“Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.”—Pablo Picasso

“Orange is the happiest color.”— Frank Sinatra

If colors, like features, mark our emotional fingerprint, what does your camera say about you Mr. Serious Photog shooting with a charcoal-black body? Huh?

Granted, there aren’t many pro cameras on the market today that come in Vintage-Violet or Pumpkin-Pie Orange, but you should never say never… Especially when never came this year at photokina in the form of a G1 DSLR by Panasonic—the new G1 offers photogs a choice between black, red, or blue. And though professional cams don’t come in as many colors as their point-and-shoot counterparts, the new Panasonic designs are one step in a colorful direction; however they aren’t the first…Hasselblad released colored camera bodies almost a decade ago with their 501 series, which came in black, yellow, red, green, and blue. They haven’t continued the trend in recent years—which brings me to my next question…Is there even a professional market for colored cams?

The jury is still out on whether lens color effects capture and exposure…Do Canon’s white lenses make that much of a difference in solar heat absorption? I’m not sure, but I can say with ease that the lighter lenses probably made more of a difference in Canon’s marketing campaign than anything else. So what about the colored bodies? With the success of colored point-and-shoots, companies are trying to take advantage of a good thing. As the women’s market expands, will colored pro cams become all the rage? Or does the color craze begin with point-and-shoots and end with bridge cameras? Surely there isn’t any real technical advantage worth noting other than, well, the fact that they’re easy on the eyes; and if they’re prettier, maybe more people will want to look into their lenses? We can only hope, right?

So what’s your favorite color cam? Are you more traditional—do you have a soft spot for the standard black? Do you like to mix it up with blue? Or are you willing to stand out with red…On our homepage, you’ll find a survey asking what camera color you prefer—check it out, and give us your opinion…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 11:40 am and is filed under Tara Propper. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.