End of an era, DPReview.com will shut down next month

snappy604

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Jan 25, 2017
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Not surprised someone, that didn't "get it", bought it because it was popular and then let it crater. Seems to happen all too often.

Didn't always agree with them, but it certainly was a point to start research on purchases. It went beyond SLR bodies, it included lenses and compact cameras, even phone cameras. It was handy to have a rough comparison on image sharpness, noise levels at various ISO levels and the ability to compare those between bodies
 
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Sucks for the staff, but not really unexpected.

The Camera market being what it is means this will likely not be the last place to fade to black.
It's more about Amazon than the camera market. Late last year they layed off 18, 000 people. Yesterday, they announced that they are going to lay off an additional 9,000 people.
 
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Good riddance, DPR served as little more than a Sony advertising platform with Rishi's fetish on dynamic range, stopped looking at the site a long time ago. I find Bryan Carnathan's the-digital-picture much more helpful and objective. For example, it was Bryan who mentioned the ineffective anti-flicker on the Sony A73, or that many Sony bodies have slow single-focus lock, DPR rarely if never mentioned these significant flaws.
 
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Jul 21, 2010
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Not surprised someone, that didn't "get it", bought it because it was popular and then let it crater.
Perhaps. But unless all camera manufacturers offer identical terms to vendors (they don’t), it would make sense for a vendor that sells a lot of cameras to acquire a popular camera review site so they could publish those reviews on their website and have editorial influence over the content.
 
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unfocused

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Very unfortunate. They were a good source of information and I felt the whining about bias was overblown. Not many good options left for written reviews.

Sadly I think this is a sign of the times in all media today. Advertising revenue online just isn’t sufficient to cover the overhead for quality writing and reporting.

Instead of thorough reviews that we can scroll through and read, it seems like we will mostly be left with You Tubers that focus on generating conflict and controversy just to attract views.
 
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Thank you, koenkooi.
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It looks like DPReview.com will be a victim of Amazon’s cuts and reorganization. DPReview.com is now set to go offline on April 10, 2023. Dear readers, After nearly 25 years of operation, DPReview will be closing in the near future. This difficult decision is part of the annual operating plan review that our parent company shared earlier

See full article...
Are they shutting it down or are they ceasing updating it?
 
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Well it's sad.
The site served as a great knowledge base. There are/were some interesting people in DPR as well, including developers of CMOS sensor.
I've been using DPReview forums more than Canonrumors forums lately. Now it's time to switch back to CR for Canon-related topics.
 
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Running a website like DPR really cannot be that expensive to run....soooo sad!
It's pretty expensive for an average person but that's nothing for a giant like Amazon, especially considering they can provide free hosting, although they would still have some running expenses.
 
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snappy604

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Jan 25, 2017
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Perhaps. But unless all camera manufacturers offer identical terms to vendors (they don’t), it would make sense for a vendor that sells a lot of cameras to acquire a popular camera review site so they could publish those reviews on their website and have editorial influence over the content.
agree.

Because money and influence was the focus and motivation of the buy out, the site lost the original appeal of mostly independent useful information. The loss of its appeal, made it lose popularity, which meant less investment and a downward spiral starts.

Reminds of me of what happened to Slashdot... once upon a time it was a good site, but corporations tried to monetize it without understanding what made it tick, it also went down that spiral.

Honestly was wondering if this site might go down that path, but so far so good...
 
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Sep 24, 2012
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While many of us have not use the site recently if it winds up completely off-line, that is a massive amount of historical context lost.

It doesn't happen often but I'm sure in the last two years I've jumped on that dpreview a half dozen times for a historical comparison of where cameras were 20 years ago versus today, how the market shifted, or even what MSRP has done for midmarket cameras over the years.

Even for things as obscure and perhaps meaningless as comparing test shots from flagship cameras over the years of their studio set, to see how much noise actually improved every five years will be a sad loss.
 
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