Huawei again accused of passing off DSLR photos as smartphone shots
Commercial, which was shown in Egypt, implies that photos taken with the Nova 3 and 3i smartphone cameras -- something the Chinese company has been caught doing before.
The Arabic-language 30-second spot features a man and woman at what looks like a vacation resort, taking a series of selfies together with the Nova 3 smartphone. They take pictures as they greet friends, sit by the pool, and eat a meal- most of them followed by a look at the resulting selfie.
At one point, the woman tries to shoo the man away from taking a selfie as she's not done with her makeup, but he takes it anyway, and she shows up in the selfie looking great.
The problem, as pointed out by Engadget, is that the photos weren't taken with the phone. The Egyptian actress from the commercial, Sarah Elshamy, posted some behind-the-scenes shots from the shoot to her Instagram account, which shows a photographer using a DSLR, and the male actor from the commercial in a similar pose but holding up nothing at all.
Huawei does not appear to have commented on the controversy. The shots have been deleted from Elshamy's account as well.
The commercial, perhaps as a result of the gaffe, has more than 2.1 million views on Huawei's Egypian YouTube channel to date, since it was posted Sunday.
The same company, back in 2016, was caught doing essentially the same thing. The company, when promoting its P9 handset, uploaded a picture to its Google+ account that it claimed had come from a P9. But the photo's EXIF data exposed that the photo was actually shot with a Canon 5D Mk. III and EF70-200 f/2.8L IS II USM lens.
In a statement following the 2016 post, Huawei said that "we should have been clearer with the captions for this image," and removed the image. Then, in early 2018, Huawei was accused of soliciting people to write fake reviews of its Mate 10 Pro phone.
In a more recent stumble, "Wonder Woman" actress Gal Gadot this past spring tweeted from an iPhone, despite her status as a paid endorser of Huawei.
The Arabic-language 30-second spot features a man and woman at what looks like a vacation resort, taking a series of selfies together with the Nova 3 smartphone. They take pictures as they greet friends, sit by the pool, and eat a meal- most of them followed by a look at the resulting selfie.
At one point, the woman tries to shoo the man away from taking a selfie as she's not done with her makeup, but he takes it anyway, and she shows up in the selfie looking great.
The problem, as pointed out by Engadget, is that the photos weren't taken with the phone. The Egyptian actress from the commercial, Sarah Elshamy, posted some behind-the-scenes shots from the shoot to her Instagram account, which shows a photographer using a DSLR, and the male actor from the commercial in a similar pose but holding up nothing at all.
Huawei does not appear to have commented on the controversy. The shots have been deleted from Elshamy's account as well.
The commercial, perhaps as a result of the gaffe, has more than 2.1 million views on Huawei's Egypian YouTube channel to date, since it was posted Sunday.
The same company, back in 2016, was caught doing essentially the same thing. The company, when promoting its P9 handset, uploaded a picture to its Google+ account that it claimed had come from a P9. But the photo's EXIF data exposed that the photo was actually shot with a Canon 5D Mk. III and EF70-200 f/2.8L IS II USM lens.
In a statement following the 2016 post, Huawei said that "we should have been clearer with the captions for this image," and removed the image. Then, in early 2018, Huawei was accused of soliciting people to write fake reviews of its Mate 10 Pro phone.
In a more recent stumble, "Wonder Woman" actress Gal Gadot this past spring tweeted from an iPhone, despite her status as a paid endorser of Huawei.
Comments
Thanks for posting!
They did it since even the best phone came with enhancement software still does not compare to the DSLR when it comes to near field focus. notice their picture, the forearm is blurred and the background if blurred, you need a very low F-stop and the ability to manually focus to make that happen.
And after that, all of a sudden, those facts that a lot of modern photographers do ACTUALLY use their iPhones for production/prints, start to look a lot more important than they used to be.
It was like going from "of course, Apple used actual iPhones to take these images" to "unlike lying knockoffs, Apple DOES USE their iPhone camera to capture images, they claim came from that camera".
And all of a sudden, you get even greater appreciation for what Apple has done. I guess, taking things for granted is not a good thing, lol.
https://www.techradar.com/news/smartphone-selfie-challenge-huawei-nova-3-vs-iphone-x-samsung-galaxy-a8
Higher up the line:
https://www.eisa.eu/awards/huawei-p20-pro/
I believe all ads for smartphone cameras that imply they were shot on the phone should be from the phone. That, at the very least.
Huawei often adds a clarifying note to marketing material to make it clear that images pictured on the screens of phones in some ads were not actually shot on the camera of those phones.
This is quite normal even if I don't agree with it. Apple too:
https://petapixel.com/2017/06/30/truth-shot-iphone-style-ads/
A similar thing happens with video game ads and Apple has been in hot water on a few occasions too.
We'll see what the official word from Huawei is, but this was a regional ad and possibly produced outside Huawei. Some sites have already picked up on this angle but even if that is the case Huawei should double down on marketing.
What next — the sun rises in the East?