News / Site News

Eagle-eyed visitors will have already noticed we've made a few changes to the homepage and added a couple of new features (both of which are still very much at the beta stage). First (and most obvious) is the new menu bar, which we hope will make finding what you're looking for easier and more logical - and allows us the horizontal space we need for some exciting forthcoming features. We've also added a comprehensive selection of software to our database and introduced a completely new feature, the Link Database. More after the jump...

As a result of technical failures resulting from the storms that hit the eastern United States this weekend, some users may have experienced various problems with the site over the past 72 hours. Issues may have included slow page loading times, missing image thumbnails, dead links and temporary unavailability of our forums. We've been working hard to return everything to normal, but if these issues persist, or if you continue to experience performance or functionality problems with other areas of the site, please feel free to send feedback via the link at the bottom of this page.

Dpreview.com is seeking keen writers immersed in the mobile technology and photography world. As an external contributor to the world's leading digital photography website, you'll produce top-quality, well-researched, and innovative articles about smart phones, tablets, photography apps and photo sharing communities.

Are you an experienced writer with a passion for photography? Do you want to use your skills to contribute to the world's #1 photography website? If so, we want to hear from you. To expand on the reviews, previews and news stories that are the core of the site, we're looking for external contributors with a proven track record of producing top-quality content to deliver a diverse range of other articles. These include photographic technique tutorials, equipment buyers' guides, book reviews, and everything in between.

We've just launched a redesigned and improved on-site search feature. The search system, currently in beta, is designed to give more relevant results from all of dpreview's editorial and forums content. We've also redesigned the way results are presented, to make it easier to get to the information you wanted. We're looking for user feedback during the beta process to help fine-tune the system and how the results are provided, so there's a 'Feedback' link at the top of every results page, to let you report back to us.

We've made our product database available on the mobile version of the site. The addition of the products section (searchable by product name, browsable by brand and product type), is another step towards making the entire site available on-the-go. Our database currently includes cameras, lenses and printers and is probably the most comprehensive on the web. As before, there are small links at the bottom of every page to swap between the mobile and desktop versions.

We've just added a mobile version of dpreview, to make it easier to get to our content from your cellular, mobile or generally portable devices. In this first iteration we've made it easy browse reviews, news stories, articles and previews. Forums and commenting support will come in later versions. However, although we think m.dpreview will make it easier to enjoy the site, we've placed small links at the bottom of every page to swap between the mobile and desktop versions.

We're going to be hosting user avatars from now on - removing the need for you to use the Gravatar service. It means you can easily manage your avatar from within dpreview and that changes are reflected much faster. If you already had an avatar hosted on Gravatar, it will have been imported already so you don't need to do anything. However, if you wish to add or update an avatar, or you've changed yours in the past few days, we're prepared some instructions for how the process now works.

Dpreview.com is looking for a Mobile Imaging Editor to join our growing team based in Seattle, WA. This is a unique opportunity to play a key part in the design and launch of an entirely new content area, and to drive the expansion of the dpreview platform into the fast moving world of connected photography.

Congratulations to 'elroyie' for winning our Challenge of Challenges 2011’with the image ‘The Last Drop’. Elroyie has won our annual contest for the second time, having also won our inaugural competition, in 2009. As promised this year we also have a special prize to the voter who most closely matches the final scoring. This goes to 'IdeaChaser,' who, along with elroyie, will receive a framed exhibition print from Custom-Digital. Both winners will be contacted via email for further information regarding the print and shipping details.

The entire team at dpreview would like to wish all our readers Happy Holidays, Season's Greetings, Merry Christmas or whatever you say in your part of the world. As we celebrate our 13th anniversary we're thrilled with the changes we've made to the site in 2011 and are looking forward to another exciting year in 2012, with even more new features in the pipeline and of course even more of the high quality content that made this site what it is today. Whatever you're doing today, enjoy yourselves and thank you for being a part of dpreview.com!

To showcase the talent and imagination shown by our Challenge hosts and entrants, we're once again running a 'Challenge of Challenges,' to find the dpreview.com Picture of the Year. This year we've made a couple of changes to the way we run this annual event. We've whittled more than 1700 challenge winners down to a more manageable 100 - selected by the dpreview editorial team. And for the first time, we're offering not only a prize for the winning entry, but also for the 'best' voter. Check out the details after the link, or jump directly to the challenge and get voting!

We've successfully migrated dpreview.com to its new web servers. And, now that most of the teething problems have been ironed out, we're confident that the errors and degraded performance that some users have been experiencing over the last few weeks are well behind us. We've also got a couple of minor feature updates to tell you about - and the winners of the Tamron Prize challenge are revealed after the link.

US photographic trade body PMA and dpreview.com are conducting a survey looking for the views of dedicated amateur photographers. The ten minute survey asks about your photographic use, the features you'd like to see in cameras and your use and experience of photo sharing sites and printing services (as well as helping us make dpreview a better place). It aims to get a clearer understanding of what committed non-professional photographers want from their cameras and related services and may even result in those things getting a bit better. Responses will be discussed at the forthcoming 6Sight conference. As a reward one lucky respondent will be sent a shiny new Apple iPad 2. Update: the survey has now closed. We will announce the winner of the iPad soon.

Planned site maintenance will mean the site will be temporarily unavailable for a period today (Saturday November 19th). For around an hour from 20:00 GMT / 15:00 ET / 12:00 PT, it will not be possible to log into the site. This will mean commenting, forums and challenges will be read-only during this period. A banner across the top of the page will make clear when this work is in progress and we hope to bring an improved user experience as a result of the work. We appreciate your patience.

Update 15:44 PT: We've completed the necessary maintenance, and site functionality has been restored. However, due to the inherent latency in DNS (Domain Name System) propagation, a very small percentage of users may be unable to post to our forums for the next 24-48 hours. If these issues persist, or if you continue to experience performance or functionality problems with other areas of the site, please feel free to send feedback via the link at the bottom of this page.

Take the lead in designing highly usable and aesthetically beautiful mobile applications for the world's #1 photography website, Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com). dpreview is looking for a software developer to not only make our site accessible on mobile devices, but to be the premier destination for all things photography on phones and tablets. To find out more - and to apply - visit the Amazon careers page here.

We've recently introduced a few small but, we hope, welcome improvements for dpreview members. You may have stumbled across them whilst browsing, but we thought it would make sense to bring them to everyone's attention. In brief: you can now edit comments you've made on news stories, articles and previews, we've introduced a 'Gear List' to your profile, and you can now feature your articles in your chosen forum(s). To find out more check out the full story after the link.

Tamron is offering an F2.8 zoom to the winner of a Travel and Nature challenge on dpreview.com. The competition, open to any registered dpreview member, runs until October 24th. The winner will be decided by public vote over the following seven days. The winning photographer will receive a Tamron SP 17-50mm F/2.8 Di II XR VC LD Aspherical (IF) in Canon or Nikon mount (Full-frame shooters can request an unstabilized 28-75mm F2.8 instead), making this the first dpreview challenge with a competition prize.

A few weeks ago we launched our articles section and we promised that you'd soon be able to create your own articles, photo blogs and other personal content using our newly-developed browser-based editor and content manager. We're excited to announce that today we've opened up access to this cool new tool for all registered members. Find out more after the link...

Sony content updated. In the light of the level of interest in Sony's latest launches, we've gone back and added more information to much of our content. Now our servers have cooled down a bit, we've gone back and, in response to the questions you've been asking, we've updated our coverage. Most noticeably, we've added some 1080p60 movie samples to the A77 preview. We've also added improved illustrations to our NEX-7 first look to make it easier to see how the control system is going to work.