some legends grown up around him? -- [[User:Hoary|Hoary]] 22:48, 18 May 2006 (EDT) | "Legendary" strikes me as way over the top. Or have some legends grown up around him? -- [[User:Hoary|Hoary]] 22:48, 18 May 2006 (EDT) | ||
| + | |||
| + | :You are right to tone down the articles. | ||
| + | :However it is fair to recognize that Maitani has acquired a notoriety that most other camera designers don't have. Just like Barnack, many people know his name while this was never the name of a company or a camera model. In contrast, there are many important cameras whose designer has fallen into oblivion. For example, I would be unable to tell the name of the designer of the Nikon F or Exakta or Spotmatic, while there is a whole website called [http://www.geocities.com/maitani_fan/ maitani_fan]. | ||
| + | :As for the legends, I have read in a book titled 往年のオリンパスカメラ図鑑 that some people stop him in the street and ask him to sign the top plate of their Pen or OM camera, and that the company offered him a diamond-point pen for that purpose. It is a fact that Olympus and Maitani himself have pushed the image of a "genius engineer" (in the same book it is called nothing less than 天才技術者). There are many interviews of Maitani published in various places, and most of them establish a comparison between the Olympus Pen, XA and OM small size models and the Leica screw models, in a tone that implicitly presents Maitani as Barnack's spiritual son. | ||
| + | :I think that we must at least tell something about this special popularity, presented in a neutral tone. The best place to put this is probably [[Yoshihisa Maitani|the page about him]]. --[[User:Rebollo fr|Rebollo fr]] 07:47, 19 May 2006 (EDT) | ||
Revision as of 11:47, 19 May 2006
Legends
We read: "The OM system was designed by the legendary camera designer Yoshihisa Maitani."
Maitani is indeed a famous designer, and deserves credit. But I'm puzzled by the way that most references to him in this encyclopedia preface him with "famous". If he's the famous Maitani, then since Olympus, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, etc are more famous than he is, shouldn't they too be prefaced with "famous"?
"Legendary" strikes me as way over the top. Or have some legends grown up around him? -- Hoary 22:48, 18 May 2006 (EDT)
- You are right to tone down the articles.
- However it is fair to recognize that Maitani has acquired a notoriety that most other camera designers don't have. Just like Barnack, many people know his name while this was never the name of a company or a camera model. In contrast, there are many important cameras whose designer has fallen into oblivion. For example, I would be unable to tell the name of the designer of the Nikon F or Exakta or Spotmatic, while there is a whole website called maitani_fan.
- As for the legends, I have read in a book titled 往年のオリンパスカメラ図鑑 that some people stop him in the street and ask him to sign the top plate of their Pen or OM camera, and that the company offered him a diamond-point pen for that purpose. It is a fact that Olympus and Maitani himself have pushed the image of a "genius engineer" (in the same book it is called nothing less than 天才技術者). There are many interviews of Maitani published in various places, and most of them establish a comparison between the Olympus Pen, XA and OM small size models and the Leica screw models, in a tone that implicitly presents Maitani as Barnack's spiritual son.
- I think that we must at least tell something about this special popularity, presented in a neutral tone. The best place to put this is probably the page about him. --Rebollo fr 07:47, 19 May 2006 (EDT)
