End of an era, DPReview.com will shut down next month
- Thread starter Canon Rumors Guy
- Start date
Another sign that digital cameras are in decline.
DPReview and https://sportsshooter.com/ shutting down more indicators...
Wonder what site is next on the chopping board.
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I DPReview's timelines for bodies, lenses, accessories and point & shoots. It helps with my replies on forums.
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I can recommend downloading all the RAW files from the ISO comparison tools for all cameras your are interested right now or might be interested in future:
www.dpreview.com
Those sample images are great if you want to compare a ten year old DSLR with a modern camera for example. So I recommend also downloading some RAW files of old cameras. Especially the ones you already own.
The tool itself only gives a limited overview about the ISO performances, but opening the RAWs in Lightroom and then recovering the shadows around the bottles by three stops shows a significant difference between cameras.
Studio shot comparison: Digital Photography Review
Expert news, reviews and videos of the latest digital cameras, lenses, accessories, and phones. Get answers to your questions in our photography forums.
www.dpreview.com
The tool itself only gives a limited overview about the ISO performances, but opening the RAWs in Lightroom and then recovering the shadows around the bottles by three stops shows a significant difference between cameras.
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We can blame Canon for this. Since they upped the DR in their cameras DPR has become so boring; witness the poetry that was DPR explaining why the DR of the Nikon D4 was just fine, but the same on a 5DS was unacceptable. Kids could study that in school instead of having to read Shakespeare.
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When Canon’s base ISO DR started creeping up, DPR helpfully and impartially promulgated the concepts of exposure latitude and ISO invariance, and added 6-stop exposure pushes to their comparison tool. All to maintain their thoroughly unbiased presentation of Canon’s inferiority.
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The closing of DPR isn't an isolated incident. It's part of a mass layoff program at Amazon:
"Amazon will lay off 9,000 more employees in the coming weeks, CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to staff Monday."
"The cuts follow an earlier round of layoffs that began in November and extended into January, which affected more than 18,000 staffers."
-CNBC
"Amazon will lay off 9,000 more employees in the coming weeks, CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to staff Monday."
"The cuts follow an earlier round of layoffs that began in November and extended into January, which affected more than 18,000 staffers."
-CNBC
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roby17269
R5, H5X + IQ1-80, DJI Mini & Mavic 3 Pro, GoPro 10
Hosting for dpreview wasn't free. At the very least it costed what AWS could have made by giving those compute / storage / network resources to paying customers.
But I am sure that it wasn't much in the grand scheme of things. The biggest cost was the salaries of dpreview staff.
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Some comments from someone with business-to-business publishing industry experience over those same decades:
1) Making a biz out of publishing stuff got to be extremely hard. Substantially all special interest magazines went out of business over the decades they've been operating. The DPR crew were protected from these pressures because Amazon opted to pay for a large magazine staff for what was essentially a camera blog with extremely well distributed forums content. The ratio of labor $ to content wasn't sustainable, but - for a long time - it didn't need to be.
2) DPR has ever been a strange duck from a business perspective. It had the promise of making money from generating interest in an expensive category for its retailer parent, but Amazon's referral program applied to all the other camera sites in the world too, so the benefit of operating DPR grew less sensical over time as Amazon became the dominant retailer.
3) When you have non-media companies, like Amazon run media sites, it eats up a part of the market that prevents a proper economy of scale for other firms to make it. Petapixel and other camera sites are probably half the size they'd be if DPR hadn't been subsidized.
4) Relationships matter in those businesses. When a CEO retires, the relationships get re-juggled, and it's always a threat to non-rational expenditures.
Even while recognizing its flaws, I'll miss DPR. Especially the current crew. They developed a more matter-of-fact and down-to-earth tone. That's a useful voice. I hope that the hole in the market allows for others to invest more successfully in replacing that and going further.
1) Making a biz out of publishing stuff got to be extremely hard. Substantially all special interest magazines went out of business over the decades they've been operating. The DPR crew were protected from these pressures because Amazon opted to pay for a large magazine staff for what was essentially a camera blog with extremely well distributed forums content. The ratio of labor $ to content wasn't sustainable, but - for a long time - it didn't need to be.
2) DPR has ever been a strange duck from a business perspective. It had the promise of making money from generating interest in an expensive category for its retailer parent, but Amazon's referral program applied to all the other camera sites in the world too, so the benefit of operating DPR grew less sensical over time as Amazon became the dominant retailer.
3) When you have non-media companies, like Amazon run media sites, it eats up a part of the market that prevents a proper economy of scale for other firms to make it. Petapixel and other camera sites are probably half the size they'd be if DPR hadn't been subsidized.
4) Relationships matter in those businesses. When a CEO retires, the relationships get re-juggled, and it's always a threat to non-rational expenditures.
Even while recognizing its flaws, I'll miss DPR. Especially the current crew. They developed a more matter-of-fact and down-to-earth tone. That's a useful voice. I hope that the hole in the market allows for others to invest more successfully in replacing that and going further.
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I used to follow DP review when I moved from Film to Digital in the 1990's. I haven't visited it in a year or so, I just lost interest in their forum. I still visit Digital Picture and Fred Miranda each week and Canon Rumors at least twice a day. There are several other sites that seem to have lost my interest.
I think that digital camera sales on Amazon seem to be stable or even shrinking and their research shows that DPR is not boosting their sales. Phil Askey got his $$$,$$$ when he sold to Amazon, I think he has lost interest. I doubt that anyone could afford the big budget it takes to keep them afloat. Many of the sites are one-man operations, the owners are not getting rich.
I think that digital camera sales on Amazon seem to be stable or even shrinking and their research shows that DPR is not boosting their sales. Phil Askey got his $$$,$$$ when he sold to Amazon, I think he has lost interest. I doubt that anyone could afford the big budget it takes to keep them afloat. Many of the sites are one-man operations, the owners are not getting rich.
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Never really used them as review aggregator and gear choice aid; I change camera rarely (and never changed brand since 1999, so I wasn't interested in generic reviews from other manufacturers), while lenses I change often, TOO OFTEN, but my holy guide about lens choice has always been photozone.de! I have NEVER regretted a purchase based on their reviews.
But in the forums, skipping all the fanboy wars, I often found, via google search, many insights and tricks on camera, lenses and photo/video equipment in general, like when I was having doubts similar to "can I mount this first thing on this second other thing, and how this other third thing will react?".
So while I personally (again, personally) won't really mourn the "commercial" side of it, I will certainly mourn the HUGE loss of knowledge you could sometimes find is some forum post; It's a great loss of information and user experience, and I'm devastated by it.
But in the forums, skipping all the fanboy wars, I often found, via google search, many insights and tricks on camera, lenses and photo/video equipment in general, like when I was having doubts similar to "can I mount this first thing on this second other thing, and how this other third thing will react?".
So while I personally (again, personally) won't really mourn the "commercial" side of it, I will certainly mourn the HUGE loss of knowledge you could sometimes find is some forum post; It's a great loss of information and user experience, and I'm devastated by it.
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