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DPReview.com to close

dpreview.com

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Re: DPReview.com to close

#181

Post by jollyllama »

akho wrote: post #169
vvrm wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> another victim of the rapid pace of improvement in smartphones It's not just the pace of improvement, but also the marketing spin. I find the strengths of smartphone camera and ILCs pretty complementary. Smartphone cameras work pretty well outdoors where there is enough light. DSLR and mirroless are hard to beat indoors in low light conditions. Coincidentally it is also easier to find your ILC indoors at home when…

> Smartphone cameras work pretty well outdoors where there is enough light. DSLR and mirroless are hard to beat indoors in low light conditions. I find the opposite. Proper cameras are much more flexible and plain better when there's enough light. Inside, without a flash, you'll not get a great photo anyway, so might as well benefit from “computational” fakery.

For 'proper cameras', it depends on the size of the sensor and lens, largely.

Re: DPReview.com to close

#182

Post by nradov »

citrin_ru wrote: post #153
Zak wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumer fixed-lens cameras are much more dead as a market than ILCs, and those made up the bulk of camera sales. Almost everyone who isn't doing photography as a profession or serious hobby is satisfied with smartphone cameras now.

There is one more use case not covered by smartphones but actually covered by fixed-lens cameras - taking photos in rainy weather (which in some parts of the world is hard to avoid) or underwater. While there are waterproof smartphones, capacitive touchscreen becomes unusable as soon as it catches even a few drops of rain or water from wet fingers. A camera like Fujifilm XP140 works well in rain as long as there are…

Smartphones don't really work for underwater photography. Even the water resistant models have very limited depth ratings so to take them scuba diving you need a strong housing, just as with any other camera. There are underwater housings available for a few smartphone models but controlling anything through the touch screen is problematic, the small lenses and sensors don't work well in dim light, and there isn't a good way to trigger external strobes.

Re: DPReview.com to close

#183

Post by solarmist »

mrandish wrote: post #73

Wow... I've been reading their comprehensive reviews and news for over 15 years. DPR got me into DSLR videography as a hobby which I've spent well over $10k on – much of it at Amazon. This really sucks as I don't know of another source I consider as authoritative for objective, thorough reviews and analysis of not only product but technologies and trends. Super disappointed in Amazon for not at least keeping the 25 y…

It’ll never be irrelevant, but like medium format it’ll become niche. Even more heavily skewed to professionals.

So 10x-100x smaller than in photography’s hay day. (My guess is 1980-2000’s.)

Re: DPReview.com to close

#184

Post by jollyllama »

pjc50 wrote: post #43
giobox wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think times have changed though, DPReviews fortunes arguably have mirrored the fortunes of the ILC (interchangeable lens camera) market. The site (along with flickr.com...) was a daily visit for me 15 years ago at the height of the DSLR boom, but I honestly now can't remember the last time I checked. ILC/DSLR annual sales volume peaked in ~2010 I believe, and has rapidly declined ever since really, another victi…

Gloomy prediction: based on Samsung Moongate, the next logical step after the smartphone camera replacing the DSLR is AI replacing the smartphone camera. Or at least substituting for underlying camera quality. Take a 10MP image and have the AI fill in the detail. Or remove detail (see the google advert for editing people out of your holiday photos). Or put in some detail that wasn't there.

Too bad we can't get the opposite: a DSLR controlled by an AI that manipulates the camera parameters just as a human would, or an AI driven interface, that captures what you're seeing without an AI hallucinating or ML touching up the photo. Panasonic can't even get autofocus right.

Re: DPReview.com to close

#186

Post by beezle »

avrionov wrote: post #58
skilled wrote: post #20

Wait what? How is it possible considering that the site is one of the most well-known resources for camera/lens reviews? "The site will remain active until April 10, and the editorial team is still working on reviews and looking forward to delivering some of our best-ever content. " Are they taking it offline too?

The site will be locked, with no further updates made after April 10th 2023. The site will be available in read-only mode for a limited period afterwards.

Is Bezos also going to try to have it removed from Archive.org?

Re: DPReview.com to close

#187

Post by bydo »

asdff wrote: post #76
bradlys wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a "boom" is an overstatement. The camera industry overall is dying and struggling. We're down to something like 10% of camera sales from 2010. There is no boom. There is a transition from DSLR to mirrorless for the few existing dedicated camera photographers out there.

Its enough of a boom for a small company like fujifilm to justify producing more cameras and lenses and even start up and grow a medium format mirrorless ecosystem. Fujifilm in particular struggles to keep up with demand which is probably not easy given global shortages, but it goes to show there is a market. It's not the market it was in 1995 or 2005, but its a market no less because there's always a demand for the…

Fujifilm is a twenty billion dollar company. Imaging is just a hobby for them.

Though I agree that if it were truly hemorrhaging them money, they'd have sold it (like Minolta or Pentax) or spun it out into its own entity (like Olympus).

Re: DPReview.com to close

#188

Post by ben7799 »

gist wrote: post #4

I used to visit this site a great deal but I haven't been there in years. I don't even know how many years. Other than generally Amazon doing layoffs my guess is interest in equipment that they talk about has dropped greatly and specifically because of smartphone cameras (Iphone in particular in my case). I have an expensive Sony Camera (several thousand for the body with a $2000 lens and other lenses) and haven't us…

I think this is a more common thing than people realize, people who have quite a bit of expensive camera gear and have been into the whole thing since the film days but yet are simultaneously really happy with a smartphone.

For me multi-lens phone cameras was the thing that really tilted things. I know initially I was infatuated with SLRs and DSLRs because of the big fancy lenses, especially the long ones out beyond 200mm.

But over time I realized the vast majority of my favorite photos were all getting taken with lenses It can be hard to argue against a good smartphone + a small drone as a travel photography kit.

Re: DPReview.com to close

#189

Post by gsich »

bradlys wrote: post #46
asdff wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, there's another boom currently going on. The mirrorless boom, and this site is the gold standard for that one as well. Now there is no home, and its much harder to gleam the differences that are actually meaningful between these many mirrorless cameras (and new dslrs that do get made).

a "boom" is an overstatement. The camera industry overall is dying and struggling. We're down to something like 10% of camera sales from 2010. There is no boom. There is a transition from DSLR to mirrorless for the few existing dedicated camera photographers out there.

And with good reason. While I like shooting with DSLM some software and hardware parts are just bad.

No GPS. The cheapest Android phone from 5 years ago has this. I don't want to use the shitty app to get geoinformation. Yes, battery lifetime - no need to enable it by default.

No embedded storage. With SSD prices cheap as now, add some 64 or 128GB storage. Keep the card slot.

More computational stuff, no need for enabling it by default, but stuff like taking 10 pictures, then selecting the best one automatically (or whatever the camera thinks is best). Additional: enable better tethering. On my Nikon Z7 I still can't set everything from the computer. Some settings depend on the mode (P,A,S,M) - why? Nobody knows.

If no flash, at least have some light.

Re: DPReview.com to close

#190

Post by dhucerbin »

fetus8 wrote: post #8
ragona wrote: post #3

Dang, I'm actually surprisingly sad about this. DPReview is _the_ site for extremely detailed analysis of cameras. When I want to buy something I go through their report first, and it's always extremely informative. It feels like this kind of layoff is part of an end of an era. Amazon used to NEVER cancel projects that customers were using. They just straight up Did. Not. Do. It. I once had to get approval from my VP…

You're spot on, this is _THE_SITE for extremely detailed analysis of of cameras/lenses/etc. I have no idea what will end up filling the gap of losing something like this. I hope Chris and Jordan continue on their Youtube journey and make the content they've been making, but man, there's still a need for a detailed text based site with super indepth info about modern camera equipment. Such a bummer.

There’s still https://www.lenstip.com/. English version of Polish site optyczne.pl. What’s funny, team from this site criticized dpreview for being not scientific enough.
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