I didn't pay much attention to the articles or reviews either. I was more into finding out what was new and heading to my local camera shop to find out. This was my way back when we all shot film.
The various forum discussions tell me plenty. Much more than any review could.
I think the last review I did read was for the Nikon Df. And I already knew I wanted one before there was a review of it.
I didn't look at a review when I decided on adding a Pentax 645D back in 2020. It was a case of already knowing I was getting the performance I needed for a very low cost. So it didn't matter what was in the review.
The same is true for an eventual Fuji GFX 100. I already know that which I need from the Medium Format forum members. It's a matter of the (also) eventual used market price dropping to where I need it to be.
In the same way that Fuji Rumours posts on facebook with a link to his site. So, you get a teaser on here and click on the link to go to their site. But on this site you get a summary of all rumours. And we get them to post it so we don't have to scour the web to find them. Win Win as far as I can see.
The manufacturers provide loaners for major review sites. With the number reducing fast, we'd be in a position to get onto their list - get some analytics going and we could look quite attractive. If/when we do reviews, I'd like them to be done really properly - better than both DPReview and IR, which both had issues with their test protocols.
I once had an extended discussion with Simon Joinson on this point, when I said I thought they undervalued the forums. He quoted all kinds of figures which he thought made the point that so far as traffic the forums were insignificant. I made your point, that they were longer term users, but he didn't think that was important.
yes he does - he wants to make money and peddles his site everywhere possible... what your win out of this ?! is he going to drive traffic to this forum in return by referring people to use this forum on his rumor site ? I do not see any win-win - but then it is not my call
It's a win for us because people come to our site first to see a summary of a collection of rumours. Then. if they are interested, they will pop over to to the individual sites for more information.
And that is why people kept pointing out to regular contributors such as your good self that you were big fish in a very small pond.
Readerships in the hundreds are just not sustainable.
site can't be an attraction because it aggregates rumors ... at least it shall be like petapixel / fstoppers ( even using ***GPT ) to write more text than just a link and invite people to discuss it HERE , not over there - because over there there are forums as well
With the continuing decline in interest in non-phone photography, I'm anticipating the day when it will be just me and Michael Kenna left. We'll have a blast. I'm sure he'll be grateful for the tips as well...
I think non-phone photography will be around for quite a while yet.
When I see "professional photographers" rocking up to weddings with just a phone camera in hand that is when I will think geee maybe they can be used for more than just snapshots and happy-snaps
On the review front, I'll all for getting good quality, on-site, impartial reviews here. Youtube is full of amateur kit 'reviews', that it's not the same thing.
There are tens of thousands of pages on my site ;~). Just picking which ones to link to would be curation job in and of itself. The better the curator, the more the content would be trusted.
Takes a "bit" more than that. While we can argue about just exactly how well they did, both dpreview and I-R had "standard" test photos they did, which allowed for comparisons. That means that before you start bringing cameras into somewhere to test, you need testing guidelines. Back in 1980, the testing guidelines I established for InfoWorld were over 50 dense pages long, and that was the starting point.
Quality editorial doesn't happen without quality editor/writers. You don't get quality for free.