Beatles Ringo Starr and George Harrison on board aircraft, June 1964
Photographer: Morrie Hill
I'm sure that a few Pentaxians have seen this classic photo of George Harrison apparently trying to figure out one of the dials of his new Pentax. I had seen this photo previously, but had never been able to confirm its provenance. By coincidence and a little Googling, I uncovered that this photo was taken by Morrie Hill during the Beatles tour to New Zealand, and is part of a collection owned by the Alexander Turnball Library. There's a page on Flickr you can check out to learn more about this Beatles Photo.
While it's not obvious at the present time, you might want to refer back to this photo for a particularly small detail after certain announcements are made in the near future. Call me what you will, but if this is considered a "tease", it's actually part of some thought I've had recently trying to determine if it's possible for high technology products to have an innate personality. In other words, I'm talking about the "soul of a camera" and is this something that can be felt and appreciated by the photographer who uses that tool? Happy postulating and if you have a well thought out view on this, I'd enjoy reading your reaction and comment to this notion. Cheers!
Note: I can see from a few posts on various forums that some folks literally took my words to mean that I'm referring to specific features in a future camera, which could not be further from the point of this post. Guess the tendency on forums to immediately react to someone's words is similar to firing off a few shots before you've taken off the lens cap. I was not suggesting that we're bringing back features in that 1964 Pentax that George is holding. That would be like BMW using the same exact engine from the original Mini Cooper in their re-incarnation. What I'm really thinking about is the idea that certain products have a synergy where the different features and functions cooperate advantageously for a final outcome. Simply defined, it means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
And again, please consider these are thoughts not necessarily related exclusively to our next camera. Any company that designs a new product suffers through many long review meetings trying to decide if their offering will resonate with its customers in a way that the experience and emotional attachment the end user has will be far greater than any one feature. This is what separates the iPod from all the other MP3 players. This is what I'm sure Microsoft is working feverishly to achieve in Windows 7. If anything, I'm simply saying we're as anxious and excited about the next few months as some of you are :-)
