DPReview.com to close

https://www.dpreview.com/news/5901145460/dpreview-com-to-close

by int_daniel • 3 years ago

845 374 3 years ago

PaulHoule7• 3 years ago

This is sad because the forums on that site have been a great help to me. For a long time I would use it as an example of why "forums aren't dead".

I can see though how the reviews might not be a viable business. My RSS reader learned not to show me many reviews about that site because I have a Sony, could care less about what new lenses are out for Nikon and Canon, and since I have a pretty good set of lenses I'd even feel overwhelmed keeping up with developments in the Sony world.

ragona2• 3 years ago

Dang, I'm actually surprisingly sad about this. DPReview is _the_ site for extremely detailed analysis of cameras. When I want to buy something I go through their report first, and it's always extremely informative.

It feels like this kind of layoff is part of an end of an era. Amazon used to NEVER cancel projects that customers were using. They just straight up Did. Not. Do. It. I once had to get approval from my VP's VP because we wanted to turn off a product with eleven daily users. 11. The number after ten.

A whole lot more than eleven people used DPReview, and they provided a service that I'm not sure is well replicated from other sources. A loss for the internet, and it makes me sad that these kinds of quasi-public-good projects are getting canned across the industry.

I get that big companies are not retirement homes for nerds but... with as much profit as the profit centers bring in, there was a little wiggle room for passion projects. Now it feels like that wiggle room is being squeezed right out of the industry as we all brace for the recession that hasn't quite shown up yet.

fetus8• 3 years ago

You're spot on, this is _THE_SITE for extremely detailed analysis of of cameras/lenses/etc. I have no idea what will end up filling the gap of losing something like this.

I hope Chris and Jordan continue on their Youtube journey and make the content they've been making, but man, there's still a need for a detailed text based site with super indepth info about modern camera equipment.

Such a bummer.

oktwtf• 3 years ago

While I agree that there is some valuable content on the site, there are certainly others to fill in the spots...

You want detailed look into equipment? Checkout Ken Rockwell's site[0], or byThom[1]

[0] https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/reviews.htm [1]: https://bythom.com/reviews--books/index.html

dhucerbin• 3 years ago

There’s still https://www.lenstip.com/. English version of Polish site optyczne.pl. What’s funny, team from this site criticized dpreview for being not scientific enough.

throw0101b• 3 years ago

I hope Chris and Jordan continue on their Youtube journey […]

Joining PetaPixel in May:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6T3qWI2c-Y

* https://petapixel.com/2023/03/21/chris-niccolls-and-jordan-d...

And their "The end of DPReview" video:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLikDUacsC8

They'll planning a few 'closing videos' before things are completely shutdown.

75dvtwin3• 3 years ago

petapixel, flickr groups there is 500px (this is more image oriented)

100asa -- for more professional photographers, and

photrio.com for the film camera, and film-development crowd.

I do not like petapixel -- because they ask me to register with google or discuss not interested in any of those...

I am surprised that dpreview was owned by Amazon. Never knew about this.

giobox2• 3 years ago

I do think times have changed though, DPReviews fortunes arguably have mirrored the fortunes of the ILC (interchangeable lens camera) market. The site (along with flickr.com...) was a daily visit for me 15 years ago at the height of the DSLR boom, but I honestly now can't remember the last time I checked.

ILC/DSLR annual sales volume peaked in ~2010 I believe, and has rapidly declined ever since really, another victim of the rapid pace of improvement in smartphones. If we are being blunt, Amazon bought dpreview to use as a sales funnel for DSLRs and cameras, which they simply don't sell so much of anymore. A sad day though.

I know dpreview covers cameras beyond ILCs, but ILC reviews where always by far the most popular content on the site - in the DSLR boom/Phil Askey years it simply was the gold standard in DSLR reviews. I still remember pouring over the classic battle between Canon's 300D and Nikon's D70 for entry level 6mp DSLR supremacy constantly on dpreview circa 2003/4.

asdff14• 3 years ago

The thing is, there's another boom currently going on. The mirrorless boom, and this site is the gold standard for that one as well. Now there is no home, and its much harder to gleam the differences that are actually meaningful between these many mirrorless cameras (and new dslrs that do get made).

pjc50• 3 years ago

Gloomy prediction: based on Samsung Moongate, the next logical step after the smartphone camera replacing the DSLR is AI replacing the smartphone camera. Or at least substituting for underlying camera quality. Take a 10MP image and have the AI fill in the detail. Or remove detail (see the google advert for editing people out of your holiday photos). Or put in some detail that wasn't there.

Zak6• 3 years ago

Consumer fixed-lens cameras are much more dead as a market than ILCs, and those made up the bulk of camera sales. Almost everyone who isn't doing photography as a profession or serious hobby is satisfied with smartphone cameras now.

taude• 3 years ago

Yeup, I used to be a regular at dpreview a long time ago, certainly before I bought my first DSR the Canon 20d. But even before that when I was still buying point-and-shoots.

I probably haven't been back since about 2014, though, when I upgraded to a Fuji XT mirrorless system, which I haven't even used in five or six years now....

visarga3• 3 years ago

Hey there, been reading the same page around the same time. The 300D was the last DSLR I bought not because it was bad, but because it was so good. Even 15 years later phones could not compare.

vwoolf• 3 years ago

I'm seeing a lot of people discussing sales numbers; here is one article showing the decline in terms of both lens and interchangeable lens cameras shipped: https://bythom.com/newsviews/real-camera-economics.html.

Lenses appear to have declined by about 66% from 2012 to 2022. Cameras, by a little under 50%.

This decline makes sense to me. I have a Fuji XT4 which I like a lot, but, also, starting around the iPhone 13, phones got really good. Their automatic exposure in sunlight, for example, is often (not always) great. At the same time, the software quality in pretty much all cameras leaves much to be desired: I can go on a rant about the number of clicks necessary to wirelessly transfer from camera to phone but would rather not, and people have been ranting about that topic for at least a decade.

RobotToaster• 3 years ago

I would've thought with everyone wanting to be youtubers camera sales would've picked up.

ghaff• 3 years ago

I still use my Fujifilm XE-3 from time to time but use my Canon DSLR rarely--mostly for situations that benefit from very wide angle or telephoto lenses. And, yeah, if I'm going on a trip where I'm mostly only going to take some snaps, much less a local hike, I'll almost certainly just take my smartphone. And this is someone who still has a Flickr Pro subscription and used to spend many many hours in the darkroom.

I can imagine buying a new Fujifilm body but not sure I can imagine getting a new Canon at least so long as my current one works.

vvrm• 3 years ago

another victim of the rapid pace of improvement in smartphones

It's not just the pace of improvement, but also the marketing spin. I find the strengths of smartphone camera and ILCs pretty complementary. Smartphone cameras work pretty well outdoors where there is enough light. DSLR and mirroless are hard to beat indoors in low light conditions. Coincidentally it is also easier to find your ILC indoors at home when you need it, rather than lugging it around on a hike. When we didn't have kids, we used to spend more time outdoors and so most of our memorable pictures are from a phone. Now that we have restless young kids and are spending more time indoors, almost all of the memorable photos are from a mirrorless camera. But the marketing spin makes it seem like ILCs are completely redundant.

novok• 3 years ago

What I don't get is why not spin off vs. just close?

Aeolun• 3 years ago

Not sure, I bought my camera from Amazon a few months ago as a result of dpreviews.

hulitu• 3 years ago

another victim of the rapid pace of improvement in smartphones

The only think which improved on smartphones was the marketing. Cameras on smartphones are still crap. (see Samsung moon shots).

Zak6• 3 years ago

It's weird they plan to shut the site down instead of just leaving it up with its existing content. Paying writers and camera reviewers is expensive, but hosting the site isn't (when you're Amazon).

saurik• 3 years ago

Amazon used to NEVER cancel projects that customers were using. They just straight up Did. Not. Do. It.

FWIW, Amazon killed Amazon Flexible Payments in 2015. They ostensibly replaced it with Amazon Pay, but they didn't offer any kind of migration path for existing users/accounts (which felt very much like a Google thing to do) and, frankly, the services were fundamentally different: the former was more like a better version of PayPal, while the latter is more like a worse version of Stripe.

I had a lot of contact with the team as this happened as I was their biggest user on mobile devices for years, and they begged me to move to their new product, but they were really screwing me by shutting down the old service in the way they did--deleting the account history and customer connections rather than just figuring out a new way to use them--and the new service not only comparatively sucked but was way more expensive (trying to command the Stripe premium, forcing me to rely solely on PayPal, which is much cheaper for small payments if you ask for their micropayments pricing).

But like, Amazon Flexible Payments was amazing. They seriously had a pricing model that automatically scaled into separate buckets all the way down to tiny tiny tiny fractions of a single cent (on which they changed like 25% with no fixed component) when using your balance, while supporting all of the standard use cases for large ($12+) payments that Stripe is good at, having the API prowess of AWS attached to the flexibility of PayPal but using your Amazon.com account's payment information. But like, it had seemed as if they internally lost all the engineers working on that project and could no longer fix even basic things like their email template. It definitely soured the otherwise excellent long-term support experience I've had with Amazon services.

ragona2• 3 years ago

Yeah I'm sure there are counter-examples. My experience is that I worked at Amazon from 2012-2020, and I recall trying to shut down a project in maybe 2013 and it was _incredibly_ tricky.

Clamchop2• 3 years ago

They ran an online discounted fashion outlet called MyHabit some years ago. I used it often and I'm sure there were at least ten more like me.

But they shuttered it.

twoWhlsGud2• 3 years ago

Indeed. The interchangeable lens camera market has stabilized (on a revenue basis at least), but it seems unlikely to ever again be a fast growing consumer market. That said, we're talking about a pretty affluent community of users. Keeping the site up in some basic way would have been a relatively cheap way to keep generating the positive brand image the site generated in that community.

I wasn't exactly overflowing with happy thoughts about Amazon before this move, but the sudden shutdown isn't helping. I suppose their exec staff is doing us a favor by reminding us all to support more regulation of behemoths like these...

D13Fd• 3 years ago

What regulation would have helped here? “No buying a website with the intent to develop it but then changing your mind”?

astrostl• 3 years ago

Sites like DigLloyd ($), PhillipReeve, FredMiranda, ReidReviews ($), and LensTip are still ticking and far more detailed in their analysis. Note the drift toward individuals and sometimes payments (which seem to be sufficiently-accepted). A ton of content has shifted toward YouTube as well.

gist• 3 years ago

I used to visit this site a great deal but I haven't been there in years. I don't even know how many years.

Other than generally Amazon doing layoffs my guess is interest in equipment that they talk about has dropped greatly and specifically because of smartphone cameras (Iphone in particular in my case). I have an expensive Sony Camera (several thousand for the body with a $2000 lens and other lenses) and haven't used it in years. I just use the Iphone. And I am someone that had a darkroom years ago and really enjoyed photography (and made money selling pictures even). It was a big deal to me to take pictures. But it was more exclusive since most people didn't have a professional camera.

Photography has changed in the sense that back when I did and enjoyed it there weren't any digital aids or easy ways to make pictures look good. Or be able to just take as many pictures as you wanted in all sorts of light conditions. And that was actually part of the fun for me. I mean even my Sony camera can't fix pictures like the iphone can on the fly.

The iphone (I've had all of them now an iphone 14 pro max is what I use) is just good enough to provide enjoyment.

asdff14• 3 years ago

The thing with this website is that it is one of those leave it until you need it situations. 10 years ago or so I was in the market for a new digital camera, and used their site heavily during that search. Of course, being a prosumer camera, it still takes great photos 10 years later, so I haven't been in the market.

There was a time where upgrading your digital camera constantly was necessary, because sensors at the time struggled in low light and you saw some really big gains for a while especially in the entry level. That said, even a 2005 5dmk1 is still a great camera today as elderly as it is compared to any other piece of consumer technology, and blowing up its 12 mega pixels into a huge print down the side of a building will probably still look a lot better than doing the same with a new phone with twice as many pixels. Having pro cameras last a long time of course hurts sites that favor a customer base that is constantly changing gear and checking in.

dangerboysteve• 3 years ago

I was in the same boat. Large Canon Full frame with IL lenses. What got me in the end was the bulk and the worry about the camera being stolen, broken, and then dealing with the media. I find I take a lot more photos all the time with my iPhone 13 Pro Max as I always have it with me.

ben77992• 3 years ago

I think this is a more common thing than people realize, people who have quite a bit of expensive camera gear and have been into the whole thing since the film days but yet are simultaneously really happy with a smartphone.

For me multi-lens phone cameras was the thing that really tilted things. I know initially I was infatuated with SLRs and DSLRs because of the big fancy lenses, especially the long ones out beyond 200mm.

But over time I realized the vast majority of my favorite photos were all getting taken with lenses < 100mm in focal length, and I simultaneously got bored with the whole "bokeh" stuff and narrow depth of field. That's what made it so hard to avoid using the phone more and more often.. a super wide, a moderate wide, and a short telephoto cover so much.

It can be hard to argue against a good smartphone + a small drone as a travel photography kit.

tylerhannan• 3 years ago

DPReview has been a constant companion for the photography nerd for a LONG time now. It will be missed.

jeffbee• 3 years ago

Damn, I did not know this was part of Amazon. I assumed it essentially printed money from affiliate links.

tonymet• 3 years ago

This is likely a deliberate blow to Google. Web search for detailed camera reviews will suffer . The remnant traffic will hit Amazon Com product page.

jerrac• 3 years ago

That stinks. I was just using them in the past few weeks researching new lenses.

ChrisMarshallNY• 3 years ago

This was one of the best sites ever, if you were into photography, or worked at an imaging company (both, in my case).

I'll miss their detailed analyses.

speg• 3 years ago

I wonder if this will affect the YouTube channel I love, Chris and Jordan!

just reading the petapixel article: it does :(

andrewmunsell• 3 years ago

Coincidentally, Petapixel is bringing Chris and Jordan on under their YouTube channel, so they will be back in May

PreInternet01• 3 years ago

Dpreview.com died when they got taken over by Amazon. Maybe the forums were worthwhile for a while after that, but the main site sure wasn't. Bigcorps just don't get what makes their acquisition targets tick.

And it's not the first time that a niche-expertise site was killed by a conglomerate. I'm still pretty salty about Google strangling Zagat, to mention just one similar case.

TheRealPomax3• 3 years ago

Of course they get what makes them tick. But they also don't care what makes them tick, they care about whether they generate (temporary) income. The biggest bigcorps don't even care what the thing itself is about, they just look at "what's the return if we buy it, and if so, what will make us more money: keep running it, dismantle it and use parts of it to improve other parts of our company, or shut it down once the revenue dries up".

Bigcorp operate like ant colonies, and run based on what's best for them. It's literally the defining aspect that separates small business from big business. In the former, people are in control. In the latter, the business is in control.

acadapter• 3 years ago

Why is so much of the good stuff from the internet disappearing without being replaced?

EdgeExplorer• 3 years ago

- Great thing gets created by passionate, independent team

- Thing becomes popular

- Megacorp takes notice and offers eye-popping amount of money to acquire thing (or doesn't have to because the founders are in over their heads anyway with how popular thing has become)

- Megacorp shuts down thing because it is a distraction from their other things which are printing unimaginable amounts of money

- Rinse and repeat

Consolidation of the entire internet into the hands of a few megacorps isn't just a problem because of their outsized influence.

readthenotes1• 3 years ago

people wont pay for good when mediocre is there for free

asdff14• 3 years ago

Sites like these are almost like living fossils. They evolved in a completely different environment than today, and therefore nothing like them can evolve again today. When it first started, DP review was just doing what plenty of other blogs were doing in terms of longform, informationally dense content, because when the founders looked around at similar stuff to compare from that's what they saw, iterated on, and created.

Today, the environment is different. If you want to get an audience on your stuff today, you aren't going to make a dpreview or a kenrockwell.com, because when you look around you don't see that stuff very much. You see seoified crap articles, and information drip fed over 20 mins on youtube with advertising in between. Such is the game today and how it must be played if you are to receive any views at all and get that initial userbase.

dhbanes2• 3 years ago

Ken Rockwell invented the use of SEO crap content in this space to sell cameras, lenses, and accessories.

kwertyoowiyop• 3 years ago

Very sad. I remember how happy and impressed I was when I first visited this site many years ago. It was a true pearl hidden among all the low-quality links that searching for "camera reviews" produced.

haunter• 3 years ago

Amazon is the worst

PaulHoule7• 3 years ago

After 2 day delivery became 5 day delivery I canceled my Prime. (I get deliveries from Japan faster than I get them from a warehouse in the next state.) I am in the middle of cancelling all my recurring bills from AMZN (Pillpack, AWS) and I recommend that you do the same. I can't wait to hear them say on CNBC that Prime cancellations exceeded additions.

noncoml2• 3 years ago

Same here. After 15 years I cancelled it.

Also their market is now full of counterfeit and Chinese crap that you can buy cheaper on AliExpress.

BHPhotovideo is the place I do most of my electronics shopping these days.

myalphabet2• 3 years ago

After 2 day delivery became 5 day delivery

Where do you live? I hear this repeated on HN a lot, but every person I know IRL doesn't have this problem (ie family spread across multiple states). Hell, in the last ~2 years, other than high-demand stuff in the pandemic like Clorox wipes, most of my orders have been _next_ day delivery, nevermind 5 days.

macintux• 3 years ago

Agreed. If I'm buying anything of value online, I want to buy from someone who actually understands and cares about what they're selling.

I'll happily pay a bit more for the ability to shop and learn and get product support.

ergonaught• 3 years ago

Major bummer. What a great resource.

skilled• 3 years ago

Wait what? How is it possible considering that the site is one of the most well-known resources for camera/lens reviews?

"The site will remain active until April 10, and the editorial team is still working on reviews and looking forward to delivering some of our best-ever content. "

Are they taking it offline too?

avrionov• 3 years ago

The site will be locked, with no further updates made after April 10th 2023. The site will be available in read-only mode for a limited period afterwards.

beezle• 3 years ago

Is Bezos also going to try to have it removed from Archive.org?

kmos17• 3 years ago

Very sad to hear this, such a gem of a site with so much in depth professional camera reviews.

I can't imagine this even registers anywhere on Amazon's financial statements, such lack of care for the commons to decide to just close this down (not that I'd except anything more really of that company).

jollyllama4• 3 years ago

This is somewhat of a shock. Hopefully this does not bode ill for the future of camera technology.

jvolkman• 3 years ago

It's Amazon's Reader moment.

mikece• 3 years ago

I really hope Amazon considers spinning off DPreivew.

int_daniel• 3 years ago

With all the data that is available on DPReview one could have made a nice product. Something like the IMDB for movies or Discogs for music releases. It is sad to see that it should just be closed down …

codersfocus5• 3 years ago

I'm working on something similar to that (https://cameralenspicker.com)

If they're really gonna shut down, I'd better backup their site and maybe use an AI summarized version of their content for my site.

petergreen5• 3 years ago

I'm actually proposing that we do!

okasaki• 3 years ago

Wow, that sucks. I had a deep parasocial relationship with Chris and Jordan. Hope they continue their youtube content somewhere else.

Lammy3• 3 years ago

TIL they've been owned by Amazon since 2007 https://www.dpreview.com/articles/1690663587/amazonacquiresd...

Will miss this site a lot :(

steveBK123• 3 years ago

Been a reader for all 25 years, sad.

It has been slowly dying since AMZN purchase, and I wonder why they did in first place.. maybe were paying too much out to DPR in affiliate link income? lol.

The larger problem is long-form written word reviews are dead due to the ad monetization models favoring video content. So now we all need to sit through 40min YouTube videos of blathering.

It does also seem like yet another signal that FAANG is killing off all the weird "how does that make any money" side projects they've collected over the last 10-15 years.

codersfocus5• 3 years ago

I am shocked. I'm about to release (...well it's technically released but not yet finished) a product in the photography space, cameralenspicker.com. I saw DPReview as the #1 "competitor" in the space, and reading this is well... like hearing your #1 competitor is dead. It really makes me wonder where this industry is headed if they're shutting down.

Ciantic• 3 years ago

This is one of the sites I still looked on camera reviews, sad to see this go. I never really cared for "community" reviews, or the user generated content, but the ones made by their team. I wonder what the review team is going to do? Usually how these end up is that those old habits are hard to kill, and the review team will return if not with the same name then under different name. I don't know how they owned things, but best would be to give out the site for their team, remove all the community features etc.

dcanelhas• 3 years ago

Their test scene and side-by-side comparison across camera settings was a great feature. I would never have purchased any of my standalone cameras if it hadn't been for DPReview.

Oras• 3 years ago

Sad news, this was my favourite site 15 years ago when I was into photography. It was the only website that you can read clear spec about cameras and see a gallery of photos taken by it.

xlii• 3 years ago

Sucks. Got a great advice on the camera there. Loved the YT videos. I doubt it'll be the end, though, as there seems that there's still need for such site (or at least I hope so).

The_Colonel• 3 years ago

Quite shocking, why not just sell it or cut staff. The site has to have significant monetary value.

sixQuarks• 3 years ago

They have an estimated 5.2 million unique visitors per month. It's definitely still a valuable publication, it's crazy they are shutting it down.

themagician• 3 years ago

And it’s in a segment with high cost, high margin products. Site is worth millions in terms of ad revenue and/or affiliate income alone.

Jiejeing• 3 years ago

That hurts a lot, I got in way past the point where it was acquired by amazon, but the forums were always a very nice place to interact (with its lots of weird and single-focused people, as every forum, that gives it charm). The reviews for most cameras made in the last 20 years were invaluable and very detailed, although lately they certainly struggled to maintain the quantity of content they put out in the past.

I cannot imagine that cutting the maybe 30 people (tops) required to maintain the site and push content will make a difference in Amazon revenue; but removing this great online resource is sure to sadden thousands of users.

gannonburgett3• 3 years ago

Former DPReview News Editor (who left after getting news of this back on January 18th) here: There were 8-10 members of the editorial team that were full time and a small group of freelancers. Add in about 8-10 more devs, who cycled in and out for the most part. So, 15-18 people, tops. By my rough math once, our entire operating cost for the year was about 10-12 minutes worth of Amazon revenue.

codersfocus5• 3 years ago

Is it true that they're not going to sell the assets, and just shut everything down? If I had connections to an investment banker, I'd be trying to see if there's an in with Amazon...

gannonburgett3• 3 years ago

Worth noting this math is based on estimated numbers from what I roughly knew people’s salaries were and what server costs were roughly estimated at. I had no first-hand knowledge of the numbers, as I wasn’t allowed to view that info as a contractor.

bluedino• 3 years ago

I wonder if the problem is they are shutting down 50 other sites that are similar to this, for other types of products. Cutting 1 doesn't make much of a diffference but cutting 50 certainly does.

acomjean2• 3 years ago

Shame.

It’s probably hard as digital cameras have been replaced quite a bit by phones. I used that sight for many point and shoot camera purchases. The reviews were good and it had a good summary of all the cameras that were out there.

There’s still the “Fred Miranda” board, but that’s more user lens reviews and a little dated. That site has shifted to focus on photos more than gear, which makes sense.

http://www.fredmiranda.com/reviews/

prpl• 3 years ago

Been reading since 2008 or so, after I started playing around with old DSLRs and posited an upgrade to a D200. Will be a ad to see it go. One of the few websites I still check daily.

Hopefully somebody builds an archive at least.

msie• 3 years ago

Damn, the forums were useful in debugging some problems I had with old inkjet paper. Got a nice history lesson about old HP papers.

_gtly• 3 years ago

dpreview had a great feature which is hard to find elsewhere: You could see at a glance at what date each manufacturer released each model of their hardware. This was so useful because you could then predict when new releases would come out and you'd get a sense of what was the cutting edge. At a glance you'd know which models were the "latest". I will miss this! Making sense of models of hardware from different makers is very time consuming.

Wondering if anyone knows an alternative site for this...

colanderman• 3 years ago

And compare features between models to see actually what has changed with each revision.

m3kw9• 3 years ago

The photos now are so good now that only visual-Phillies will be interested in better photos. When I buy a SLR or a phone, near perfect photos are expected

klodolph2• 3 years ago

There are still significant gaps when it comes to usability for streaming video.

bmarquez2• 3 years ago

RIP. I'm really sad about this, and it's actually something that finally makes me question the Amazon monopoly. Amazon spends so much money on meh (IMO) Prime Video content yet can't keep this site online as an archive.

I know that phone cameras have taken over the market in the last decade. For wide-angle lenses, they're great, but iPhones can't quite keep up (yet) with 200-300mm telephotos so I still browsed the site regularly.

I'm sure some YouTubers might pick up the slack but I hate still camera YouTube reviews because you can't download the files or check image quality for yourself (DPR has this studio scene where you could compare image quality at 100% side-by-side with different cameras at different ISO's).

Topgamer7• 3 years ago

THIS makes you question it? Not any of these:

- Blatantly ripping off products listed on their site, using sales data from those products as decision making on which products to steal.

- The monopolization of every market they enter

- Their search listings are garbage, amazon centric and filled with junk

- Anti-competitive practices such as pricing agreements for products on amazon, when listed on websites other than amazon

- They downright treat their employee's as serfs, nearly across the board.

bmarquez2• 3 years ago

As an end user, a lot of Amazon's criticisms are invisible to consumers.

- Amazon screws up and sends a poorly packaged product which is damaged? They just ship another one.

- Amazon starts creating "Amazon Basics" branded items? Either I buy it if it's a good price, or don't if it's not. Amazon Basics actually helps fight against the flood of cheap Chinese junk by creating a branded product of acceptable quality.

Stuff like anti-competitive practices or poor treatment of employees isn't even noticed by most consumers. This isn't like Walmart where both the customer experience and the corporate experience are equally poor.

Taking away existing products (like DPR) or slow shipment of items DOES visibly affect the average consumer.

calo_star• 3 years ago

I'm rather sure that Amazon is a company that strictly makes the world a worse place.

sitkack• 3 years ago

Would it be possible to freeze the site in place? Is it archived by the IA and the Wayback Machine?

asdff14• 3 years ago

Here's a 2007 article from when they were acquired by Amazon. It seems at the time this made sense. Jeff Bezos identified the website as the source of truth in the digital camera field and sought to own that source and have it direct customers to his website. The founders were naturally overwhelmed and busy as founders of any company are, and were promised resources to make their jobs easier and let them build out the features they wanted (anyone know what these were? as far as I know dpreview has been about the same as its always been in terms of features).

https://www.dpreview.com/articles/1690663587/amazonacquiresd...

Today, maybe it no longer makes sense from Amazon to hold onto dpreview. Maybe the source of truth for most people has moved on from high quality texual sources, to other sources. Perhaps these are youtubers who amazon supplies affiliate links instead in order to capture this market. It goes to show to never trust the hand that feeds you to look out for you, you can and will be cut once its deemed convenient and prudent, and the larger the company you hitch your wagon on the more likely are they to behave like a cold large company.

pcurve• 3 years ago

I cannot believe that was 16 years ago!

ckozlowski• 3 years ago

Jeff Bezos identified the website as the source of truth in the digital camera field and sought to own that source and have it direct customers to his website.

I wonder if that's the key point. It was Jeff's project, and like Alexa, is no longer protected now that he's no longer there.

eddiewithzato• 3 years ago

The rise of youtube is the cause to me. Websites that specialize in niches are not as profitable since Youtube pays so much better due to their ads. Along with the huge userbase and easy content search.

Today people go to youtube first for reviews

calme_toi• 3 years ago

It's my go-to site before buying any camera related stuff.

But I guess it's not making any money for Amazon.

Do you know what kind of website would make money?

The buzzfeed style equipments websites. Those full of lists of top 10 best vlog/instagram cameras/tripods. Each item on the list starts with some affiliated links, beneath them are some bullets of pros cons, and every couple of graphs there is a google ads.

I feel exhausted reading them.

Please can anyone recommend alternatives?

nunez3• 3 years ago

That's what the people want.

Reading is a dying art. No time; everyone is too busy and the Internet is too vast. It's all about videos and twitter-sized text.

mrandish2• 3 years ago

Wow... I've been reading their comprehensive reviews and news for over 15 years. DPR got me into DSLR videography as a hobby which I've spent well over $10k on – much of it at Amazon. This really sucks as I don't know of another source I consider as authoritative for objective, thorough reviews and analysis of not only product but technologies and trends.

Super disappointed in Amazon for not at least keeping the 25 years of content online. If nothing else, recent reviews will be valuable for another 1 to 2 years and instructional content for at least 5 years. A bigger loss is that the overall site content documents much of the first 25 years of serious digital photography – an important and unique historical record due to the consistency of the editorial focus and review format. And Internet Archive is unlikely to capture it well due to so much CMS-based chart and hi-res RAW content in test reviews.

(BTW, I don't agree with those saying mobile photography/videography has (or will soon) make DSLR/mirrorless irrelevant. As useful & impressive as mobile imaging is, larger formats and interchangeable lenses still enable important capabilities for pros, semi-pros and serious hobbyists that mobile can't.)

solarmist• 3 years ago

It’ll never be irrelevant, but like medium format it’ll become niche. Even more heavily skewed to professionals.

So 10x-100x smaller than in photography’s hay day. (My guess is 1980-2000’s.)

digitallyfree3• 3 years ago

This really is an issue with many online magazines/boards/etc. with a treasure trove of information that shut down on a whim. I understand that continuing to operate the site and produce content isn't profitable, but the cost of running an official read-only archive is a drop in the bucket for the corp.

Having a third party archive and distribute such a large amount of copyrighted content also starts to get legally iffy. When the Bioware RPG forums shut down there was a lot of debate from the users on the best ways to save the content and distribute it in a legal fashion. There are movies and shows out there which were written off by the studios and are only available illegally. Honestly the official owner should take the initiative and ensure that future generations can enjoy the content - but of course they don't care and will just move on to other ventures.

riversflow• 3 years ago

I don't agree with those saying mobile photography/videography has (or will soon) make DSLR/mirrorless irrelevant.

I like to go backpacking. I used to always take my Full Frame Camera and a couple of lenses, after several years of going with the same crew, they finally convinced me that I should just leave the extra pounds behind and use my phone.

I won't do it again. The difference in the image quality, if you actually look at it, and not just scroll it, is night and day, and from my understanding of optics there is no way that it will ever be comparable.

In my personal opinion if you are trying to make photographic art, to really capture beauty, a smartphone camera is incredibly limiting. You can do it, just like you can make art with a disposable camera, however the rendering is too utilitarian and the ability to capture fine details will always be lacking. You can get moments quite well, perhaps even better than a ILC, I find "Live" photos particularly charming, and moments can be very beautiful. But again, my subjective opinion on aesthetics is that to capture things that are already very beautiful in their own right, like a landscape at sunset, a waterfall, or a Stag in the woods require fairly precise equipment–not algorithmic de-noising.

I am extremely sad about DPReview closing, it is an extremely valuable resource for comparing lenses. I will forever hold this against Amazon.

JenrHywy4• 3 years ago

I find something like the Ricoh GR III a great compromise - APS-C sensor, brilliantly sharp lens, tons of control, in the body of a small P&S.

stephen_g3• 3 years ago

Yeah, I agree with this. Last big trip I did, I brought my heavy full frame camera but still took a few hundred photos with my smartphone.

The iPhone photos (about 1 year old iPhone Pro) look fine, and are a great documentation of a lot of the interesting things I saw but which I didn't care to take pictures with the SLR (interesting things out the train window, shops and restaurants I went to, random things on the street, etc.). The SLR pictures are just something else though, and I had the eight or so best of them printed in large format to hang on the wall after I processed them, and I also show them to people on my iPad.

I guess the phone photos are all most people care to take, and that's fine. But I wouldn't just take a phone because I do want to actually make that art, and it really does make an incredible difference. I showed somebody some of the processed DLSR photos on the iPad and they were confused, thinking they were just iPhone photos I'd taken, saying "Why are these, like, good?". There's just something about a real lens and a full frame sensor that even non-photographers can immediately spot.

petergreen5• 3 years ago

screw amazon, lets keep it ourselves! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35284510

nunez3• 3 years ago

Wow; had no idea that Amazon purchased DPreview. End of an era.

twen_ty• 3 years ago

Checks date - it's not April 1st. This is incredibly sad - and also makes me angry how big corporations like Amazon can destroy communities just like that.

DPReview wasn't just about in-depth camera reviews which they pioneered and excelled at but also about the forums where photographers of all level of skills and interests would come together to share their passion and thoughts. This more than anything else would be a massive loss.

What's next? IMDB?

marricks• 3 years ago

This is one of the first review sites I got into, and really set the standard for what I came to expect from reviews. I fell into and out of photography a lot but I was always left wanting... this, exactly this in whatever other tech things I was interested in.

I learned a lot reading the review, and trusted them a lot. I just recommended them to a sibling a week ago for a camera rental. These days I don't get emotional or attached to websites (or companies) but this one hits, and hard.

BooneJS• 3 years ago

dpreview was my main source for getting into photography. I was a faithful reader for many years.

TheRealPomax3• 3 years ago

I assume a full site mirror will be submitted to the @internetarchive? Because it would be insane to pull 25 years of detailed information that cannot easily be found elsewhere off the internet just because your dad doesn't want you living at home anymore.

blagie2• 3 years ago

Probably not. This is an incredible knee jerk. It's closing with 2-3 weeks notice.

This does not reflect well on Amazon. This could be sold, spun out, archived, given back to the founders, or many other things. 20 days is not enough time to do anything worthwhile, though.

TheRealPomax3• 3 years ago

Small note: this doesn't reflect on Amazon. Barely anyone knew Amazon owns them, and once the site's gone, no one who didn't use dpreview will look unfavourably at Amazon for it. This was a great website that most of the world didn't use which is why Amazon can just pull the plug with literally no repercussions =(

superkuh• 3 years ago

Not them. But the archive team have been made aware and are gathering in #dprived on hackint IRC.

pabs36• 3 years ago

https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/DPReview

petergreen5• 3 years ago

I'm suggesting "we do it ourselves" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35284510

tmalsburg2• 3 years ago

I learned a lot from DPReview about photography, but I also learned a surprising amount from them about what excellent writing looks like. Sometimes I read long reviews about cameras that I wasn't even interested in just because the writing was so good.

noveltyaccount• 3 years ago

I was just thinking about this site the other day. I was on a trip with an older DSLR Nikon D3200 and a Samsung S21 Ultra. Most of the time I had to look at metadata to tell which photos came from which, a fact that I found staggering. I thought back to how critical DP Review was 10–15 years ago and how much our phone cameras have closed that gap. Remarkable.

nunez3• 3 years ago

100%.

I stopped using SLRs back in 2010 or so. Phone cameras weren't good enough to surpass them by then, but I knew that this is the direction that everyone was going and lugging around a camera while traveling was a pain.

Fast-forward to today, where you can get excellent photos and videos in almost all light conditions thanks to huge advances in computational photography and bigger lenses.

The only advantage that SLRs bring are interchangeable lenses. Not sure how strong that moat will hold up though.

gesman• 3 years ago

I'm sure there would be a line-up of good-willing buyer(s) for DPREVIEW.

This is an exceptional portal with second-to-none depth of photo technology coverage.

It feels like something is missing in "we're closing" message. Cost is not the problem these days.

Pending lawsuits?

Blackmail from deep pocket disgruntled vendor?

anonu• 3 years ago

Goes to show nothing lasts forever. Sites like dpreview were great, but probably not monetizing like it did in the earlier days of the web. People get their superficial reviews from Amazon product pages and silly "top 10" sites and don't really care for the indepth analysis.

outofpaper2• 3 years ago

It's a real pity that Amazon isn't allowing the team to take the site and continue to manage it. Crazy that in these times it makes more sense to lay off and shut down a site like DPreview.

jillesvangurp• 3 years ago

Sad news. I've never bought a digital camera without first checking that website. Invaluable resource. I've been following their youtube channel as well for a few years as well and they just did an episode on this: : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLikDUacsC8

This does make you wonder if this was the only possible outcome for Amazon or whether they are just too indifferent/lazy to make an effort to sell this to somebody else. I bet there would have been interested parties that could have taken over. It's the kind of bean counter move where the effort of finding out the answer to that question was balanced against the potential benefits (millions?) and disregarded for some reason. I don't buy the notion that this was not salvageable. It's an institute and a great brand with a loyal following. That has got to be worth something.

From the sounds of it, not all is lost, the two people behind the youtube channel sound like they will just continue on their own. They grew the channel to 400K+ subscribers. So that's not nothing. I hope Amazon does the right thing with the content of dpreview.

visarga3• 3 years ago

Probably it was all to report reduction in headcount.

Espressosaurus5• 3 years ago

This was always the likely outcome given the decline in camera sales. They're not going to be making money hand over fist with hockey-stick growth, which is what it takes to justify your existence at a company like Amazon.

I'm surprised they ever bought DP Review in the first place. As a purchase it makes no sense for a company like Amazon.

ge0rg2• 3 years ago

This is so ffffing sad to read. I've only recently become an active user of the forum, as it's the last island of active Samsung NX mirrorless camera users (some of which run Linux), and it was really great to have a polite and civil discourse with other nerds sharing the hobby.

freeAgent• 3 years ago

That reminds me of another great loss. I wish Samsung hadn’t ended the NX line. The NX1 was an amazing camera and Tizen was adapted perfectly for it IMO.

egorfine• 3 years ago

This is incredible.

Have we really come to an era where so few people care about cameras and taking good pictures that it warrants a shutdown of _the_ camera review site?

valarauko3• 3 years ago

Lots of people here saying they used to visit this site regularly. I'm curious as to what they got out of it (some people say they used to visit the site daily). I can see the value when you're looking to buy a camera, and reading reviews makes sense to me in that very narrow context. Besides that, why visit a camera review site daily? How frequently were people buying cameras? Professional photographers, sure, I can see the appeal.

mihaaly• 3 years ago

Daily is unrealistic - how many days of a year they have update for a particular interest? - but regularly when you are interested in cameras, following product news even if you are not buying right now, or soon, it is good. To be informed! I did so several years ago (once or more per week). Now... not so much. Less time for photography. If I had more time, this could have been different.

valarauko3• 3 years ago

I mean, I kind of get it. Back when I was looking to buy a camera, I was on the site quite a bit.

For me, the equivalent place to hang out, read reviews or discuss techniques were the forums of home-barista.com in the late 2010s. Lots of coffee innovations now commonplace came from there. I wasn't necessarily looking to buy an espresso machine or a grinder, but it felt like a place where people more knowledgeable than me in an interest of mine were pushing the boundaries, out in the open.

throwaway2905• 3 years ago

Research before buying, troubleshooting after buying. I'm not a pro but a diehard enthusiast so most months I don't visit it but when sorting out gear I can spend days on this stuff and most of it is on DPR because that's the only place where people congregate specifically to discuss gear's obscure features and niche applications like astrophotography. Can it do bracketing and interval shooting together? How bad is rolling shutter? Can I adapt this old lens to that body, what about flange distance? Do you want to find out before you shell out $2000 that you have saved up, or after?

valarauko3• 3 years ago

I've spent a fair bit of time on the site, but only on the reviews. Sounds like the forums were where the real action is/was.

mrelectric3• 3 years ago

I enjoyed photography and camera handling tips, explored and troubleshooted my cameras and their countless options, as well as the general discussions as on any forum.

solarkraft• 3 years ago

I'm not surprised but sad. They were amazing. To the point at which I wondered how they were profitable.

Magi604• 3 years ago

RIP DPReview. Great place to consume in-depth camera and lens reviews and get input from real users through the forums.

I can proudly say I had an image selected as a winner in one of their annual "best photos of the year" contests.

greendave• 3 years ago

Looks like the Amazon acquisition finally caught up. Sad, as DPR was a great resource and had an interesting community, at least until about 7 years ago when they started leaning in more to video content and less into deeply-technical reviews and discussions.

BeetleB2• 3 years ago

This is absolutely shocking. Shutting down the site for DSLR enthusiasts. Just ... amazing.

hristov• 3 years ago

This is a little disappointing. Shipments of interchangeable lens cameras (the bread and butter of dpreview) have been going down since 2010 due to the increasing quality of cell phone cameras. However, at this point, both shipments of interchangeable lens cameras and lenses are stabilizing and growing slightly. And at about 6 million camera bodies and 10 million lenses per year these shipments are not insignificant. Especially considering that the average prices of these units are pretty hefty.

So my point is it is still a pretty significant industry and it still deserves a review website. That is one of the unfortunate things of large companies buying niche sites like dpreview. They look at everything at the 10 000 feet level and kill the website even if demand for it still exists. I do hope the dpreview editors find a way to continue their work at a new site in the near future.

Zak6• 3 years ago

Shipments of interchangeable lens cameras... have been going down since 2010 due to the increasing quality of cell phone cameras.

I'm a bit skeptical of that. Phones almost eliminated the market for the lower-end fixed-lens cameras that made up the majority of camera sales. People mostly bought those because they wanted to capture memories and share interesting things they saw with their friends and families. Phones do a fine job of that now, and are more convenient. Most of those customers never bought interchangeable lens cameras.

ILCs are for people who want to do photography in some sort of serious sense. Phones won't replace ILCs for that market any more than a multitool replaces a set of screwdrivers for a mechanic. The biggest thing stopping people from buying new ILCs is old ILCs.

I have a seven year old Olympus. If I spent $2200 on the new one, I'd get a bit faster burst rate and an autofocus system that's better at tracking certain subjects. If I switched to a different system in the same price range I'd get slower burst rates in most cases, but a bit better noise performance and dynamic range. I could sell my current camera body for about $500, making that a $1700 upgrade for... not a whole lot of improvement.

ben77992• 3 years ago

Definitely sad as this is a site that has been around and is/was an important early website.

However I don't really think it's much of a loss for photography. DPreview was always pushing the whole equipment acquisition as the goal part of photography that always seems so weird. They would regularly talk about how you needed some new camera and willfully ignore alteration to your technique that got better results without needing the new equipment. Their forums and comments were always ultra dramatic and controversial with all kinds of brand bashing & cheerleading and other stuff that had little to do with photography.

I think it was OK at first as all the tech was new, as time went on it became more and more counterproductive.

I actually think smartphones getting people off the train of ever fancier cameras every few years actually helped photography due to:

- Better UI

- don't need to relearn a new camera constantly

- Always have the phone, so everyone got more practice

- Forced use of prime lenses made more people start moving around to frame their photos

- People started to forget about the tool and just use it

I'm still holding a pretty high value amount of camera gear, probably higher value than any other hobby I have. But it doesn't get used as much, and I"m constantly thinking of selling it off. I guess a lot of that being a result of no longer really caring about the specific types of photos the expensive camera gear facilitates.

vr46• 3 years ago

100% this.

Not only will I not miss it, I'm glad it's going, I found the reviews to be extended advertising for camera manufacturers and retailers, and the forums were packed with know-nothings arguing over cameras they'd never used.

thih93• 3 years ago

Is there more context? Or any un/official reason behind the decision?

khazhoux• 3 years ago

A real shame. I've been visiting dpreview since 2000.

Just a couple of days ago, I noticed all their review videos on front page featured the same presenter, and it gave impression they're down to just a couple of people running the site.

Zak6• 3 years ago

The video reviews ("DPReviewTV") are a mostly-independent team who did the same thing previously as "The Camera Store TV" and have already announced a deal with Petapixel.

https://petapixel.com/2023/03/21/chris-niccolls-and-jordan-d...

drumhead• 3 years ago

When I was a camera buyer this was the site to go to if you wanted the best information and opinions. Shame to see it go but the camera market now isnt what it was 15 or 20 years ago.

redindian752• 3 years ago

Phil Askey's Photo Review (DPReview's old name) was a pioneer in camera reviews even in back 1998/99 when I first encountered it. I remember it was run from Singapore with the url philaskey.net/~photo or something. He used to review cameras in such clarity and detail that it was so popular among digital camera nerds.

Huge loss!

sunflowerfly• 3 years ago

I was trying to remember the old name. I believe it was just Phil running a blog solo? Content was slow to appear but incredible quality when it did.

It would be great if someone took it back to its roots.

reagle• 3 years ago

https://reagle.org/joseph/2013/photo/photo-net.html

redindian752• 3 years ago

Found Phil's interview -

https://www.dpreview.com/interviews/5323285840/phil-askey-fo...

http://photo.askey.net/

1024core• 3 years ago

Why shut the site down? Why not spin it off? I'm sure it could survive as an ad-supported site, as it used to before being taken over by Amazon.

Apreche• 3 years ago

I sure hope archive.org is on top of this. This is about as big of an archive emergency as there can be.

jmyeet• 3 years ago

This is a little bizarre.

Some of you may not know that Amazon went through a phase of buying the #1 site in every space. DPReview is the one for cameras. There were others (eg IMDB). Amazon's strategy seemed to be to drive traffic to their site by buying these sites.

Digital camera sales fell off a cliff. I think they peaked at about 2010-12. Now we're at less than 10% of those sales, possibly less than 5%. Of course because of phones. I still like specialist cameras that do things phone can't (eg 300x zoom, 1000fps recording). But these are now niche products.

it seems strange to shutter the site however. How much upkeep does it really require? You can pause actual reviews so all you have to do is add new cameras when they're released, which isn't that often these days. You can even close the forums if you don't want to moderate them.

it's similar to the Google Reader argument: it simply can't be that expensive to maintain.

balletto• 3 years ago

I'm guessing (but only have anecdotal info) that Amazon more broadly is taking the broom to many little things.

daneel_w• 3 years ago

A shame. DPReview is hands down the most methodical and thorough review platform for digital cameras. I wonder if there's enough time to mirror the content on such short notice.

wcerfgba• 3 years ago

What is required to transition the site to community ownership?

firstSpeaker• 3 years ago

I have such fond memories of searching and reading to choose my next lens maybe a 1.5 decades ago.

sourcecodeplz• 3 years ago

I don't understand why they can't just keep it online as a static site.

GoofballJones• 3 years ago

The articles were great. The comments/forum sections were one of the levels of Hell.

mobilene• 3 years ago

What bums me out about this is that the site will disappear. For people like me who collect cameras and review them online, DPReview is a gold mine of info on cameras from the digital age.

Ikatza• 3 years ago

No Internet Archive mirror?

pabs36• 3 years ago

ArchiveTeam are planning on working on one, they probably welcome help:

https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/DPReview

EchoReflection• 3 years ago

maybe time for some enterprising/interested individual at https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/ to start going through...

julieturner99• 3 years ago

I just checked and my account shows posts and replies from 2002-2014. 2014 is about 2 years after I bought my last non-smartphone camera (I bought a Panasonic GH2 in 2011 or 2012). As much as I love high-quality photography, I've been able to make do with my iPhone ever since.

So in that sense it's not surprising to see dpreview go away, as I am likely similar to many others in my changing habits. But I really hate that it's going offline. So much knowledge is captured in those forums -- not just specs and tech but technique and ideas. What a shame. Wish it was staying up but dormant.

seanp2k22• 3 years ago

You know what they say: Capitalism Breeds Innovation! /s

seanp2k22• 3 years ago

If anyone is looking for a somewhat comparable replacement, https://www.rtings.com/camera is the best I know of. Their monitor and TV reviews are amazing too (that's how I found out about them a few years back).

chernevik• 3 years ago

What a shame. I'm by no means a photographer but I found their reviews incredibly helpful.

dboreham3• 3 years ago

In years past this was one of my favorite sites (from before the Amazon acquisition). Then A few years ago they blocked one of my posts. I don't remember the specifics, probably I included a link to another site. Anyway suffice to say the post wasn't commercial or spammy or negative. I deleted my account and never visited the site again. It was quite hard to delete my account iirc.

shaman1• 3 years ago

I don't see why at least they don't keep it in read only mode for longer - e.g. a few years - until the content becomes obsolete. This will alienate many Internet dwellers and make the Amazon brand sink even lower. Surely it doesn't cost them much.

dahwolf2• 3 years ago

Sure enough the camera market has drastically shrunk, but even then it is bizarre to have the singular most popular website/community in the industry, with a treasure chest of 25 years of content, only to wipe it out like it never happened.

As for this faith being "in the stars" as so many suggest, note that until very recently they had open positions. And as far as I know, plans to rebuild the entire site. It wasn't exactly on its way out, rather it seems a casualty of the current economic panic in tech.

Even if this was meant to be, the ramp down is close to criminal. Extremely short notice, no interest in selling it to another party, no plan to keep it online long term, no archival. Nothing.

This part of the web which I hold dear to my heart is on its way out. Long form, quality content, deep community (most of the time). Not only have smartphones disrupted photography itself, it has also changed content consumption. From long form to short form. Quantity over quality. And community engagement is shallow.

Discovery is under pressure as Google, Facebook, the like starve the web. The rise of AI chat bots will nuke the remaining debris.

It's quite telling that the site's 2 main reviewers (which are great) can fairly effortlessly move on as they were clever enough to build a following on their Youtube channel. You see a similar effect when journalists build a following on Twitter, in a way they become independent of their employers.

It's just another sign that independence will wreck you. Google and social media are the traffic controllers of our digital existence. You play on their platforms or you cease to play at all.

At least, you'd be on a safe and stable platform? Well, no.

rockzom• 3 years ago

The lack of archival is the biggest problem I have with any of this.

Imagine if Wikipedia were taken offline in 2048, with one month notice.

JamesAdir• 3 years ago

This is not "panic" in tech just corporate politics. Some middle manager wanted to shutdown this site for several years and didn't have the approval of higher managers or consensus with others. It's the same with Amazon Smile program. It's meaningless for Amazon in terms of cost, and imho it causes much more harm in communities like non-for-profits in the case of Amazon Smile or photography hobbyists in the case of DPReview.

dahwolf2• 3 years ago

"This is not "panic" in tech just corporate politics"

You're quite confident in the thing you just made up. The CEO of Amazon literally has written an announcement detailing the process where they comb through their various businesses and making cuts, where they openly state that these are due to suddenly worse economic conditions.

pixelmonkey2• 3 years ago

Sad news.

A guy named Ken Rockwell runs a solo operation publishing reviews of cameras and lenses across the DSLR / mirrorless ILC market.

https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/reviews.htm

Example review of the recently released Canon R7 (a nice mirrorless camera I own):

https://kenrockwell.com/canon/eos-r/r7.htm

Note that his review style is to start with sample images, and then kick off his prose/text review. So you have to scroll a few pages until the "Introduction". That starts here:

https://kenrockwell.com/canon/eos-r/r7.htm#intro

freetime22• 3 years ago

Ken Rockwell's reviews are not really comparable to the in-depth reviews that DP Review built their reputation on, though.

Here's their review of the Canon R6 m2 for comparison (unfortunately they haven't done an in-depth review for the R7 so I can't provide an apples-to-apples comparison):

https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canon-eos-r6-mark-ii-in-dep...

DP Review also has a YouTube channel that is separate from their website reviews, and offers a more casual and entertaining format. He's their video review of the R7:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0Zb0WjQKILY

pixelmonkey2• 3 years ago

I agree. I was just providing an alternative given the reality.

buildbot• 3 years ago

Ken Rockwell is a complete blowhard asshole - it doesn't take long to find weird racism, extremely biased opinions, and bad advice. Does he still only shoot in JPGs?

jacooper• 3 years ago

Why does amazon even own Dpreview.com?

tamade• 3 years ago

Why not find a buyer? Plenty of traffic and monetization

e12e• 3 years ago

What will happen to my content?
You can request a download of all the photos and text you’ve uploaded to the site. This will be available until April 6th, after which we will not be able to complete the request.

Would be nice if they'd organized to make sure content lived on at the Internet Archive?

firecall• 3 years ago

Well that is a shame!

That site is a part of industry and digital photography history!

The incredible rise of the dSLR and digital compact cameras was astonishing. Then to have the industry smashed by the iPhone and Android is equally so.

ksec• 3 years ago

Just wondering, How much is Dpreview actually worth and what is the cost of operating it?

This is sad as we continue to see old, professional, decent online publishing decline.

ulfw2• 3 years ago

As a relic and few remaining photo enthusiast I will not buy any photo or related gear from amazon.com anymore. End of story. 23 years I've been on dpreview always daily. I loved watching dpreviewTV too. (doubt the 'Camera Store' in Calgary will be able to take them back)

This is ridiculous for a company as rich and huge as amazon. Go shut down IMDB next so I won't buy any movies from you anymore either.

getlawgdon• 3 years ago

Well, shoot. This one hurts. One of my favorite no-nonsense places to get info or just browse. And smartphone cameras are getting good but they're not remotely close to real cameras. Had a 13 max until my new/much better s23 ultra and the best shots on either absolutely pale compared to my Lumix G3, now quite long in the tooth.

mrelectric3• 3 years ago

This is great sadness, especially now that Mirorless and DSLR are picking up in popularity again.

sinuhe69• 3 years ago

It’s not exaggerated to say DPReview is an important bit of history. Wonder if anyone will go archive them before it’ll vanish forever?

It’s really sad.

pabs36• 3 years ago

ArchiveTeam are starting a project to put this on archive.org, I expect they will welcome help.

https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/DPReview

eatbitseveryday• 3 years ago

What does help look like?

pabs36• 3 years ago

Pastebin lists of URLs that you know of and send the links to them to the IRC channel.

There may also be a bunch of coding to do, I don't know enough about ArchiveTeam to tell what needs doing, but its probably either URL enumeration or similar.

Also because of rate limits, the job will need a lot of IP addresses. These will be gotten by individual users running the Warrior. So if you have a suitable machine/network for that, please take a look:

https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Warrior

STELLANOVA• 3 years ago

Hope there is someone inside current DPreview web team who is going to put complete site (codebase, db, storage) on torrent... That would be really nice (run DPreview locally in docker). :)

75dvtwin3• 3 years ago

I am guessing that all these businesses that looked 'cheap' to the money-making, investor-darlings machines (the FAANGs) -- will now get closed.

The inflation apparently, does not just affect the currency value -- it also corrects the value of salaries compared to the outcome.

I am also expecting that 80% of the companies behind the 2,600 apps in this list: https://theresanaiforthat.com/ will close those efforts down within 2 years.

The next iteration of businesses/sites that come in place of dpreview -- will be ad-ridden, small budget enterprises like

emulsive.org

Semaphor• 3 years ago

As someone working for a slightly older, different language competitor: ouch.

walterbell• 3 years ago

https://om.co/2023/03/21/amazon-shuts-down-dpreview/

The saddest part of the shutdown is Amazon’s decision to keep the site in “read-only mode for a limited period” after the shutdown on April 10th. That is a shame considering how valuable a resource has been for the internet from the beginning. It is even more disappointing because Amazon is the largest cloud provider in the world, and letting this live on wouldn’t even cost them a damn thing.

ganesh7• 3 years ago

I don't think I'll miss it. This is what happens when you sell out to Amazon, haha.

jeffreygoesto• 3 years ago

"No such bucket" error?

pragmatick• 3 years ago

This has been my go-to source for reviews and user opinions on cameras for 20 years. This really sucks. I hope they find some other site where they can at least continue the forums.

Friedduck• 3 years ago

There’s a larger story about consolidation on the web and longstanding franchises getting folded into others are going dark.

The economics of cameras have changed but I fear that the market for independent reviews has cratered and made it much more difficult get honest unbiased information.

I checked: I’ve been active on DPreview for 19 years.

scaradim• 3 years ago

will that be archived somewhere?

hoppyhoppy2• 3 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35263635

ngcc_hk• 3 years ago

History need the site info to be kept.

petergreen5• 3 years ago

If all users requested their data and then pooled it together, we can build a simple version of DPR to keep things alive. And maybe even build it into a new/modern version. I've put together a quick google form to see if people want to try this plan https://forms.gle/2aGQtnQGw6SJCqVE7

Obviously there's much more content than user data.. but i'm sure we can keep it alive too

petergreen5• 3 years ago

I've now laid out the plan in better detail here https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/120wkz4/lets_j...

DPReview.com to close

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