Welcome to the Internet

Nikon Rumors recently ran my Nikon Z9 second impressions as a guest post on their site. That was very flattering. It was also a novel experience for me – generally nobody reads what I post here on my blog, and it’s as much for my own benefit as anything else (e.g. a form of “rubber ducking” when I’m trying to figure something out, or simply a record of my thoughts for me to laugh at in years to come).

I was surprised how much traffic it brought to my site – my vague intuition was that with the content repeated wholesale there’d be no motivation for folks to visit the original.

I was also slightly surprised by the comments section (on Nikon Rumors), though upon reflection I probably shouldn’t have been. As Peter (Nikon Rumors admin) quipped to me, “Welcome to the Internet :)”.

Roughly-speaking, it seems to break down into:

Constructive

A very small portion of the feedback was constructive (and sometimes intentionally so, even), e.g. typos, my embarrassing mislabelling of a jaguar as a leopard, etc. Some was interesting in revealing unintended ambiguity in my phrasing – I always find it intriguing to find valid, different interpretations of things I wrote. It’s a worthy challenge to try to write without ambiguity.

I really appreciate when people provide useful feedback – even if it’s not well-motivated. It’s so rare in life to receive useful feedback.

Missing context

A lot of the feedback was because of missing context – many folks assumed it was a review, not merely a random collection of observations, and therefore meant to be balanced & comprehensive. Or that I’d only use the Sigma 150-600 C with the Z9 (I did mention use of other lenses, but apparently too briefly or obliquely for many to register).

That’s useful to know because it revealed I was unwittingly assuming folks would read the first impressions first, which provided a bit more context, and also assuming a lot about the reader’s mindset coming in – i.e. that they’d implicitly understand that a lot was tongue-in-cheek.

Missed sarcasm / irony / frivolity

It seems apparent from some comments that my sense of humour / writing style just didn’t sit well with many folks. I’m used to that – I hate irony and never use it all the time.

The Nikon Z9’s acrobatic abilities seemed to particularly rub many folks the wrong way, which even in retrospect I still find odd because it seems so obviously (a) a very minor concern in any case and (b) just funny, really. Many folks did wonder aloud why I had my camera loose in a car anyway, which is a totally valid question and one I didn’t think for a minute to address when I wrote the article.

(for the record, it’s mainly because I’d never really needed to before, and I like having the camera readily available – plus I’ve since figured out that I can kind of wedge the Z9 under the seats, in the rear footwells, so problem solved!)

Mean

Sadly, most feedback was acerbic and ill-intentioned. Thankfully the novelty of the occasion neutered the mean-spirited comments, and they’re easy to skim over because they tend to be repetitive, pithy, and thus easy to identify. I’m a bit mystified as to why those folks spend their time that way, though. Some kind of game? Catharsis?

4 thoughts on “Welcome to the Internet”

  1. Oh wade, I stumbled across your blog while searching for information about the current wait time for the backordered Nikon Z 100-400mm lens. At first it felt like I had gone back in time to the early 2000s. The early stages of Web 2.0 where people blogged just to create content without concern for monetizing it via ads. I even disabled my ad-blocker to check if your blog really was this clean and minimal.
    Shortly after, I came upon this post with this title that brought back the reality of what the internet today is really like. Just wanted to say thank you for keeping on doing what you do here.

    Reply
    • Oh wow – thanks! I’m flattered. I despise ads, so I can’t see myself ever using them in anything I create.

      Good luck getting the 100-400 – I’m surprised you’re finding there’s a wait, given how quickly I got mine after ordering it. That was twenty minutes after launch, though – perhaps there’s a backlog built up since?

      And I hope it turns out a bit sharper for you than my copy was. Even as soft as my copy was, it was still such a tempting lens. I really wish it had been a bit sharper. Every day since, that I’ve used the Sigma 150-600 instead, I’ve been steadily grinding down my teeth in the frustration of buggy autofocus and practically dysfunctional image stabilisation. Fingers crossed for the upcoming 200-600 Z!

      Reply
  2. Thanks. The lens is going to be a huge upgrade for me and I won’t have the kind of lenses you have on hand to compare against(I have the 300mm f4.5 AI-S) So one worry is that I won’t catch the sharpness issues like you did with yours, especially since I’ll be using it with a Z5.

    Reply
    • Ah, yes – with a Z5 I don’t think you’ll have any complaints given the lower sensor resolution. The 100-400 isn’t that soft, even for the [likely] bad copy I had. And image quality beyond just sharpness is very good – bokeh etc. You’ll be very happy, I think.

      Reply

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