Nikon Community
From Mod Mania
There are various brand of DSLR camera that most of their type have quite similar specs and propose. People sometimes confuse which one of those many brands they need to choose. However there are a lot of consumers that choose Nikon as their choice of DSLR camera and Nikon is becoming more popular in Indonesia especially in my city Surabaya. Furthermore most of the Nikon consumers have make their own community and that community/clubs exist in different country all around the world, however there are an official community for Nikon and it’s called Nikonians.
Nikon history:
Nikon Corporation was founded in 25 July 1917, however during that time Nikon use different name for their company it was Nippon Kōgaku Kōgyō Kabushikigaisha then they change their name to Nikon Corporation at 1988; Nikon is a multinational corporation in Tokyo, Japan. Nikon produce cameras, binoculars, microscopes, and measurement instruments. During the world war II Nikon Corporation grew to nineteen factories with 23.000 employees to produce Japanese military equipment such as binoculars, bombsight, lenses, periscope. In 1991 Nikon opened a manufacturing facilities in Ayuthaya north of Bangkok, Thailand. By the year 2000 Nikon had 2,000 employees
Nikon is one of the most leading cameras company in the world and because of their huge amount of consumers, those consumers has made a community for Nikon users and they call it Nikonian. Nikonian is a online website providing an information about film, cameras photographers and accessories. Nikonians founded in 1999 by J. Ramón Palacios and Bo Stahlbrandt and open to the public in 30 April 2000 with 30 members. However, in this year nikonian have more than 20.000 members joining them. Nikonian have 4 membership levels first is Free membership, second is Silver membership, Third is Gold Membership, Fourth is Platinum Membership. Those memberships offer each member with different advantages and other than the free membership the community offers member with exclusive place in the community such as member galleries for posting picture, discount or free access to Nikon event and workshop. This membership gives fund for the nikonian to keep operating.
Community activity:
In the community people are helping each other’s by sharing their experiences and skills about photography as well taught other members how to master their cameras. Moreover they also help on how modifying lenses and other tricks on how to be more multifunction and economical. For example modifying a 50mm 1:8 lens turns into macro lens by making a hole that fits the lens and sticking it into the pringles so that we don’t have to hold the lens separately with the camera body.
The website also provide the newest camera information in details to give the member information. However they don’t just give us specs information of that camera but also they give us a comment about the positive and negative thing about the camera and then they will compare that particular camera to another camera that might have the same price with slightly better specs so that the members gain more knowledge and make them easier to choose which one they should buy. Moreover they also did that with lenses, flash and other accessories that Nikon camera able to fit in. Furthermore, Photoshop and other software also become the discussion in the community, also some of the member post a tutorial video of how to edit the photo.
Where the nikonians gather? The official Nikon community usually held an exhibition around the world and usually there are a lot of the members’ community gathers around. The exhibition place, date and time can be easily found in the nikonians website.
Nikon community in Indonesia:
The Nikon community in Surabaya has exist through a group of student from school whose using Nikon camera then from there they gather friends from outside whose interested in photography and using Nikon as their camera to join the community. Nevertheless due to the increase growth of community members now the community not just consists of students but also a pro photographer that works as a photographer. It wasn’t the official Nikon community is the community that consist of people whose using Nikon camera so then all of us called it as a Nikon community. As a Nikon consumer in Indonesia I was joining the Nikon community in my city Surabaya, we usually meet up at a café, mall or our community house bringing our cameras, photos and sharing our experiences, solving problems and sometimes we have photo hunting together inside or outside the city. In the community that I have joined when I was in Indonesia, they also have a photo competition every each month. It almost the same like the official community Nikonians and also have the same activity but we are smaller group that consist of 200 people and still growing.
In conclusion, the community Nikonians and my Nikon community that I join in Surabaya have the same purpose is to share ideas, information and solving problem as well as having fun together Base on my experience, it is a good idea to join a photography community even though is just a small community because it helps a lot to improve our skills by sharing our experience and we have so much fun by sharing the same hobbies and the most important part is to have more friend.
References:
- Nikonians, http://www.nikonians.org/ - Nikonian eZine 26 (online journal ), http://www.niknians.org/ezine/TheNikonian-26.pdf, 2004. - Nikon Corporate History, http://www.nikon.com/about/info/history/corporate/index.htm - Nikon, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikon
