Dpreview, what a shame… (Imaging Resource, too)

TeamSpeed wrote in post #19516966
Great, so I guess Imaging Resource is now a goner too.... there goes two large archivals of info.

I suppose it's inevitable. With the collapse of the DSLR market and cameras having become so good that any time difference is more personal preference than it is technological shortcoming, no one is visiting these sites any longer. When I switched from film to digital, both these sites were an invaluable tool but for the last few years, my purchasing of equipment has slowed and even then, there is not a whole lot of research I need to do any longer. I'm suspecting I am not an outlier. Sad to see them come to an end but their usefulness has sort of diminished.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #19516971
??? Is this in reply to my recent post?

More info
As of Monday, May 8, 2023, Imaging Resource's website had been offline for over two days with no explanation for why the site had been taken down after nearly 25 years.

No, I got information about DP Review data access not as a result of this thread, but didn't have an opportunity to relate it in this thread until now, so I came back to the thread to provide an update.

gjl711 wrote in post #19516972
I suppose it's inevitable. With the collapse of the DSLR market and cameras having become so good that any time difference is more personal preference than it is technological shortcoming, no one is visiting these sites any longer.

But that had always been true in the film days, yet we still had enthusiasts magazines.

I think the problem now is that people don't want to deal with any format that requires writing or reading a coherent sentence as lengthy as this one I've just written.

Wilt wrote in post #19516974
No, I got information about DP Review data access not as a result of this thread, but didn't have an opportunity to relate it in this thread until now, so I came back to the thread to provide an update.

Ah ok, but that info is almost 2 months old now, there are some changes since with a new domain, etc.

RDKirk wrote in post #19516975
But that had always been true in the film days, yet we still had enthusiasts magazines.

I think the problem now is that people don't want to deal with any format that requires writing or reading a coherent sentence as lengthy as this one I've just written.

Na, people read and write as much if not more than in the past. It's just for different things now. And your right, back in the day there were lots of enthusiast magazines, but they were pretty much all replaced. I'm not sure if there are any still being published. This is just the nest step. Digital photography became popular for a bit, then everyone moved to their phones and today it's less so. Just the natural progression of things I suppose.

One thing I have always stated...

Back in the hiatus of DSLR photographer, it seemed like "photographers" were coming out of the woodwork shooting senior portraits, weddings, etc. They went out and bought the kit boxes as Sams Club or Costco, and all of a sudden their photos were better than their friends' from phones, etc so they advertised themselves as photographers.

Some were decent, many were not, I have experience here, because I often offered up my services as a second shooter, and I lost track of the times that the client of the main shooter would contact me directly for my photos, because a) the main photographer results weren't as expected and/or b) they took too long to get photos to the clients.

Now that has really waned to the point now that if you are a photographer, there is less overall competition. At least in these parts, that is true. The number of "advertised photographers" on various social sites, craiglist, etc has diminished greatly from just 6-8 years ago. Covid likely has a part of this too, but in the end, this all can be a blessing.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #19516986
One thing I have always stated...

Back in the hiatus of DSLR photographer, it seemed like "photographers" were coming out of the woodwork shooting senior portraits, weddings, etc. They went out and bought the kit boxes as Sams Club or Costco, and all of a sudden their photos were better than their friends' from phones, etc so they advertised themselves as photographers.

Some were decent, many were not, I have experience here, because I often offered up my services as a second shooter, and I lost track of the times that the client of the main shooter would contact me directly for my photos, because a) the main photographer results weren't as expected and/or b) they took too long to get photos to the clients.

Now that has really waned to the point now that if you are a photographer, there is less overall competition. At least in these parts, that is true. The number of "advertised photographers" on various social sites, craiglist, etc has diminished greatly from just 6-8 years ago. Covid likely has a part of this too, but in the end, this all can be a blessing.

That might be an added reason behind someone who recently started a thread about 'why no more posts about flash?'...the wannabe-pro population has shrunk, leading to less folks inquisitive about the subtleties of effective flash usage. Not simply less use of flash due to high ISO low noise ambient shooting.

gjl711 wrote in post #19516982
Na, people read and write as much if not more than in the past. It's just for different things now. And your right, back in the day there were lots of enthusiast magazines, but they were pretty much all replaced. I'm not sure if there are any still being published. This is just the nest step. Digital photography became popular for a bit, then everyone moved to their phones and today it's less so. Just the natural progression of things I suppose.

There have been some recent attempts at enthusiast US magazines...but they wind up being webzines. British magazines appear to be on better footing.

But notice (I think it's already been discussed in this thread) that activity on conventional forums is also diminishing.

No, people are not reading and writing as much if not more than in the past. They can't according to recent statistics on grade level attainment.

Wilt wrote in post #19516990
That might be an added reason behind someone who recently started a thread about 'why no more posts about flash?'...the wannabe-pro population has shrunk, leading to less folks inquisitive about the subtleties of effective flash usage. Not simply less use of flash due to high ISO low noise ambient shooting.

Which leads to “I am an Ambient Light Photographer”.
And you know our reply?…

Nick5 wrote in post #19518509
Which leads to “I am an Ambient Light Photographer”.
And you know our reply?…

I told this long story before. Long story short. I was asked by a friend to shoot his wedding. A younger fellow from work who was into photography. Later we wound up being event shooting partners.

Reading about what a mistake that would be I kept declining and I finally broke down. Six months before the event I started to study flash photography and Neil van Niekerk became my flash guru. I asked a lot of questions here and Wilt and others helped me out too. I remember our Tupperware conversations. The Lightsphere. On another site Gary actually got mad at me. I said they they used the scraps from the Lightsphere to make the Puffer. I was a little worried for a while because he had money. Probably still has.

That being said I learned two things. I gained a whole new respect for working pros. Second. After that year reading about steadfast natural daylight photographers at times that meant they didn't really know how to use a flash.

I have nothing against natural daylight photography. Even if that is you preference, as a professional you need to walk into any situation and low how to use all the available tools to do the job properly, even if that means using a flash. Ironically my shooting partner hated flash and was a huge daylight natural photographer.

The secret to flash photography is to make it look like you didn't use one.

RDKirk wrote in post #19516975
But that had always been true in the film days, yet we still had enthusiasts magazines.

I think the problem now is that people don't want to deal with any format that requires writing or reading a coherent sentence as lengthy as this one I've just written.

Any type of a technical forum, like POTN, is no place for "texting" a question or a reply.

RDKirk wrote in post #19516991
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No, people are not reading and writing as much if not more than in the past.
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I disagree.

Most of the people I know in real life almost NEVER wrote 10 or 15 years ago. . Now those same people are writing all the time, throughout the day. . But the nature of writing has changed ... people are now writing short text messages and short captions for their posts.

If you consider how many billions upon billions of words are being written every hour in the form of text messages, how can you possibly think that people aren't writing as much or more than they did in the past?
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RDKirk wrote in post #19516991
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They can't according to recent statistics on grade level attainment.
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The level at which people write has nothing at all to do with the amount that they write. . Just look at the way most writing is done on social media and in text messages for examples of this.

Why do you see a connection between how well people write and how much they write? . I don't see any parallel correlation whatsoever. . In fact, the opposite is likely true.

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Tom Reichner wrote in post #19524627
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I disagree.

Most of the people I know in real life almost NEVER wrote 10 or 15 years ago. . Now those same people are writing all the time, throughout the day. . But the nature of writing has changed ... people are now writing short text messages and short captions for their posts.

If you consider how many billions upon billions of words are being written every hour in the form of text messages, how can you possibly think that people aren't writing as much or more than they did in the past?
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The level at which people write has nothing at all to do with the amount that they write. . Just look at the way most writing is done on social media and in text messages for examples of this.

Why do you see a connection between how well people write and how much they write? . I don't see any parallel correlation whatsoever. . In fact, the opposite is likely true.

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I will concede that when I say "writing as much" I'm not talking about the absolutely number of sheer individual words.

But I don't think you've made a point. If people are less able to express or understand a thought that requires more than 256 characters to express, we are not doing better.

RDKirk wrote in post #19524655
I will concede that when I say "writing as much" I'm not talking about the absolutely number of sheer individual words.

But I don't think you've made a point. If people are less able to express or understand a thought that requires more than 256 characters to express, we are not doing better.

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No, of course we're not doing better. . But we are, collectively, writing a lot more than ever before, and that is true whether you measure it by number of words or by amount of time spent writing. . We are writing more meaninglessly and more poorly than ever before, but we are doing a whole lot more of it because devices which we write with are readily available to most of us at any minute.


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Well here it is, June 3, and they are still publishing news, reviews (as recently as May 25) and accepting comments, when the original shutdown was planned for April.