In a major black eye for the manufacturer, Panasonic has been caught red-handed using an image taken with a Nikon camera on the product page of its latest release, the Panasonic Lumix S9.
Getting worse. The photo was not only taken with a Nikon camera, but also by a former Nikon ambassador.
Getting worse. Not only does Panasonic use the image to showcase the capabilities of the Lumix S9, it 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-eater birds (alongside an image of a beagle, which I’ll get to later). “’Animal Recognition’ supports birds, canines (including wolves, etc.) and felines (including lions, etc.)” reads the Japanese text.
If you’re like me, you’d assume this photo – used specifically 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 would be wrong.
This photo was actually taken in 2016. Not on a Panasonic camera but on a Nikon, by a former Nikon ambassador: the Romanian photographer Mircea Bezergheanu. You can see just as much if you Google the image as 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 lots more great footage). The same article seems to appear here, on another Romanian site.
I asked Bezergheanu what camera he had Actually used to take the photo, and it was the Nikon D810 – not the Lumix S9. Not even the Lumix GH5S, from the Japanese product page Also uses the image (as seen in the second link in the Google search above).
Japanese retailer System 5 also used the listing image for a third camera, the Lumix S5II. While this clearly isn’t directly from Panasonic, it certainly looks like it’s from a bundle of publicity material provided by the brand.
So what does this all mean? Unless Panasonic has one terribly good explanation (and I asked for comment but received no response at the time of writing), this is a huge breach of trust for the brand.
For the sake of fairness, the product page does contain the text “Images and illustrations are for illustrative purposes only.” But also in the interest of fairness, you would expect that an illustrative image could be pulled from the enormous library that must certainly have been taken with the camera or technology in question.
If this had at least been shot with a different Lumix, with the same AF technology, then that would be acceptable to me. But if you present a photo as if it was taken with your equipment, when it was so clearly taken with a competing camera using completely different technology… how can this happen? possible be an accurate representation of your product?
And if you’re misleading with the images and pretending to show me what your camera can do, how can I trust anything you tell me? Are the videos shot with a Canon? Do the RAW files come from a Fujifilm?
I don’t even think this is funny; I really do not know. Because do you remember that cute photo of the beagle next to the birds? That’s a publicly available stock photo, as revealed by Photo Rumors. So how many images on this product listing were for the S9 actually made with an S9? Or the GH5S for that matter?
It reminds me of the time (one of four, in fact) that Huawei was caught pretending 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 looks bad for the company.
For his part, Bezergheanu thinks it’s fine that Panasonic uses his photo to promote the capabilities of the S9. “I am a subject in the international press,” he wrote on Facebook. “I really want to test that device too, so I invite them to La Colibe, Corbu – archaic Romanian hamlet.”
Panasonic needs to make a public response, and immediately. And probably Mircea’s photo should be taken off the website too.
Take a look at 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.