Camera-wiki.org:Standards (companies)
This page describes the quality standards to be achieved in an article about a company, and gives some suggestions.
Contents
Continuity
In general, the title of the article will be the current or latest name of the company. For example, Asahi (maker of lenses, the Asahiflex and Pentax, etc.) later became Pentax; we therefore have a single article about Pentax.
Where companies split or merged, or where there is some other compelling reason to have different articles for different periods, multiple articles are possible.
Article Title
When creating a new article about a company, the current, most commonly used and recognized form of the company name should be used. For example: a company was originally called Foo Black Boxes with Glass Lenses, Inc., later changed its name to Foo Camera Company, Ltd. but everyone in the real world calls it Foo Camera - the article title should be Foo Camera. You can detail the history of name changes in the article itself (see notes on historical company name, below). This follows the Wikipedia article name guideline for articles with proper names.[1]
Historical notes
A page about a company should contain a brief summary of the company history. It is not necessarily restricted to developments in photographic hardware. Places and people are worth mentioning too.
Company names
Within the article, any name of the company should be given in complete form in the original language, and, where helpful, also in an English translation. Distinguish between (a) an English name (whether or not this is a translation) used by the company itself, and (b) your own translation; use the former where possible, but in any case avoid any risk of giving the reader the impression that your own translation, however careful and well intended, was used by the company.
Be alert to the possibility of false generalizations even within what seem to be reliable sources. For example, Konishiroku in the US changed its name to Konica well before Konishiroku in Japan did, and it is very likely that material put out later by Konica (or Konica Minolta, or Sony) in the US will assume a US (and of course non-scholarly) readership and mention the change of name in the US without making it clear that this change was limited to the US.
List of products
Camera makers
A page about a camera maker should contain a list of its cameras, as exhaustive as possible. This list should be organized in sections and subsections, a typical arrangement being to have one section per image support and one subsection per camera architecture, for example:
- Digital
- DSLR
- Point and shoot
- 35mm film
- Autofocus SLR
- Manual focus SLR
- Point and shoot
- Rangefinder
- 120 film
- 4.5×6 folder
- 6×6 folder
- 6×6 TLR
Of course you can dispense with the list if the company only produced one or two camera models.
Lens makers
It is not always possible to give a list of lens types, but a list of common brand names used by the company is useful. A list of cameras equipped with these lenses is also useful, when possible.
Distributors
Some companies are only distributors, selling cameras made by other companies. When the distributor sells cameras under its own brand, a list of cameras is useful, and can be presented the same way as for a camera maker.
