More bad news for Panasonic: in addition to the latest statement from the company’s president and reports for the marketing department trying to influence reviewers, Panasonic is now also being accused of using stock photos in their latest Lumix S9 camera campaign. One of the photos seems to be taken with a Nikon camera by… a Nikon Ambassador. Currently, this issue has only been confirmed for Lumix Japan, but it’s possible that similar promotions are being conducted in other countries. In summary, some of the photos on the Lumix S9 product page are stock photos, and the camera screen images seem to be composites.
For example, the dog picture from this page:
can be found on Shutterstock:
The next screenshot is from this page:
The birds picture is taken by a Nikon Ambassador:
and the dog to the right is all over the Internet (famous dog!):
Update: Lumix Japan has issued an apology for this issue. The PDF document includes an apology and mentions that they will review the content of the Lumix site. However, the PDF document is very brief (it lacks company names and other details), leading to further criticism for not being in an appropriate format for an official release.
Additionally, this issue has been covered by Japanese TV news.
Also: this image is part of the introduction for the LUMIX G VARIO 12-32mm lens, but it appears that the photo of the girl on the right was taken with a Canon EOS 5DsR and a TAMRON 150-600mm G2 lens. The caption implies that the photo was taken with a Lumix camera and lens. This could potentially be considered a violation of Japan’s Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations.
The issue is highlighted in the following tweets:
