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Simon Rodan

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I've noticed an interesting trend in the reviews DP Review does; 14 of the 19 cameras reviewed up to November 2009 were "highly recommended". That's 74%, up from 68% in 2008; compare that to just 27% in 1999. The proportion of recommended and highly recommended were above the mean (79%) in every year since 2004 and only once before then. The recent Nikon D3000 is in interesting case in point. A list of cons almost as long as the list of pros and still it gets top honors. As I noted elsewhere ( http://j.mp/8r9YiD ) grade inflation has set in.

While cameras are obviously improving, the fallacy is comparing this years camera to last year's ones - if last year's Nikon was recommended and this year's Canon is better, shouldn't it be highly recommended? No. In making buying decision, most of us arent' interested in comparison with the past, only with what else is available as an alternative today. There is clearly an upward trend in camera and image quality - and this has to be adjusted for, removed from the equation.

If all cameras are dubbed highly recommended, the label becomes valueless. As a colleague's son noted when all the players on his soccer team got MVP plaques, "How can everyone be 'most valuable' "?
 
Simon Rodan said:
I've noticed an interesting trend in the reviews DP Review does; 14 of the 19 cameras reviewed up to November 2009 were "highly recommended". That's 74%, up from 68% in 2008; compare that to just 27% in 1999.
Click to expand...
Simon Rodan said:
The proportion of recommended and highly recommended were above the mean (79%) in every year since 2004 and only once before then.
Click to expand...
How are you getting a mean value from an ordinal variable? And how do you get a mean as a percentage from an ordinal variable? ((Recommended + highly recommended) 2 ?)

I think there two main reason why the ratio of highly recommended cameras has gone up: DPReview now reviews far fewer compact/P&S cameras than it used to, and the cameras they do review tend to be the ones that they find more interesting and more likely too be good.

Brian A.
 
I think it is because they can't afford to bite the hand that feeds them. Here is the way I interpret their ratings.

"Highly Recommended" = recommended
"Highly Recommended (just barely)" = second rate
"Recommended" = not recommended
 
Simon Rodan said:
I've noticed an interesting trend in the reviews DP Review does; 14 of the 19 cameras reviewed up to November 2009 were "highly recommended". That's 74%, up from 68% in 2008; compare that to just 27% in 1999. The proportion of recommended and highly recommended were above the mean (79%) in every year since 2004 and only once before then. The recent Nikon D3000 is in interesting case in point. A list of cons almost as long as the list of pros and still it gets top honors. As I noted elsewhere ( http://j.mp/8r9YiD ) grade inflation has set in.

While cameras are obviously improving, the fallacy is comparing this years camera to last year's ones - if last year's Nikon was recommended and this year's Canon is better, shouldn't it be highly recommended? No. In making buying decision, most of us arent' interested in comparison with the past, only with what else is available as an alternative today. There is clearly an upward trend in camera and image quality - and this has to be adjusted for, removed from the equation.

If all cameras are dubbed highly recommended, the label becomes valueless. As a colleague's son noted when all the players on his soccer team got MVP plaques, "How can everyone be 'most valuable' "?
Click to expand...
This comes up all the time. The reviews are not randomly chosen from a large population. There is not enough time to review all cameras that pass across the desk. They choose the best ones. I know I don't want to read reviews about poor cameras, do you?

And, as others have stated, the differences in quality between major DSLRs these days are mostly minor. Read the entire review and decide for yourself. The label alone tells you nothing.
 
I find it not to being in anyone's best interest to purchase a camera solely on 1 review on 1 website, so the reviews here, as on other sites, are pretty much taken at face value with me.
 
I used to write for a (non photo) magazine. We were accused of being biased to favor our advertisers because we published favorable reviews all the time.

The accusation of favorable reviews was correct but that of bias wasn't. The editor in chief decided that we had very limited space for editorial so we published only reviews of those items we recommended to our readership.

Here's an example. We're reviewing item X. There are 30 different item X's sold. We can publish reviews of perhaps 3 of these or perhaps 10%. Now we can publish 3 negative reviews leaving our readership sure not to buy those three but not sure which of the remaining 27 TO buy. Or we can find 3 good ones and recommend them to our readership.

Which would YOU prefer we did?
--

-----
-paul
 
pcassel said:
......... Or we can find 3 good ones and recommend them to our readership.

Which would YOU prefer we did?
Click to expand...
Good point, well made.

To the OP...

I think it is great that there is so much good stuff around. It means it is hard to make a real mistake, doesn't it?
--
Regards,
Baz

I am 'Looking for Henry Lee ' (could be Lea, or even Leigh) and despite going 'Hey round the corner', and looking 'behind the bush', I have not yet found him. If he survives, Henry is in his mid-60s, British, and quite intellectual.

What is it all about? Well, something relating to a conversation we had in the pub 35 years ago has come to spectacular fruition, and I'd like him to know how right he was.

If you know somebody who could be this man, please put him in touch with me. Thank you.
 
To say that only those items that are going to be highly recommended are reviewed is to admit that the reviewer knows the outcome before doing any research. That, in effect, is saying the review is meaningless. I don't think DPR does this. If you read the review carefully, and read between the lines at times, DPR tells the reader the flaws of the camera. Its just that the final rating doesn't reflect a useful comparison to other models.
 
on this site are excellent, its the conclusion that causes all the conflict, so why not remove conclusion altogether and let us decide.

Carl
 
Sometimes this does involve trade offs.

Dpreview tends to write very thorough and detailed reviews, and these take a lot of time and effort, and this means they cannot possibly review all cameras made.

Steve's Digicams, which is also a very good website, tries to cover a wider range of cameras, but doesn't go into the same level of detail. So the net result is that more cameras are reviewed on that site, but the ones here are reviewed more thoroughly.

I also find user reviews, both here and at Amazon.com or Epinions.com to be helpful too. Just remember that user reviews are often biased since people tend to support their own buying decisions.

Take your pick.

There is something out there for everyone's preferences.
--
Marty
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marty4650/sets/72157606210120132/show/
http://www.fluidr.com/photos/marty4650/sets/72157606210120132
Olympus E-30
Zuiko 9-18mm
Zuiko 14-54mm II
Zuiko 40-150mm I
Zuiko 70-300mm
Zuiko 50mm f/2.0 macro

 
Simon Rodan said:
In making buying decision, most of us arent' interested in comparison
with the past, only with what else is available as an alternative today.
Click to expand...
Excepted for the upgraders, who might want to compare the new model to the previous one too.

--
Iván József Balázs
(Hungary)
 
I cannot speak for DPR. I can for ourselves.

What we'd do is get in all this product. We'd quickly examine the products and eliminate the ones we could due to obvious shortcomings. We then would test the most promising and report the best.

I cannot say we didn't ever miss a superb product due to we mistaking a feature for a defect, but I can say we never recommended a product we determined was second rate NOR did we ever bow to our advertisers by recommending a bad product of theirs over a good one from a non advertiser.
--

-----
-paul
 
carl english said:
on this site are excellent, its the conclusion that causes all the conflict, so why not remove conclusion altogether and let us decide.
Click to expand...
Why not ignore the conclusion instead? I and I suspect many others who aren't experts, can't assemble the data into a cohesive whole. Look at the Beginners forum for some idea of the expertise many have who visit this site looking for information.

I read the reviews by going to the bullet points in conclusions and then examining the data in detail supporting those conclusions. That's about the limit of my expertise.

--

-----
-paul
 
Hugowolf said:
How are you getting a mean value from an ordinal variable? And how do you get a mean as a percentage from an ordinal variable? ((Recommended + highly recommended) 2 ?)
Click to expand...
I set highly recommended to 5, recommended to 4, above average to 3 and so on.

The proportion of the two categories (Recommended + highly recommended) is a based on a count measure. For each year I calculated the proportion of reviews in this set as a proportion of the total number of reviews that year. The 'mean' is the I this to the proportion in this category for all years.
Hugowolf said:
I think there two main reason why the ratio of highly recommended cameras has gone up: DPReview now reviews far fewer compact/P&S cameras than it used to, and the cameras they do review tend to be the ones that they find more interesting and more likely too be good.
Click to expand...
Fair point, but this assumes that over time the proportion of good cameras to less good ones increases (or if the ratio remains constant, dpreview is sampling an increasing proportion from the better cameras).

Thanks for the comment.
 
tjack wrote:

Read the entire review and decide for yourself. The label alone tells you nothing.

Except it I thought it used to; I used to use the recommendation as a say of deciding which reviews to read in their entirety.

But your right that the label alone is not enough on which to base a buying decision.
 
Paul

Thanks for your insight.
pcassel said:
I used to write for a (non photo) magazine. We were accused of being biased to favor our advertisers because we published favorable reviews all the time.

The accusation of favorable reviews was correct but that of bias wasn't.
Click to expand...
I don't think I said the reviews were biased (or at least that's not what I meant) but that the compression of the variance made the indicator less useful.
pcassel said:
Which would YOU prefer we did?
Click to expand...
You're right - I'd prefer to read about good rather than bad products. However, that renders the "recommendation" moot, since all are essentially "highly recommended" or they wouldn't have been reviewed in the first place.

Simon
 
Simon Rodan said:
Simon Rodan said:
How are you getting a mean value from an ordinal variable? And how do you get a mean as a percentage from an ordinal variable? ((Recommended + highly recommended) 2 ?)
Click to expand...
I set highly recommended to 5, recommended to 4, above average to 3 and so on.

The proportion of the two categories (Recommended + highly recommended) is a based on a count measure. For each year I calculated the proportion of reviews in this set as a proportion of the total number of reviews that year. The 'mean' is the I this to the proportion in this category for all years.
Click to expand...
And I thought Econ was called the dismal science. Your statistics are totally invalid.
Simon Rodan said:
Simon Rodan said:
I think there two main reason why the ratio of highly recommended cameras has gone up: DPReview now reviews far fewer compact/P&S cameras than it used to, and the cameras they do review tend to be the ones that they find more interesting and more likely too be good.
Click to expand...
Fair point, but this assumes that over time the proportion of good cameras to less good ones increases (or if the ratio remains constant, dpreview is sampling an increasing proportion from the better cameras).
Click to expand...
It makes no such assumption.

Brian A
 
Marcamera said:
"GREDE INFLATION"

50% words mis-spelled.
Click to expand...
... or even misspelt? or mispelt? or misspelled? (all legit, apparently...)
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/misspelt

Hey, give the guy a break. It happens, and when it happens it invariably happens in the (bloomin') title line.
--
Regards,
Baz

I am 'Looking for Henry Lee ' (could be Lea, or even Leigh) and despite going 'Hey round the corner', and looking 'behind the bush', I have not yet found him. If he survives, Henry is in his mid-60s, British, and quite intellectual.

What is it all about? Well, something relating to a conversation we had in the pub 35 years ago has come to spectacular fruition, and I'd like him to know how right he was.

If you know somebody who could be this man, please put him in touch with me. Thank you.
 
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