A Thousand Words: The Canon Camera Museum

In real life, if you were to encounter a museum about a product, housed within the headquarters of that product's corporate parent, what would you think?  Would you find the information trustworthy, or would you be skeptical?  Would you expect a slick, expensive presentation or a nerd-tastic display of every minute specification?

These are all questions I asked myself while visiting the Canon Camera Museum, which is hosted on Canon's website.  I found that a company museum can be both interesting and selectively cheery, as well as shiny and new and a little too technologically detailed for the average camera user.

The museum is set up as a virtual space with five buildings, each hosting a different exhibit, surrounded by digital fields and pastures (which looked unfortunately similar to Farmville).  One building is simply a short introduction to the museum, and the other buildings house History Hall, Camera Hall, Technology Hall and Design Hall.

History Hall, like the historical narratives of a lot of virtual museums, features blocks of text arranged as a timeline.  You can read the digest form, which is long, or the full story, which is even longer and can't possibly appeal to anyone who isn't writing a research paper.  History Hall also contains a slick presentation on the history of the EOS cameras, and even though this exhibit reads like a sales pitch, its layout is quite interesting.  The main screen pans slowly back through images of the EOS line, showing what products looked like each year, which creates an interactive timeline that you can click on at various points for more information.  I wish this was how Canon has chosen to present the rest of their history.

Camera Hall is a pretty basic showcase of images and specifications of Canon's digital and analog cameras and camcorders.  There's not much to it, which is nice because it's easily accessible for those of us who don't know or care too much about mechanical specifics.

Technology Hall goes into great detail about how cameras are made and what the science is behind each product.  In the Technical Room you can see demos of how different camera parts work.  You can also view a Virtual Camcorder Plant and a Virtual Lens Plant, both of which feature videos showing the process of creating different products.  The Lens Plant video is especially good, like something you might find in a real museum exhibit, but they are both a little too upbeat and couched in an aura of marketing and promotion.

Design Hall was the most impenetrable exhibit in the museum.  I had no idea what most of the links meant, much less how to navigate through them, because they were full of technical jargon and product names that I was unfamiliar with.  I was all but ready to give up when I saw the Making of Camera Design section, which unfolds as an interactive video explaining the process of making and marketing cameras.  It was nice, in this sea of confusion, to sit back and have someone explain what camera design entails - someone who assumes you don't have a technical knowledge of cameras and lets you go at your own pace.

I suppose if you really like cameras, or if you desperately need a chunk of information on the Canon company, the Canon Camera Museum is for you.  The rest of us will have to settle for cherry-picking the sections that are understandable and not too dull.  And though I appreciate the Canon dollars that went in to making the unique design and the many interactive components of this museum, I can't help be a little turned off by the sunny corporate message on display.  All in all, the Canon Camera Museum is worth at least a glance, as long as you understand that not everything will appeal to you, and remember who's keeping the lights on.


The Canon Camera Museum
Mission:  The Canon Camera Museum is a virtual facility presenting a wealth of information on Canon cameras.  You'll learn things you can't learn elsewhere as we highlight the appealing features of Canon cameras.
Website:  www.canon.com/camera-museum