In a serious blow to the manufacturer, Panasonic has been caught red-handed using an image taken with a Nikon camera on the product page for its latest release, the Panasonic Lumix S9.
It’s getting worse. Not only was the image captured with a Nikon camera, but also by a former Nikon ambassador.
It’s getting worse. Panasonic not only used the image to showcase the capabilities of the Lumix S9, but has used the same image in the same way for at least one other camera: the Lumix GH5S. What the hell is going on?
If you go to the Japanese product page for the S9, specifically the animal recognition section, you’ll see a beautiful image of two European bee-eaters (next to an image of a beagle, which I’ll come back to). “‘Animal Recognition’ supports birds, dogs (including wolves, etc.), and cats (including lions, etc.),” reads the text in Japanese.
If you’re anything like me, you’d assume that this photo – specifically used to demonstrate the capabilities of the camera’s autofocus system – was taken with the camera in question. Or at least using the autofocus system in question.
We will be wrong.
This photo was actually taken in 2016. Not with a Panasonic camera, but with a Nikon, by a former Nikon ambassador, Romanian photographer Mircea Bezergeanu. You can see as much if you google the image like I did below:
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If you look at the image above, you’ll see that the top link is to a Romanian Nikon website and a piece by Bezergheanu on how he photographed the bee-eaters (with much nicer images). The same article seems to appear here on another Romanian site.
I asked Bezergianu which camera he was in fact used to take the photo and was a Nikon D810 – not a Lumix S9. Neither does the Lumix GH5S, whose Japanese product page too uses the image (as seen in the second link in the Google search above).
Japanese retailer System 5 also used the image in its listing for a third camera, the Lumix S5II. While this is clearly not from Panasonic directly, it certainly appears to be from a bundle of promotional material provided by the brand.
So what does it all mean? Well, unless Panasonic doesn’t a lot good explanation (and I’ve reached out for comment but haven’t heard back at the time of writing), this is a huge breach of trust for the brand.
In the interest of fairness, the product page contains the text “Images and illustrations are for illustrative purposes only.” However, also in the interest of fairness, you would expect that an illustrative image could be pulled from the vast library that must surely have been taken with the camera or technology in question.
If this was at least done with another Lumix using the same AF technology, that would be acceptable to me. But when you present a photo that looks like it was taken with your equipment, but it’s so obviously taken with a competing camera using completely different technology… how can that possibly be an accurate representation of your product?
And if you mislead with the images, pretending they show me what your camera can do, how can I trust anything else you tell me? Are the videos shot with Canon? Do the RAW files come from Fujifilm?
I don’t even think it’s funny – I really don’t know. Because remember that cute picture of the beagle next to the birds? This is a widely available stock photo, as revealed by Photo Rumors. So how many images were there in this product listing for the S9 actually taken with s9? Or the GH5S, for that matter?
This reminds me of the time (one of four, actually) that Huawei was caught pretending that photos taken with a phone were actually taken with a camera (ironically another Nikon DSLR, the Nikon D850). Whether you think it’s disingenuous or downright dishonest, it’s a bad look for the company.
For his part, Bezergeanu is taking it easy that Panasonic is using his photo to promote the S9’s capabilities. “I am the subject of the international press,” he wrote on Facebook. “And I really want to test this device, so I invite them to La Colibe, Corbu – an archaic Romanian village.”
Panasonic needs to give a public response and immediately. He should probably remove Mircea’s photo from his website as well.
Check out the best Panasonic cameras (whose AF really needs no misrepresentation these days) along with the best L-mount lenses for S bodies and the best Micro Four Thirds lenses for G cameras.