New brand site for Sony uses rendered JPG frames for 3D parallax scrolling

I guess it comes down to fashion and at the moment these animated scroll things are it...

I really don't get on with these scroll down animated sites.

As usual with these things, I don't see anything useful or informative on the landing part of the page, begin to scroll, see I'm expected to scroll for god knows how long incase there is anything useful, all I usually see is show off animation, I sigh, then close the page.

Why am I suddenly expected to constantly scroll these things? Is it just so some web developer can show off their latest, now tired, seen it all before now, trick?

I want to land on a page, see if its worth anything, then possibly click for more info. If I want to see an animation, video, or what ever, just show the darn thing in a normal video. But I want a choice there, not a silly site that auto starts it, often hurting my ears, or waking up the house, with full volume in the process. If the landing page gives me interest, I'll happily watch a short advert, animation, or whatever to get more info.

Why all this scrolling? There are much simpler ways to show all this, without me having to almost work to get to see it. Its not my message, its theirs. Why are they making it harder for me to see their message? I just left the page.

Just me?

Oh, BTW, I have some magic beans for sale on a pretty website. Any takers?

They start by saying "we are engineers, but we are also artists", then they spend the rest of the ad creating this separation between engineers and artists, that seems to be common to most electronics companies, like this:

"You don’t wear a TV. You do wear the Personal 3D Viewer. So, we had to rethink our process. We started by designing from the inside out but ended up with a chunky, unwieldy viewer. So we reversed tack and designed the outside first. Only then did we arrange the internal workings and make something desirable to both watch—and wear."

The reality is that Sony has _always_ been focused on how things look and on making things smaller, there are many stories about how their product managers would carry around a wooden replica of the final product as they wanted it to be, challenging the engineers to make it smaller and make it all fit (open up an early MiniDisc player, and you'll see this process at work :).

So this just makes the whole ad look like it's created by a marketing department that doesn't know anything about Sonys history and its design philosophy.

Then again, isn't that what almost all advertising is trying to do these days: draw your attention to the superficial form so you forget to criticise fundamental flaws with the design?

I first read about such lenses and other similar products on http://photojojo.com/store/ . They have such products for both android and iphone.

Now, is it worth it? Depends on your requirements. If you don't want to get into professional photography but still want to improve the quality of your photographs you can use one of these. However, remember that these don't replace DSLRs.

1. Mobile Camera : average quality/almost zero creative control/very good mobility

2. Mobile Camera + Lens accessory : better quality/almost no creative control/good mobility

3. Point & Shoot Camera : decent quality/little creative control/good mobility

4. Hybrid/Zoom Camera : decent quality/very high optical zoom/decent creative control/poor mobility

5. Mirrorlesss/Interchangeable Lens Camera : Good quality/Good Creative Control/average mobility

6. DSLRs : Good quality/Good Creative Control/Poor Mobility

I personally prefer to keep [1] in my pocket & [5] in my bag(along with lenses). I also have an old Zoom Camera that usually sits in my home. I occasionally use it together with a teleconverter lens to take photographs of sun, moon & objects/people that are far far away.

I haven't been a big fan of these types of pages, especially the type that take over the scrolling functionality. I was recently tasked with building one. The creatives love it, I dislike these pages even more now.