Long before Nikon mirrorless was a thing, Nikon was a brand name synonymous with serious photo enthusiasts. Great, if the only market you’re seeking to appeal to is the serious enthusiast. But I’ve always felt that perception has been as much to Nikon’s detriment as its advantage.
And yet, in that brief early Noughties window when dedicated digital cameras became family friendly, mass market devices sold in supermarkets, the brand seemed to momentarily shake off its stuffy, traditionalist image. It not only briefly let Fujifilm adopt its DSLR bodies but also submitted to producing and promoting user-friendly point and shoot cameras and bridge models in a range of sometimes garish colours. Nikon black and gold was augmented with shiny, shiny red, blue and canary yellow.
To me this period never felt authentically ‘Nikon’. It was leaning into customer demand rather than innovating. Like that dodgy uncle who turns up to the family barbecue in a Hawaiian shirt, the brand seemed at pains to suggest that it too could let its hair down and hang out with the cool kids. Hell, in a case of wearing its intentions directly on its sleeve, its snapshots were actually called ‘Coolpix’. The suggestion was we’d all be ‘chimping’ – coo-ing “Cool pics, man!” at the LCD screen – when reviewing a shot. Which happened.
But eventually, when smartphones superseded digital compacts as the device used for daily snapping, Nikon breathed a sigh of relief and went back to doing what it knows best – producing cameras for camera enthusiasts and professionals.
Social media and Gen Z has latterly, however, had other ideas. Thanks to TikTok-ers rediscovering these easy to handle, formerly inexpensive point and shoots on the second-hand market, it is the people, rather than the company that produced them, in danger of making Coolpix cool again.
Of course, Nikon doesn’t make any revenue from second-hand sales and it’s very possible that snapshot cameras being popular with teenagers and hipsters is a short-term flash in the pan. Nevertheless, for the first time in years I’m witnessing new Coolpix branded Nikons launched, if tentatively so. Can the manufacturer seize the opportunity to make Nikon cool again?
At the time of writing, it’s launched its ‘big, beautiful Coolpix’ in the Nikon Coolpix P1100, sitting atop its bridge camera range with a whopping 125x zoom capability. But is that ‘cool’ in itself or just a regurgitation of past glories?
Perhaps to be truly cool again Nikon needs to take a leaf out of the book of last year’s Barbie blockbuster and think pink. Nothing would be more of a contrast with its stuffy image than a completely pink Coolpix, whether metallic finished, pastel finished or otherwise. Sure, it may not feel authentically Nikon, and it may have traditional users scoffing at the apparent lack of seriousness, but that didn’t bother the photo stalwart a couple of decades back. Its current marketing department will be all too aware that those users attracted by pretty colours today… are of course the brand loyalists and mirrorless camera users of tomorrow.
The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of Amateur Photographer magazine or Kelsey Media Limited. If you have an opinion you’d like to share on this topic, or any other photography related subject, email: ap.ed@kelsey.co.uk
