What's happened to DPReview?

[morepix]

DPR used to be the first site I'd visit every day to catch up. It was a distinct pleasure. However, for the past few weeks, it's changed -- for the worse, IMO. It looks more junky, more Amazon sales oriented, and reviews seem to be less frequent than they formerly were. I miss the pleasure of catching up. The transition from Phil Askey to the Amazon crew was just fine, even an improvement. But what's happened now?

If there has been a thread or two on a similar reaction, I've missed it, as I seldom visit this forum. I'd appreciate any pointers to such a thread so I might better understand what's going on. It's certainly not that I've lost interest in digital photography issues.

Thanks

--
David
pbase.com/morepix

 

[Big Stick]

There's no need for ridiculously in-depth, text-heavy dissertations on cameras that drain time and money (I'd take a Chris Nichols review over that any day).

This isn't the early digital era, where changes happened glacially. Content today needs to be covered more briskly and concisely.

Surely you understand this?

 

[morepix]

There's no need for ridiculously in-depth, text-heavy dissertations on cameras that drain time and money (I'd take a Chris Nichols review over that any day).

This isn't the early digital era, where changes happened glacially. Content today needs to be covered more briskly and concisely.

Surely you understand this?

No, I don't what do you mean?

 

[greg 123]

There's no need for ridiculously in-depth, text-heavy dissertations on cameras that drain time and money (I'd take a Chris Nichols review over that any day).

Interesting.

This isn't the early digital era, where changes happened glacially. Content today needs to be covered more briskly and concisely.

The pace of camera development is slowing because the business is slowing. The speed of innovation in cameras has peaked. A more likely reason reviews have less depth is that there is less new information to cover.

Surely you understand this?

Maybe others can follow your line of reasoning better than me.

 

[robb974]

Have you noticed that there is a general slow down in many corners of digital photography in the past few years? DXO Labs just declared bankruptcy. The Japanese government reportedly has been trying to get Fuji to invest in Nikon in order to prop up Nikon. Etc. I think there just is less to review or talk much about. Seems to me that digital photography is in many ways pausing for a breather to take account of itself at the moment. I would not expect a sudden renewal in its intensity of the past decade or two any time soon. Consider what is happening over on Flickr as an example. It seems an era of consolidation has replaced the era of innovation. I wish you good shooting.

 

[Big Stick]

There's no need for ridiculously in-depth, text-heavy dissertations on cameras that drain time and money (I'd take a Chris Nichols review over that any day).

This isn't the early digital era, where changes happened glacially. Content today needs to be covered more briskly and concisely.

Surely you understand this?

No, I don't what do you mean?

DPR is covering more digital photography issues than ever before. There is no evidence whatsoever of your claim.

 

[Big Stick]

There's no need for ridiculously in-depth, text-heavy dissertations on cameras that drain time and money (I'd take a Chris Nichols review over that any day).

Interesting.

This isn't the early digital era, where changes happened glacially. Content today needs to be covered more briskly and concisely.

The pace of camera development is slowing because the business is slowing. The speed of innovation in cameras has peaked. A more likely reason reviews have less depth is that there is less new information to cover.

The pace isn't slowing at all. Developments are proceeding apace on multiple fronts (not counting Canon, that is).

 

[lichtfresser]

Longtime visitors of DPR will have noticed that the content changed and the quality declined. In the past I made my decisions, which cameras/lenses to buy, based upon the extensive in-depth reviews of DPR a few times. Within the years I found their methodology in many ways flawed and unsufficient. There are lots of people on this planet who neither have the opportunity to see or check an item locally nor to return it after purchase. They have to rely on reputable sources when they go online. Nowadays there is too much lawyer-approved misleading information hiding under 'marketing' coming from manufacturer. The 'truth' behind should be disclosed by reviewers and not by customers as it is more and more the case.

To me DPR lost lots of its reputation in the past years due to an increasing tendency to mainly generate clicks and comments with often redundant or lurid articles in the news section. There is no need to write zillions of buying guides for any imaginable category unless somebody a) is interested to get as much gear as possible into the focus of potential buyers or b) don't want to annoy manufacturers from whom they got the gear and invitations to worldwide 'exciting shooting locations' from.

One other part of the strategy seems to avoid making gear fully comparable. Most notorious examples are the pointless, often content-unrelated and fully reviewer-subjective ranking/award system or fitting up new cameras within a dedicated system with different lenses without updating the predecessors. This is not what I would call serious or professional.

Lately I caught myself having been more amused than informed resulting to skip a review and jumping to the comments immediately keeping in mind that this comment section is a perfect guide how to become an internet troll. Amusement is fine with me unless I want information. So sometimes I feel being unwillingly entertained which leads to frustration and time wasting.

So if I don't want entertainment I personally find optyczne.pl a serious additional source to get information about camera gear since the translator of 'your friend' works satisfyingly enough to understand polish content.

Be the pixel with you...

 

[Tom Axford]

Have you noticed that there is a general slow down in many corners of digital photography in the past few years? DXO Labs just declared bankruptcy. The Japanese government reportedly has been trying to get Fuji to invest in Nikon in order to prop up Nikon. Etc. I think there just is less to review or talk much about. Seems to me that digital photography is in many ways pausing for a breather to take account of itself at the moment. I would not expect a sudden renewal in its intensity of the past decade or two any time soon. Consider what is happening over on Flickr as an example. It seems an era of consolidation has replaced the era of innovation. I wish you good shooting.

I can't say I've noticed any real slowdown. What I have noticed is a change in the types of topics covered in news items: much more on video, more on drones, more on phone cameras, more on post-processing and special effects.

There may be fewer new cameras coming out, but new lenses seem as frequent as ever (largely due to an increase in third-party manufacturers and cinematography lenses).

 

[RedFox88]

DPR used to be the first site I'd visit every day to catch up. It was a distinct pleasure. However, for the past few weeks, it's changed -- for the worse, IMO. It looks more junky, more Amazon sales oriented

It's actually providing content to keep people coming here since digital cameras are nature and market is shrinking (see below )

, and reviews seem to be less frequent than they formerly were.

Seems, sure. Cameras typically get released twice a year and fewer and fewer cameras are coming out every year. It's a shrinking market.

I miss the pleasure of catching up. The transition from Phil Askey to the Amazon crew

There's never been an "amazon crew"

was just fine, even an improvement. But what's happened now?

If there has been a thread or two on a similar reaction, I've missed it, as I seldom visit this forum. I'd appreciate any pointers to such a thread so I might better understand what's going on. It's certainly not that I've lost interest in digital photography issues.

Digital photography is now mature, with little advancements.

 

[FrancoD]

I don't know many sites that are still the same or similar now to the way they were 20 years ago.

Do you ?

I used to visit Steve's Digicam a lot.

I haven't now for several years apart from once or twice a year.

Is that site really bad now ?

No,we both have changed.

 

[Docno]

DPR used to be the first site I'd visit every day to catch up. It was a distinct pleasure. However, for the past few weeks, it's changed -- for the worse, IMO. It looks more junky, more Amazon sales oriented

It's actually providing content to keep people coming here since digital cameras are nature and market is shrinking (see below )

, and reviews seem to be less frequent than they formerly were.

Seems, sure. Cameras typically get released twice a year and fewer and fewer cameras are coming out every year. It's a shrinking market.

I miss the pleasure of catching up. The transition from Phil Askey to the Amazon crew

There's never been an "amazon crew"

was just fine, even an improvement. But what's happened now?

If there has been a thread or two on a similar reaction, I've missed it, as I seldom visit this forum. I'd appreciate any pointers to such a thread so I might better understand what's going on. It's certainly not that I've lost interest in digital photography issues.

Digital photography is now mature, with little advancements.

I can think of a lot of FE lenses waiting for review and i’m sure that s the case for other mounts

 

[morepix]

DPR used to be the first site I'd visit every day to catch up. It was a distinct pleasure.

So I can see from the responses so far that DPR has changed because the world has changed. Fair enough. Since I can no longer say "distinct pleasure," guess I'll just have to adapt or go elsewhere. Thanks for the pokes.

--
David
pbase.com/morepix

 

[morepix]

There's never been an "amazon crew"

Well, that's news to me. Do you suppose the tooth fairy dispenses the paychecks each month.

 

[Scott Everett]

Hi David,

A few times a year, every year, for about the last 11 years (since DPReview was bought by Amazon), we see a post like this. And each time we do we try to invite users to open up about what exactly they want more of, less of, what they like and don't like. This time is no different, so I'd love to learn more about your perspective. Can you expand on what exactly you are referring to with each of the below descriptions? I've also shared a little perspective with you on each comment as someone who was a member like you for many many years before I started working here in 2011.

"looks more junky"

-Obviously this is one area where you are entitled to your opinion, It may be the current design doesn't work for you. But by any quantitative measure we have been slowly improving the UX of the site for years, and if you go look at previous designs it is not hard to see this. The forums have actually not changed all that much in functionality, but we've added a lot of features, mostly small, at the request of users. As for the homepage and content, we've primarily cleaned up the layout and focused on making it easier to scan on both desktop and mobile.

"Amazon Sales orientated"

Both before and after DPReview was purchased the site had the same basic array of ad slots, E-commerce links (buy boxes / links to stores). Obviously the look of the store links have evolved with the site, but they have remained about the same for over 7 years now.

"reviews seem to be less frequent"

Pretty much every year after the site was purchased we reviewed more products every year than the year prior. There are some outlier years where less products were launched, and in 2017 and 2018, there has been a drop in launches across the industry for sure. But we've sped up the reviews process a bunch and so are able to review products quicker than we were before, and we continue to refine our testing methods to ensure our ratings are more accurate than any other on the web, and improved upon our own benchmarks.

Overall, we are a evolving site and community in a contracting industry, so undoubtedly some things have changed. Our goal is simply to provide the most accurate, timely, and interesting photographic technology content on the web, and everything we do centers on that goal.

Feel free to PM me or reply here if you want to chat more about your thoughts.

Thanks,

Scott

 

[morepix]

Scott,

Thanks for your open response. My relationship with the site content has changed. In recent times the first thing I'd to do when I sat down at my computer was to scan DPR for items of interest. That has changed for me. I still come here to read the news and my favorite three or four forums, but with less frequency and less interest.

What gets in the way is that my appetite for the burgeoning field of digital photography hasn't followed the meal offered by DPR. For me, DPR used to be about (1) cameras, and (2) how to use them. Now I find a lot of material recommending best choices for soccer moms, bird watchers, students (!), etcetera, mobile phone cams/apps, drones, backpacks, video gear, yada yada. My side of the relationship has not followed the movements of the field covered by DPR. The question I should have asked is, what's happened to me? not what's happened to DPR?

Now I know, and now I have an answer to the re-framed question. Thank you for that. I remain a reader.

 

[Rick Knepper]

Hi David,

A few times a year, every year, for about the last 11 years (since DPReview was bought by Amazon), we see a post like this. And each time we do we try to invite users to open up about what exactly they want more of, less of, what they like and don't like. This time is no different, so I'd love to learn more about your perspective. Can you expand on what exactly you are referring to with each of the below descriptions? I've also shared a little perspective with you on each comment as someone who was a member like you for many many years before I started working here in 2011.

"looks more junky"

-Obviously this is one area where you are entitled to your opinion, It may be the current design doesn't work for you. But by any quantitative measure we have been slowly improving the UX of the site for years, and if you go look at previous designs it is not hard to see this. The forums have actually not changed all that much in functionality, but we've added a lot of features, mostly small, at the request of users. As for the homepage and content, we've primarily cleaned up the layout and focused on making it easier to scan on both desktop and mobile.

"Amazon Sales orientated"

Both before and after DPReview was purchased the site had the same basic array of ad slots, E-commerce links (buy boxes / links to stores). Obviously the look of the store links have evolved with the site, but they have remained about the same for over 7 years now.

"reviews seem to be less frequent"

Pretty much every year after the site was purchased we reviewed more products every year than the year prior. There are some outlier years where less products were launched, and in 2017 and 2018, there has been a drop in launches across the industry for sure. But we've sped up the reviews process a bunch and so are able to review products quicker than we were before, and we continue to refine our testing methods to ensure our ratings are more accurate than any other on the web, and improved upon our own benchmarks.

Overall, we are a evolving site and community in a contracting industry, so undoubtedly some things have changed. Our goal is simply to provide the most accurate, timely, and interesting photographic technology content on the web, and everything we do centers on that goal.

Feel free to PM me or reply here if you want to chat more about your thoughts.

Thanks,

Scott

 

[MarshallG]

. The speed of innovation in cameras has peaked.

Good thing Sony doesn’t pay attention to your prognostications.

 

[Scott Everett]

Hi Rick,

i just checked and I don’t have any PMs from you. Would you mind trying to send one again?

Thanks,

Scott

 

[MarshallG]

Hi Scott,

Your team writes some exceptional, detailed and useful articles. But your site has been carrying a some photography-related links which are more gossip than value. I think it distracts from the unique, high quality content you produce.

Thats just my opinion, of course.