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DPReview.com to close

dpreview.com

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Re: DPReview.com to close

#341

Post by schroeding »

throwaway290 wrote: post #333
lmm wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Phones definitely cannot compete with ILCs in the applications that photographers use. That's overly broad. A lot of what photographers do doesn't need those capabilities (hell, some photographers work with literal children's toys), and the niches where you need them are getting smaller all the time. There are a few things you still can't photograph well with a phone (e.g. birds in flight), but that's a long way fr…

In Asia I see more people with cameras year after year. It is now at a point where striking a convo about a camera someone has is tired because the next person over also has a cool camera. I mean I saw a guy with TWO Leicas yesterday. Fuji's mirrorless are huge and medium format is now as frequent as those Fujis were 6-8 years ago. It's not only about features, in which I still think cameras best phones any day. It's…

> Same reason film is big lately.

Also Instax / Polaroid. AFAIK, Fuji makes the majority (or at least a very significant chunk) of their consumer camera sales with Instax cameras and Instax film.

Re: DPReview.com to close

#342

Post by Krisando »

mod50ack wrote: post #339
lmm wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OK, but nobody is doing serious photographic work (professional or hobbyist) using children's toy cameras. Some serious artistic photographers do do serious work with them, taking pictures to show in galleries and the like. I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone was out there doing professional e.g. wedding photography with one, for customers who want photos that look a bit different. Of course it's a stylistic…

> Of course it's a stylistic choice, but camera choice often is. OK, I guess I mean to exclude this kind of work which is done because the cameras are of much worse technical quality — these are by definition not applications for which traditional dedicated cameras are used. In other words, the toys are not replacements for more capable equipment. Yes, you can shoot with a Barbie camera ( https://www.youtube.com/watc…

Not the grand parent.

> The Pixel, though, in my opinion, produces pretty bad photos.

I've had the opportunity to play with iPhone 14, it has 12 megapixel cameras, but I find that the image quality is no difference to 8 megapixels of detail, and if you use third party applications that can take pictures without post processing, it's often closer to 6 megapixels and the grain in the image is not great. Smart phones don't appear to be resolving the detail advertised.

> I shoot in RAW

Shooting raw on my Android phones (since the iPhone 14 won't let me) shows there is clearly very little dynamic range, which when trying to do beautiful processing on skin tones or such, come out very flat (regardless if going for natural or unrealistically perfect).

I do a lot of photography in poor lighting, I over expose a lot so I can the details in the shadow, and then bring it back down in post processing in raw. Try to do anything similar on phones, terrible grain. Leave it to the phone processing, it does some really bad approaches at AEB with post processing and not very good handling on the HDR merge, plus the exposure time is huge, meh.

> But I suppose that my eye is good enough to know real bokeh from fake.

It's not convincing to me because you can see stuff like the background between strands of hair in focus. I imagine it's only going to get better at that.

The biggest problem with phone photography is sensor size currently and it seems unlikely we're going to have larger sensor sizes when it requires more flange distance for the optics.

Re: DPReview.com to close

#343

Post by roelschroeven »

dboreham wrote: post #232
Espressosaurus wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ken Rockwell is a blowhard that copy/pastes info into every "review". His sharpness comparisons are laughable, as is his blatant fanboyism (which went from Nikon to Canon. It's funny to read the things he said about one brand 10 years ago and compare it to what he says about the same brand today). I would not put him into the same category as DPReview with a straight face. DPReview gave us the exposure latitude and h…

I don't know him but I have to say I like Ken Rockwell's content. I wouldn't go to him for pixel peeping lens comparisons but for a general overview he's good. There are also nowadays several good YouTubers in this field. And of course there's TDP albeit Canon and Sony-only coverage there.

On his About page, Ken Rockwell says

> To use words of Ansel Adams on page 193 of his autobiography, this site is my "aggressive personal opinion," and not a "logical presentation of fact." This website is a work of fiction, entirely the product of my own imagination and personal opinion.

and

> I have a big sense of humor, and do this site to entertain you (and myself), as well as to inform and to educate. I occasionally weave fiction and satire into my stories to keep them interesting. I love a good hoax.

and

> I have the energy and sense of humor of a three-year old, so remember, this is a personal website, and never presented as fact. I enjoy making things up for fun, as does The Onion, and I publish them here.

(All of that are his own words!)

If you enjoy his writing for entertainment, no problem. But don't take anything written there as fact.

Re: DPReview.com to close

#344

Post by ge0rg »

numpad0 wrote: post #321
WWLink wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"starting around the iPhone 13, phones got really good" -exasperated sigh- I wish I could agree but I just can't. I feel around that point pictures taken by phone cameras stopped looking real. They started forcing stuff like HDR and AI correction and very heavy handed noise filtering. Looking back at my old pictures from the 2010s, I think my canon digital elph took better pictures than my phones do now lol. I realiz…

To me they do seem to be getting “better”, in air quotes, I think due to ILCs supplying ground truth data… IMO the real problem is that there aren’t much connection between that photos you like and people. “If we take the S.D. Card out of the proper camera and insert it into a proper Computer…” just don’t cut it anymore. They only have a phone each. You have to be able to get the photo to the phone to social media be…

The companion apps provided by ILC manufacturers are just horrible, broken, useless. I was really glad that I could hack the in-camera "send email" function of the Samsung NX500 to send the picture to a VPS which then forwards it to my favorite photo sharing chat instead.

Re: DPReview.com to close

#345

Post by thih9 »

codersfocus wrote: post #156
thih9 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case why not keep the old content online at least? And continue paying affiliate commissions to themselves?

From their announcement, that appears to be their plan. They said they will keep the site up for an limited amount of time. It's speculation on how long "limited" is. Months, years? There might be some clues with how quickly they shut down alexa.com "In December 2021, Amazon announced that it would be shutting down its Alexa Internet subsidiary. The service was then discontinued on May 1, 2022." which would put it at…

5 months seems not much time for a platform like this. I recently bought a lens that has been released 3 years ago; a gear review written today could provide useful information for much more than 5 months.

Re: DPReview.com to close

#346

Post by blagie »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #135
blagie wrote: post #120

Earlier 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 =(

> no one who didn't use dpreview will look unfavourably at Amazon for it

True, but many tech nerds (who make decisions about services like AWS) visited dpreview.

Right now, I won't use GCP or anything related to Google in business settings because of about a dozen similar decisions which impacted me. There's a finite budget of decisions like this which a company can make before people lose trust, and it impact business.

Re: DPReview.com to close

#347

Post by ajolly »

max51 wrote: post #283
matmatmatmat wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It so happens I recently took a Pixel 6 Pro and a Canon 80D on a trip abroad. I used a rebuild of the stock camera app that does away with the automatic over-sharpening that the stock camera app has, and with the 80D, I used the EF-S 15-85 mm lens that (I believe) used to be the kit lens for the 7D. I also used the EF 70-300 mm non-L lens. There is, in my opinion, no question that the 80D takes sharper pictures in da…

If you're willing to post process your images, the 80D will look way better for night pictures. The problem is that there is no built-in function for it and you have to manually process each pictures. You might even need more than one tool if you want to take advantage of the same type of AI fakery that phone have.

One thing I love about my A7S is the ability to tilt the screen and take candid photos of people while we're having a conversation. Also that thing pretty much shoots in the dark so I find that magic.

Re: DPReview.com to close

#348

Post by bluedino »

Jiejeing wrote: post #47

That hurts a lot, I got in way past the point where it was acquired by amazon, but the forums were always a very nice place to interact (with its lots of weird and single-focused people, as every forum, that gives it charm). The reviews for most cameras made in the last 20 years were invaluable and very detailed, although lately they certainly struggled to maintain the quantity of content they put out in the past. I…

I wonder if the problem is they are shutting down 50 other sites that are similar to this, for other types of products. Cutting 1 doesn't make much of a diffference but cutting 50 certainly does.

Re: DPReview.com to close

#350

Post by Friedduck »

There’s a larger story about consolidation on the web and longstanding franchises getting folded into others are going dark.

The economics of cameras have changed but I fear that the market for independent reviews has cratered and made it much more difficult get honest unbiased information.

I checked: I’ve been active on DPreview for 19 years.

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