"Lack of pictures" Topic

I have been looking for some new figures but there seems to be a lack of pictures on the manufacturers sites. They post a few but not all the range. I don't want to buy sight unseen as they may not be what I want.
Anybody else frustrated by this?
Why don't manufacturers post the pics?

Not sure that I share your opinion, take a look at the following websites and you will see plenty of pictures:

Aventine
Artizan
Crusader
Foundry
1st Corps

Raglan

Agreed, and one of the reasons I love Cutting Edge.

I was loking for Achaemenid Persians and 1st corps is one of the exceptions as I have these. But I wanted other manufacturers to mix it up and found only limited pictures .

Crusader & Foundry looks interesting thanks

You've got to remember that for many manufacturers it is a cottage industry. Also, (not making a sweeping generalised statement) for many people, who may be great at sculpting 1/1000 scale ironclads, the difficulties of taking a digital image, transferring it to a computer, and putting the image on the computer is a Herculean task. Much easier for them to sculpt a new range of Renaissance galleys, with crews and oars.

Check out Miniature Design Studio, their unit deals are quite acceptable. Scale and sculpting would go with the ranges you mentioned.

In my experience, the manufacturers with the best sculptors have lots of great pics; the others, not so much. Funny, that… ;-) Simon

Why don't manufacturers post the pics?

Is it that time of year again already? This topic comes up every so often and my response is always the same – have you any idea how much time and effort is required to photograph every figure and then assemble those photographs onto a web site?

As sillypoint rightly said, for many manufacturers it is a cottage industry. Which would you rather:
a) they spend lots of time, effort (and money) putting pics of EVERY figure on their web site or
b) spend that time and effort designing, sculpting and casting more figures for us to purchase?

And before anyone says "but it takes no time at all" let me tell you: WRONG. It takes me a full half-day to do 30 or 40 decent shots and get them up on the web. Easy enough when you just need to add a pic of your new pack, hard to do when you have a backlist of hundreds or thousands….

BigRedBat nailed it.

Go BigRedBat !…or should I just call your Mr. Bat?

Thanks. Mr Bat seems a little… formal.

I made the mistake of buyng a particuarly well-illustrated Foundry catalogue, about 5 years ago. It is now quite dog-eared and ragged, and I reckon it must have cost me over £5,000.00 GBP in purchases. Aventine are great with the pics, too!

Cheers, Simon

The "BigRedBat" is right on,I will not buy sight unseen.

As others have said, I don't buy any minis sight unseen.

For me, it's like the story of the woodcutter and his axe. If he doesn't stop every once in a while and sharpen his axe, he winds up working harder and harder for the same result.

If a miniatures company spends some time every once in a while photographing their minis and posting them to their website, eventually all of the minis will have been photographed, and they should see an increase in sales.

Thanks for all the commnents.
It does seem to me that more figures could be sold if pictures were displayed as not everyone gets to shows/conventions to see the figures. Even if it is time taken from production occassionally it would be cost productive. Surely you would want to portray your figures in the best light and advertise them?
I think BigRedBat/oldbob have a point. There are some fantastic figures made these days and the best seem to have pictures taken of them. Seeing is believing isn't it?

Magard said :

…for many manufacturers it is a cottage industry. Which would you rather:
a) they spend lots of time, effort (and money) putting pics of EVERY figure on their web site or
b) spend that time and effort designing, sculpting and casting more figures for us to purchase?

I'd go for (a). I don't care how many figures they sculpt – without seeing a photo I'm not going to buy them anyway.

I also agree with Mr Bat, more often than not I find that a figure without a picture is suspect to just being a poor quality figure.

…for many manufacturers it is a cottage industry. Which would you rather:
a) they spend lots of time, effort (and money) putting pics of EVERY figure on their web site or
b) spend that time and effort designing, sculpting and casting more figures for us to purchase?

I'd go for (a). I don't care how many figures they sculpt – without seeing a photo I'm not going to buy them anyway.

So for those manufacturers who DON'T have pictures of every figure they produce on their site, how many of them are going out of business?

If photos were necessary to secure sales you'd think they world do so wouoldn't you?

Margard, I think the issue is how many more sales would be had, if there were pictures on the websites? Also how many potential sales are diverted from those companies to ones that have pictures on their websites?

I have a familiarity with the products of a few companies. I don't need pictures of their products, but a new buyer would want otherwise. For some companies, maybe internet sales aren't a big part of their business. Relatively new companies, like Empress and Aventine need to display their wares to potential purchasers, on their websites..

If you are selling product on the Internet, having pictures of that product is not an unreasonable request. As Mark mentioned above, it takes him half a day to take 30 or so pictures and put them on his website. I've met him, and read many of his comments. He seems like a smart guy. If putting pictures on his website makes little difference, why does he waste his time on it?

IMHO ,I will not buy ANY figures with out seeing pics of them! Simon and oldbob are right on target! Cheers Mike Adams