Bad news : DPReview.com is closing April 10th

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Back in the 90's DPR was a great resource for me. But the escalating tenor of the site wore thin very quickly. I found a much better site......NikonCafe - small, friendly and with excellent photographers willing to help others. Now BCG has matured to a great site also. Haven't visited DPR in 20+ years. Their demise is no loss to me.
 
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I've been a regular reader of DPreview and their forums since 2011. I do agree with others here who have noticed the decline in tenor over the years. I never read the comments following a review because they are just filled with trolls and brand bashing. Even the brand-specific forums have a lot of trolling going on. Nevertheless, I have learned a great deal from staff and forum members on DPreview. I will miss them. I will miss Chris and Jordan's entertaining videos, but I hope they find another venue afterwards. They did start out on their own channel through the Camera Store in Calgary – maybe they will return there.
 
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My guess is they had expenses of $2.5-3 million per year without any IT investment in hardware and software. The business had advertisers, but was increasingly relying on small camera companies and small product promotions. Originally, they probably expected a benefit to Amazon product sales, but I don't think that happened. There was no membership model supporting the business. The forums were just one piece - they had a lot of expensive editorial content, videos, newsletters, etc. Technology to support the business and fight off spammers had to be expensive - and if they needed a software or hardware upgrade their scale makes things very expensive. I bet they were losing $2 million per year with no chance of a path to profitability. Once Amazon focused on profits, it was an easy place to cut.
 
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I stopped visiting the forum years ago after the change in ownership when censorship of any critical comments about photo gear would be deleted. I expect that from Amazon but not a public forum. Lots of better alternatives without the heavy handed moderators with a god complex.
 
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I stopped using DPR after getting less then stellar behavior from other members. I remember when the first Z9 landscape picture got posted and the feedback for using an action camera to capture landscape. Or my sin for using a Z9 in studio and expressing my feelings about it.

I hope those individuals don’t migrate over to BCG.

Sure there are lots of enjoyable individuals there and it’s definitely a good business decision to cash in on it.
 
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PhD69 said:
See here :confused:
Click to expand...
The two guys that head DP review are extremely talented people with amazing skill sets, especially in a future growth market of video...........

It would be a shame to loose their skills, i hope they start up their own thing, i mean you have to respect Jarod Polan and his efforts that also need resourcefulness and talent to meet cost pressures in what seems a ever shrinking market, margin and survival seems to be the priority.........the DP review guys would need to make not only their own cost recovery but need to feed the parent company with a return...........i hope they kick in on their own show.

Sadly like supermarkets the internet is continuously diluting quality shows by saturating the market with so many free be would bees reviewers.

Only an opinion
 
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There is a time series embedded within dpr fora,which preserve the opportunity to reconstruct a unique record over the past 2 decades. Dpr is a chronicle that's archived unique insights, reactions and perceptions from within digital photography,as the industry has developed. It's primarily the voices of the consumers and the photographers. Losing this archive will be a tragedy to future historians seeking to decipher an historical narrative over this time period.

For example, in the Nikon forums there are insightful reports and insights by AnotherMike, bobn2 (Professor Emeritus Bob Newman, former head of a UK computer science department), Marianne Oelund and Jim Kasson who are both expert electrical engineers and they have tested cameras with innovative adaptions of apparatus in their own laboratories.

One example

Forget "like", Canon is Nissan, Fujifilm is Toyota: News & Rumors Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review

Expert news, reviews and videos of the latest digital cameras, lenses, accessories, and phones. Get answers to your questions in our photography forums.
www.dpreview.com www.dpreview.com

Typical of any archaeological midden, dpr suffers a high noise-signal ratio. Sifting out the empty posts and screes of trolling threads will need fine filters. (There were times when trolls made the dedicated Nikon forums intolerable. For example, DSLR bashing / Mirrorless bashing turned those forums into no go zones.)
Nevertheless, its information is valuable in its entirety.
 
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I'm on Nikonians but find the forum interface too unwieldy. It seems overdue for a modern software overhaul. Any value left in FM resides in its dedicated lens threads. The FM Nikon forum until about 2019 was an informative helpful place, but abseiled a couple of years ago, when a couple of strange personalities obsessed with Sony fundamentalism turned the Nikon discussion threads into a no go zone., and many members left. They must have some inside affinities to avoid moderation, but then no mods are the problem there.

BCG is unique, thank you for its wise moderation.
 
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It is really a sad news. I have been so much loving the articles on DPReview website and the DPReviewTV. I have been following Chris and Jordan since they started their vlog for The Camera Store in Calgary. Living in the other big Alberta City of Edmonton, I have been very proud of them. They have been doing such a wonderful job and what a chemistry between them. I really wish they start their own YouTube Channel. I hope the world is much more than those Bejos and Masks!!
 
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dasm said:
It is really a sad news. I have been so much loving the articles on DPReview website and the DPReviewTV. I have been following Chris and Jordan since they started their vlog for The Camera Store in Calgary. Living in the other big Alberta City of Edmonton, I have been very proud of them. They have been doing such a wonderful job and what a chemistry between them. I really wish they start their own YouTube Channel. I hope the world is much more than those Bejos and Masks!!
Click to expand...
Just an update. Chris and Jordan joined Petapixel.
 
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I started visiting DPReview in 2004. Back then there were a lot of other sites
worth looking at as well - photo.net, imaging-resource, Digital Camera Resource, luminous-landscape. and cameralabs. Some still exist. None was the size of DPReview. The site had specialized forums not found elsewhere. I grew rather fond of posters in some of those forums. Posters there would post links to sites like this one.
 
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I was never a member there but always found their reviews were good. This was also reflected in DPReview TV that I enjoyed viewing. Some probably did not like the banter, but the underlying analysis was balanced and fair.
 
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Good news. I wondered if they would go it alone and start their own channel. Always enjoy watching them and under the banter they were always well balanced and fair.
 
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I liked Chris and Jordan’s videos and the written reviews were good. I thought the forum side of it was at best rather tedious with snarky comments and not a lot of respect. This forum and Photography Life are in a different league. The reviews on Camera Labs are also useful. If Jordan and Chris continue at Peta Pixel successfully we still have a good range of places to follow. It is the loss of all that historic test data and analysis which is such a shame.
I think the problem is that photography forums seem to best run as small scale operations by people who see the role as fulfilling a need. Large organisations seem to mess things up. i don’t know anything about the economics of keeping a site profitable. I am however much more tolerant of advertising I see on photography sites and I definitely like to support them if they publish useful books and courses.
 
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O said:
The two guys that head DP review are extremely talented people with amazing skill sets, especially in a future growth market of video...........

It would be a shame to loose their skills, i hope they start up their own thing, i mean you have to respect Jarod Polan and his efforts that also need resourcefulness and talent to meet cost pressures in what seems a ever shrinking market, margin and survival seems to be the priority.........the DP review guys would need to make not only their own cost recovery but need to feed the parent company with a return...........i hope they kick in on their own show.

Sadly like supermarkets the internet is continuously diluting quality shows by saturating the market with so many free be would bees reviewers.

Only an opinion
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I think you are referring to the guys that handle video and reviews for DPReview TV - Chris and Jordan. The head of the group is the General Manager - Scott Everett. He's been there a long time. They have a staff of a dozen people with a couple of editors, a producer, and several software engineers. I suspect they have $2 million in salaries and benefits. I don't see how their business model can work without subscriptions and advertising. Even then, the publication content delivery and newsletters are very expensive to produce and would probably be curtailed if they wanted it to be profitable. It becomes even worse when you are operating at a loss. They have a disproportionate amount of news coverage from advertisers and very little from Canon and Nikon.
 
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