Comment by mrandish | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrandish | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

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.)

> 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.

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.

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.

I have a GR IIIx. It's absurdly good.

Yeah, same. The Fuji X100 made me pack away for my DSLR for everything except sport and concerts. The GR IIIx has made me pack away my X100.

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.

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.)

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com