Whats wrong with dpreview?

Crispin

At the risk of asking a stupid question.....
Why does everyone seem to dislike dpreview so much?

PaulieC

I sed to like it until amazon bought it. Now it's just all ads

gloobag

The forums are full of dumb Americans with more money than sense.

Dragan

From a technical standpoint it's details and reviews are pretty good. If you are going to just read up on a camera it's a great place. It has some good tests shots as well ( although i would recommend www.pixel-peeper.com of it for that ).

Mostly, the issue seems to be the forums and such. You can have a lot of unfounded rubbish going around on it, that then gets repeated just because someone "read it on t'internet".

It's not like here. We have a smallish, dedicated community. People know the score. If i come on and saw "The Nikon D90 sucks balls at high ISO and it takes AGES to focus" then i am gonna have a whole load of people say "prove it" and they are right to say that.

It's why i like here so much, people tend to talk about what they know and ask questions about what they don't know.

What more could you ask?

duffarama

I like it

Mostly because as an Olympus user it's FAR more useful to go there for information about my equipment and information about lenses than here.

I can't speak for the majority of the forums there but the Olympus SLR talk is pretty good, a couple of wind up merchants around the place but they get found out quickly enough.

The lens reviews are fantastic and the camera reviews are good but far too detailed (in that I'm not interested if I'm not going to buy the camera) I tend to read the first couple of pages and skip to the conclusion page.

AnCatDubh

I find it ok but I visit so infrequently that it isn't really significant. I certainly wouldn't say I dislike it. Never found their forum format engaging but thats a user interface thing rather than technical or knowledge based. If I were looking for a spec or a review I'd probably check there first.

AnimalRights

I like it and here, each serve their own purposes...
I hate the way I have to go to each post in their forums, is there a way to make it like a normal forum where you can see all the replies without leaving the page?
I like reading it on my iphone in work....plenty of threads.
I do agree with rich Americans, they all own the 'Holy Trinity' and virtually every expensive lens.
Ken would be a pauper over there.

Crispin

Fair enough so.
I just heard a lot of "don't read what you hear on dpreview" and when I've looked at the reviews they always seem in depth and useful. I've never really looked at their forums too much, quite happy mooching around on Boards.ie so I guess any criticism is just aimed at the gear heads on forums talking sh*te

duffarama

AnimalRights wrote: »

I like it and here, each serve their own purposes...
I hate the way I have to go to each post in their forums, is there a way to make it like a normal forum where you can see all the replies without leaving the page?
I like reading it on my iphone in work....plenty of threads.
I do agree with rich Americans, they all own the 'Holy Trinity' and virtually every expensive lens.
Ken would be a pauper over there.

Click "flat view" at the top of the page.
Can make understanding a thread a little difficult at times though

Hugh_C

gloobag wrote: »

The forums are full of dumb Americans with more money than sense.

Is that so, ThePantyChrist? :eek: Sweeping statements suck in self referential sorta way :P

I think it's great, love the technical reviews and the side by side comparisons particularly. I don't use the fora. Or the forums either.

:cool:

Cameraman

The technical reviews are great and pretty accurate, but the forums (fora ?) vary a lot.

They are largely unmoderated and have a high proportion of idiots posters who write before thinking, or doing the most basic research (of many nationalities) and 'pixel peepers'. The Canon ones are where I visit the most, and they suffer a lot from this. Having said that, there are also a lot of very useful contributions.

Last but not least, if you want to read endless speculation about the next camera due out (for any manufacturer) there's no better place.

Stephen

I hate their forums. Not the content or anything, just the layout and the way they work. vBulletin or even phpBB would be much, much better.

unreggd

I love it, but dont go near the forums

Its great for the reviews, spec comparisons, and sample photos

GhostInTheRuins

unreggd wrote: »

I love it, but dont go near the forums

Its great for the reviews, spec comparisons, and sample photos

Same here, I never go near the forums but the main site is great for reviews and news.

rymus

gloobag wrote: »

The forums are full of dumb Americans with more money than sense.

Oh that did make me laugh. Thanks for that. You do realise though that it's not only dpreview that suffer from the 'more money than sense' crowd. I'd go as far as to say it even extends beyond 'dumb Americans'. Every forum has it's users that think they know alot more than they do or pontificate on subjects as if they invented it. Not just photography forums either. It's just that dpreview is a very large forum so statistically, it has a lot more of these people. And they happen to be largely American. But still, thanks for the laughs

ThOnda

I know who you are talking about ;-) But no worries, I have accepted that fact.
And to mention "more money than sense" - just listen to local radios...

bullpost

As an Olympus user I'd agree. The forums are a good source of info for us non canon/nikon oddities

duffarama wrote: »

I like it

Mostly because as an Olympus user it's FAR more useful to go there for information about my equipment and information about lenses than here.

I can't speak for the majority of the forums there but the Olympus SLR talk is pretty good, a couple of wind up merchants around the place but they get found out quickly enough.

The lens reviews are fantastic and the camera reviews are good but far too detailed (in that I'm not interested if I'm not going to buy the camera) I tend to read the first couple of pages and skip to the conclusion page.

jaqian

Personnally I love the reviews on the site and its one of the first places I go to read up on a product. Thats as far as I go for soem reason I can't register for the forums using gmail and I'm not intersted in getting an ISP based email address.