I sure hope archive.org is on top of this. This is about as big of an archive emergency as there can be.
DPReview.com to close
191–200 of 387 posts
Re: DPReview.com to close
#192Lots of people here saying they used to visit this site regularly. I'm curious as to what they got out of it (some people say they used to visit the site daily). I can see the value when you're looking to buy a camera, and reading reviews makes sense to me in that very narrow context. Besides that, why visit a camera review site daily? How frequently were people buying cameras? Professional photographers, sure, I can…
Research before buying, troubleshooting after buying. I'm not a pro but a diehard enthusiast so most months I don't visit it but when sorting out gear I can spend days on this stuff and most of it is on DPR because that's the only place where people congregate specifically to discuss gear's obscure features and niche applications like astrophotography. Can it do bracketing and interval shooting together? How bad is rolling shutter? Can I adapt this old lens to that body, what about flange distance? Do you want to find out before you shell out $2000 that you have saved up, or after?
Re: DPReview.com to close
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably not. This is an incredible knee jerk. It's closing with 2-3 weeks notice. This does not reflect well on Amazon. This could be sold, spun out, archived, given back to the founders, or many other things. 20 days is not enough time to do anything worthwhile, though.
Small note: this doesn't reflect on Amazon. Barely anyone knew Amazon owns them, and once the site's gone, no one who didn't use dpreview will look unfavourably at Amazon for it. This was a great website that most of the world didn't use which is why Amazon can just pull the plug with literally no repercussions =(
Unfortunately I agree-- no repercussions at all. I've been visiting the site basically from the beginning and had no idea Amazon bought them. I guess I missed that one blog post from 2007.
It's such a shame.
Re: DPReview.com to close
#194Here's a 2007 article from when they were acquired by Amazon. It seems at the time this made sense. Jeff Bezos identified the website as the source of truth in the digital camera field and sought to own that source and have it direct customers to his website. The founders were naturally overwhelmed and busy as founders of any company are, and were promised resources to make their jobs easier and let them build out th…
> Jeff Bezos identified the website as the source of truth in the digital camera field and sought to own that source and have it direct customers to his website.
I wonder if that's the key point. It was Jeff's project, and like Alexa, is no longer protected now that he's no longer there.
Re: DPReview.com to close
#195Earlier 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…
> 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…
I think the reality is that most people who were doing photography don’t need what ILCs offer. I was talking to a sweet old lady on one of the last days I was in California. She was showing me some of her work, and TBH, small-aperture landscape / portrait photos that are to be viewed on a smartphone don’t need to be taken on an ILC. Even bokeh can be hacked for a base class of photos.
To put it in another way, ILCs were bought because saw people had to buy them, back in the day. If you wanted anything that wasn’t potato-quality, you needed an ILC.
A lot of photography was enjoyed as an accessible art. It was about being able to capture things. You don’t strictly need an ILC for that, and I think photography will evolve and adapt in that regard. There will still be a market for folks who e.g. need aperture or shutter control, simply because of market segmentation reasons. As an art-art, photography will be about being able to see things differently, and for that reason, there will be people drawn back to the knobs, switches, and lenses that ILCs offer. Some folks will say it’s about the bokeh, or the low-light, or whatever, but it was always about being able to see differently than what other cameras could see, or even what the human eye can “see.”
To which end, the marketing spin is just that. We shouldn’t discount creative folks being able to see differently with a smartphone. It’s just that there are shots that you won’t get be able to take with a small-aperture fixed lens on a smartphone sensor.
(This, and of course, applications where the bleeding edge of image quality matters.)
Re: DPReview.com to close
#196This is a little bizarre.
Some of you may not know that Amazon went through a phase of buying the #1 site in every space. DPReview is the one for cameras. There were others (eg IMDB). Amazon's strategy seemed to be to drive traffic to their site by buying these sites.
Digital camera sales fell off a cliff. I think they peaked at about 2010-12. Now we're at less than 10% of those sales, possibly less than 5%. Of course because of phones. I still like specialist cameras that do things phone can't (eg 300x zoom, 1000fps recording). But these are now niche products.
it seems strange to shutter the site however. How much upkeep does it really require? You can pause actual reviews so all you have to do is add new cameras when they're released, which isn't that often these days. You can even close the forums if you don't want to moderate them.
it's similar to the Google Reader argument: it simply can't be that expensive to maintain.
Re: DPReview.com to close
#197I'm guessing (but only have anecdotal info) that Amazon more broadly is taking the broom to many little things.
Re: DPReview.com to close
#198A shame. DPReview is hands down the most methodical and thorough review platform for digital cameras. I wonder if there's enough time to mirror the content on such short notice.
Re: DPReview.com to close
#199This is a little disappointing. Shipments of interchangeable lens cameras (the bread and butter of dpreview) have been going down since 2010 due to the increasing quality of cell phone cameras. However, at this point, both shipments of interchangeable lens cameras and lenses are stabilizing and growing slightly. And at about 6 million camera bodies and 10 million lenses per year these shipments are not insignificant.…
> Shipments of interchangeable lens cameras... have been going down since 2010 due to the increasing quality of cell phone cameras.
I'm a bit skeptical of that. Phones almost eliminated the market for the lower-end fixed-lens cameras that made up the majority of camera sales. People mostly bought those because they wanted to capture memories and share interesting things they saw with their friends and families. Phones do a fine job of that now, and are more convenient. Most of those customers never bought interchangeable lens cameras.
ILCs are for people who want to do photography in some sort of serious sense. Phones won't replace ILCs for that market any more than a multitool replaces a set of screwdrivers for a mechanic. The biggest thing stopping people from buying new ILCs is old ILCs.
I have a seven year old Olympus. If I spent $2200 on the new one, I'd get a bit faster burst rate and an autofocus system that's better at tracking certain subjects. If I switched to a different system in the same price range I'd get slower burst rates in most cases, but a bit better noise performance and dynamic range. I could sell my current camera body for about $500, making that a $1700 upgrade for... not a whole lot of improvement.
Re: DPReview.com to close
#200What is required to transition the site to community ownership?