In the past week my YouTube algorithm has been force feeding me an endless supply of eager to please content providers, telling me that the one camera the world has been waiting for, is finally with us. Well, not with me or possibly you, but definitely with them. The camera in question is the Lumix L10. A £1,299.00 compact camera.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I have not been waiting all my life for such a camera at such a price. In this I seem to be unusual, if not unique if you listen to the typhoon of hyperbole being created by those gifted these cameras by Lumix Panasonic to ‘review’. I use the word ‘review’ here extremely loosely as none of those using the camera to create content for their YouTube channels is truly reviewing anything. What they are doing is playing the game.

The game is simple. The marketing department chooses some influencers, friendly writers and obvious websites to send away for a nice few days abroad, in a nice hotel with free accomodation, travel, food and drink. In the case of the L10 a trip to Osaka, Japan! During this time they are asked to sign an embargo document preventing them from saying anything about what they have seen and been told, until the new launch is officially announced by the camera brand. Then they can fill their boots and their social media channels!

They are also given access to the camera for a few hours to ‘review’. This is when they record their excitement about the product and give us a list of stats about it that the brand has given them. There is no editorial integrity here, just straightforward repetition of a preprepared sales pitch. A thank you for a nice few days away.

I know this happens because when I was the editor of Professional Photographer magazine I was part of the game, I had a few nice trips, although I had removed all camera reviews from the magazine so I could not be bought!

However, that was fifteen years ago, a time when camera sales were more buoyant than they are today. There were also a lot less YouTube channels desperate for content. I understand both the needs of the brand to sell their products and the ‘reviewers’ need to play by the mutually beneficial rules, but in my opinion they are both playing a losing game.

The reviewer is selling their soul to the devil by so obviously performing to the manufacturers tune and the manufacturer is producing yet another camera which we don’t really need. This is the problem with every camera launch today, until there truly is some great new innovation. We already have all of the cameras we need on sale either new or second hand. A reality that suits neither player in the camera selling game and one that reminds me of something that a creative at the London department store Selfridges said in the early 2000s. He said that we all have enough clothes, and we don’t need to buy anymore, but it was his job to make us think we did! And this he attempted by creating a sense that if we bought something new we would be better people, more stylish, confident and successful. The same could be said of the continued launch of cameras, the only differance is that the brands are reliant on others to do their persuasion for them. You really will be a better more confident and successful photographer if you buy this camera. Believe me!!

I have always felt a moral responsibility when giving any advice to anyone concerning photography. I have no intention of selling snake oil, making false promises or treating advice as a compromised commercial transaction. I just can’t do that. I don’t want to do that, which is probably why I don’t get invited to camera launches anymore despite our large audience on this website and on the A Photographic Life podcast.

I am not sure how effective these expensive launch jollies are in 2026. How clearly and accurately they are identified as creating sales. Or if they are now merely evidence of a reducing market relying on old ways with diminishing returns. Either way it would be good to see some of these reviewers grow a back bone and speak some truth. To provide honest, uncompromised reviews for those looking to buy a new camera. However, the more expensive they get and the smaller the improvements remain, the launching of cameras that offer nothing new seems to me like an increasingly pointless exercise. I wonder if we will ever see that said on YouTube!

Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8 magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020) and Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, (Orphans Publishing 2024). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.

© Grant Scott 2026