We gearheads at CrunchGear are fairly skeptical when it comes to hardware manufacturers trying to tap the excitement of social networking/sharing sites — phone carriers and MySpace comes to mind — but here’s one that was actually quite nice.
Nikon looked through Flickr, picked out a few great photographers, and sent them D80s, which is a really nice DSLR. They then used the photos they shot in a few advertisements and created a Flashy website detailing each of the photographers, who range from rank amateurs to professional wedding snappers.
This kind of thing makes everyone happy: Flickr gets some recognition as a incubator of talent, Nikon gets some good will, and cool photographers get nice cameras. Now if someone would troll YouTube for the next NBC news anchor, then we’d be getting somewhere.
Nikon Gives Out D80s to Flickr Photogs: Wow, Nice [Crunchgear]