Photoclub Alpha

I AM not a Mom, and if I was, I’d be a Mum because we don’t have Moms in Britain, just the same way we don’t have Pops. I grew up in a world where everyone had Mummies and Daddies, and having a Mum and Dad would have been non-u, infra-dig. Times change and our kids grew up with a Mum and Dad and ended up with parents just as likely to sign off an email with Christian names as anything else.

So, I do not qualify to test out the latest Sony Alpha system ‘product’. It looks like you have to be a Mom to do this one, and it’s firmly aimed at Mickey Mouse’s home territory. Disney has launched a ‘Digital Photogaphy 101′ course which even had an enrolment deadline for the first course, of May 31st, and a completion date. It’s free, and it is free because Sony has sponsored it and stuffed it with upfront advertising which starts on the right note by listing the Sony Alpha 100 and flash as course material.

Check it out -

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Patronising and condescending it may be to target one sex and one social situation, especially when you consider that the rising stars of portrait and wedding photography are more often than not female. In fact, rather more women seem to make it into professional photography as a career than men these days. College course shows are dominated by the girlies. It’s a far cry from the days when photo clubs were all blokes and the wives made tea, and photography courses had one lone lass. But hey, Mickey comes from that era and before. He grew up in the dustbowl with Dorothea Lange and probably posed side by side with Minnie, in middle age, for a dispassionately revealing confrontation with Diane Arbus. He already knows women take pictures.

During Sony’s European launch event in Morocco, June 6th 2006, senior European and Japanese staff made it clear the Alpha 100 was targeted at women. They spoke of the increasing trend towards DSLR ownership by women. They spoke of the lumpy monstrosities preferred by men when choosing their favourite system. And how the Alpha would befriend the birds as well as the beasts!

This doesn’t make me feel any less virile when toting my Sony Alpha, any more than wearing trainers is less manly than clumping around in leather brogues. For me, the smallest and lightest camera that can do the job is the best camera. I’ll accept bulk and weight if great benefits, like full frame imaging with all my Minolta AF lenses, go with it. Even then I will probably keep compact, travel-friendly APS-C on the go.

What of the Disney course? Should I check it out by faking an enrolment? Should I insult Shirley, who is as closely related to the genuine Mom item as Marie Antoinette was to real shepherdesses, by persuading her to enrol and check it out? Will one of you out there swallow your pride at having read the camera manual and worked out how to switch on your PC, and do it for us?

It’s good news for Sony Alpha owners and the future of the system. Statistics quoted by the financial press, reviewing this, say that typical course enrollers spend over $800 on advertised sponsor goods. That must make such courses one of the most effective forms of direct marketing ever devised.

OK, guys, watch out for the Photoclubalpha ‘Alpha 101′ course soon. It will be aimed at grumpy old men who are still convinced that nothing will ever replace film, believe that Windows ruined a perfectly good DOS operating system, expect their 1965 Auto Rokkor PF to fit every Minolta made since, and spend ten minutes every day polishing those brogues. We hope to get sponsorship from Thornton Pickard, the Dallmeyer lens company and Gevaert Dry Plates.

- David