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DPReview.com to close

dpreview.com

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Re: DPReview.com to close

#201

Post by Kaijo »

jollyllama wrote: post #184
pjc50 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Check out this AI camera control module: https://witharsenal.com/

It's not something I'd use, I usually want as much creative control as possible over all the settings and RAW conversion. There are too many permutations of parameters that "correctly" capture the scene according to different aesthetic aims. The reviews of the version 2 seem to agree, that it's useful, but not for experienced photographers with their own creative vision. But how then would the inexperienced ever develop a personal vision, using this?

Re: DPReview.com to close

#202

Post by kelnos »

vvrm wrote: post #165
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…

> 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…

Respectfully, I think you're still in the minority. The vast majority of people I know with young kids don't even own a dedicated camera, or rarely pull it out. Their phone camera is more than sufficient and much more convenient to use for them.

Re: DPReview.com to close

#203

Post by egman_ekki »

vvrm wrote: post #165
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…

> 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 was sightseeing in the night and had my Nikon D7100 (crop sensor) with a good lens (up to f/1.8 iirc) and Samsung Galaxy S8+. After the first few shots, I put the dslr back to my backpack, the photos from the phone were much better. And that’s a pretty old smartphone!

I know newer Sonys have crazy ISO, also own a fullframe, but it’s just so easy to mess some setting up and end up with crappy photo from a dslr in those challenging conditions, and I’m no beginner when it comes to dslrs.

Re: DPReview.com to close

#204

Post by bmarquez »

Topgamer7 wrote: post #173
bmarquez wrote: post #59

RIP. I'm really sad about this, and it's actually something that finally makes me question the Amazon monopoly. Amazon spends so much money on meh (IMO) Prime Video content yet can't keep this site online as an archive. I know that phone cameras have taken over the market in the last decade. For wide-angle lenses, they're great, but iPhones can't quite keep up (yet) with 200-300mm telephotos so I still browsed the si…

THIS makes you question it? Not any of these: - Blatantly ripping off products listed on their site, using sales data from those products as decision making on which products to steal. - The monopolization of every market they enter - Their search listings are garbage, amazon centric and filled with junk - Anti-competitive practices such as pricing agreements for products on amazon, when listed on websites other than…

As an end user, a lot of Amazon's criticisms are invisible to consumers.

- Amazon screws up and sends a poorly packaged product which is damaged? They just ship another one.

- Amazon starts creating "Amazon Basics" branded items? Either I buy it if it's a good price, or don't if it's not. Amazon Basics actually helps fight against the flood of cheap Chinese junk by creating a branded product of acceptable quality.

Stuff like anti-competitive practices or poor treatment of employees isn't even noticed by most consumers. This isn't like Walmart where both the customer experience and the corporate experience are equally poor.

Taking away existing products (like DPR) or slow shipment of items DOES visibly affect the average consumer.

Re: DPReview.com to close

#205

Post by digitallyfree »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #171
akho wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Lots of software tricks make it easy to take low light photos on phones today but require quite a bit of manual tweaking on a DSLR.

The thing about this is that the manual tweaking allows you to take the picture you're envisioning. Whereas the processing on the phone provides a clear picture in poor conditions, but it's not necessarily the picture I want.

For instance a phone can do a great job in a backlit scenario by intelligently cutting the highlights and boosting the shadows. The resulting image shows both the subject and background clearly but it doesn't represent the real-word lighting conditions. As a result it's great for a quick snapshot but is less useful in an artistic sense.

Re: DPReview.com to close

#209

Post by valarauko »

throwaway290 wrote: post #192
valarauko wrote: post #114

Lots 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 r…

I've spent a fair bit of time on the site, but only on the reviews. Sounds like the forums were where the real action is/was.

Re: DPReview.com to close

#210

Post by snapetom »

silisili wrote: post #96
antisthenes wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you honestly think your phone camera is a valid replacement for medium/large format film, then you were never serious about photography in the first place. For all their improvements, smartphones are still extremely limited by sensor size and the size of optics. Those are terrible, compared to even the entry level DSLRs. I'm glad it works for your use case (although I can't imagine what that is), but any decent ph…

The vast, vast, vast majority of pictures are viewed on a 6ish inch screen. You'll have real trouble telling much difference there. Now if you're blowing things up into a poster, it becomes much more apparent, granted, but it's not a common use case.

If the use case was a 6ish inch screen, that was overkill for medium/large format, which is parent's point.
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