JohanCruyff said:
About DPR appartent bias
"In 2007 Digital Photography Review was acquired by Amazon.com."
Source:
http://www.dpreview.com/about
Why would an independent gear seller emphasize the (comparatively) weak points of a brand and the (comparatively) strong points of another? Do we have to presume that Canon grants Amazon lower margins than Sony-Nikon?
I've been told independently by two retail camera store owners (one owns a solo outlet, the other owns a small chain) that Canon does, in fact, give them lower margins compared to other manufacturers. I have no idea if that applies to large retailers, and of course it may not (those same owners indicated that Canon's policies strongly favor large retailers over the smaller outlets, leading one owner to drop Canon consumer-products entirely and only sell broadcast video gear from Canon).
But I don't think anyone here is suggesting some sort of grand conspiracy theory – certainly I'm not. The reviewers/writers simply have a personal bias and are unable to avoid it influencing their reviews and conclusions.
DPR and DxO are similar in many ways. Both perform generally reliable testing, DxO's is quantitative, DPR's is qualitative, they're complementary and both are useful. Both have a similar glaring flaw, DxO claims to be 'scientific' and they're clearly not, DPR claims (at least, Rishi claims) to be unbiased. Both have a bias that influences their conclusions. The 'advantage' DxO has is that while their Scores are biased, their measurements are objective; with DPR's subjective testing (outside the studio), there's no way to be sure the biases aren't affecting the testing itself in addition to the conclusions.