Hogloff wrote in post #17270530
Yes...but how do you narrow down what cameras to test? By listening to people on forms like this...I think not. By spending a couple of hours at various sites looking at their results...yep.
How do you decide? Listening to Thom?
I actually walked straight into the camera store for my latest camera brand decision when the reps from Leica, Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pentax 645 (their medium format platform), Hasselblad, Phase One, Mayima, etc. brought all their cameras and lenses and flashes for me to try in store. I got to try out the supertelephotos, their 200mm f/2's, their f/1.4's, f/1.2's etc. It was a great experience, and I loved talking to all their representatives to get an idea of their customer service and their manufacturing ideologies (most of the reps were photographers themselves who gave feedback to their employers) and I tried all the cameras myself. I worked with both Nikon and Canon (zooms and exotics) gear at my newspaper and would frequently borrow friends' gear to try everything myself. I learned the nuances between brands this way shooting cross-platform 40 hours a week. I've looked into transparent testing websites like Photozone.de, Slrgear, Lensrentals.com, etc. for research, but never needed to look into DXOMark at all to justify my purchases. I understand the pros and cons of Sony sensors and other brands of bodies from playing around with the raw files myself. Sony is a new player, don't give them so much credit, Nikon had the first widely-available sensor where you could raise shadows like crazy (that I can remember).