DMillier wrote:
absquatulate wrote:
Mackiesback wrote:
For the most part, the original review was fine, well at least the description was. You did a decent job of pointing out the shortcomings, and did a fair job of rating the seven categories. That is not the issue anybody has with it. The issue is that you have applied conditions to the star rating system, your own personal conditions, that effectively hijacks any reasonable meaning to the usefulness of the system. And that is the issue people are having.
I haven't hijacked anything, the review is a personal take on the camera, as all these reviews are, there are plenty of reviews on the net if you want to go and look at them, many of them missing some key points about these cameras, their IR capability being the most notable.
Its not that "these people" dont get it. I think we all understand what this camera is, we all get how passionate you are for this type of technology. Millier is right, it would have been a great thread or blog post or opinion piece. But by posting it as a review and hijacking the star system for your own personal tastes, it renders the star system meaningless, which is is not objective and frankly, pretty selfish.
Rubbish, there are all sorts of reviews on here you could tear apart, they're just opinions on how people feel about the cameras. Here's one, the guy gives the Sony A6000 1.5 stars because it doesn't have a feature he likes, seriously? where were you on this one?
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4039399
I could pull up hundreds of reviews with all sorts of quirky comments on here. Some consist of of one sentence, "great camera, love it!". At least I put some thought into mine, whether you like it or not. You're not the judge and jury on these reviews, they are what they are, just user opinions, not scientific and not monitored with strict guidelines, that's what the DPR Team is for if that's what you really want. Even they get shredded for the slightest comment if someone doesn't like it, talk about mountains out of molehills....
I accept that it is difficult to write a review that doesn't get someone worked up about something they think you've got wrong, that is par for the course for reviews. You have my sympathy a little on this.
On the other hand, you chose to publish a review...
My problem with your review is shared with a couple of people here: you spend a lot of words identifying a lot load of issues with the camera that initially leads to an expectation there it should get a zero stars rating then you simply ignore the flaws you have mentioned and it give it a perfect score. Doesn't really make sense. Either it has those problems or it doesn't. Your justification has been little more than: well, it's pretty difficult to make a camera like this so we should sort of expect it to have lots of problems so we might as well ignore them and just rate it on the two things it's good at.
That's fine for coming to terms with a personal decision to buy and use something that suits you but it is a poor basis for a review that is supposed to give other people who haven't used it an understanding and to try and work out whether it will suit them.
I might as well as write a review that says something along the lines of:
Well, this camera does have a few drawbacks: it runs on beetle dung only, tricky to pick up at the camera store, it stores its files on 10" magnetic tape, it weigh 300 pounds, is only sensitive to x ray light and explodes with a force of 2 megatons if air pressure drops.
But, it has this really lovely coloured shutter button, it's my favourite colour, I like it a lot. Rating ***** Go out now and buy one.
Pretty purile humour maybe, but I wanted to make the point that there is a difference (or should be) between writing a review (which should be aimed at helping people understand a product) and evangelising a product you personally like. Just a random google turned up this review of the Canon 5DS, the highest rez 35mm DSLR currently:
https://www.cnet.com/uk/news/canons-50-megapixel-slrs-fail-to-dethrone-nikon-in-image-sensor-test/
Using your approach, this is the highest rez camera, it does really well what people know it has been built to do so is an instant 5***** review with no need to worry about flaws. Yet Cnet do not take this approach: they manage to find plenty of things that are less than perfect about its sensor despite the winning pixel count and they are happy to take it down a peg or two as a result. I don't even say I agree with what they say but I do agree with the principle: when you do a review, you can't just ignore or the negatives because there is something that appeals to you. That's not fair to the people reading it who could be misled.
Now a blog or a forum post that is an opinion piece is completely different. I think you chose the wrong medium to express your opinion. I wouldn't post a review without being very careful indeed to be able to justify everything I said with facts. But maybe that is just me.
Without wishing to cover old ground, I think it is you, if you care to look at many of these reviews, as I have, it's quite clear they are user opinions, if you're not sure about that just check some.
