My Thoughts on DPReview Closing, and What it Means for the Rest of the Market

XZDX · March 29, 2023

I am going to be completely honest in saying I personally never used DP review until january this year. I got 2 point and shoots for youtube stuff, a nikon S8100 and S800C. I'm actually tickled pink about having these, they are MUCH MUCH MUCH better than my OnePlus 9 ever will be; it makes me want to go back and look for the Sony CyberShot I had, or the RCA Flip USB that I had, which was the predecessor to the Flip series. @LinusTechI believe this is the camera you were thinking of.

I had used other cameras though. I have a number of sony mavica's, 2 floppy and 1 cd/dvd, and the newer one can even do 720p video. So I have almost modern big rigs.

FD73 (My personal one that I got from an uncle in about 2016, pictured not my personal camera)

MVC-FD51 (My parents model, not their camera in picture)

MVC-CD300 (Parents CD Camera, they didn't like it, it sat till I was in high school and I used it for photo class, got an A, this thing is actually huge, it looks small in pic)

These cameras may be old, but the floppy cameras are basically a dollar for 10 theres so many of them, and these CD cameras actually have good enough video out you could use them for something like a stream camera, or custom security, basically whatever you want. But, these cameras are vastly different to point and shoots that came out 10 to 15 years later, such as mine.

Nikon S8100 (Currently my favorite video camera)

Nikon S800C (I want to make streamlabs work LOL)

Would anyone reasonably want to use the floppy disk cameras nowadays? No probably not professionally. But do you know what I would do with them? Go out, buy a plop of them and a box of disks, go to a 2nd grade class, and now everyone is learning how to use a camera. A REAL camera. They even have to learn how to handle a delicate thing for the first time if they ever take out the floppy disk. Straight up, these older machines that you can get a whole period correct editing setup out of the garbage for under 15 dollars would be AMAZING solutions for homeschool kids or younger K to 5th Grade age students.

Low Risk, documented, and people would have a reason to look into how to fix them. Not only are you cleaning up E-Waste, you just created an entire repair industry and you put a factory of indian people to work making something cool, rather than working at a scam company.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

So why would they close this staple website?

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Well son, I really hate to break it to you, but corporations like Amazon want your money. Not only do they want your money, but they want you to buy more and more beep boop pachinko machines to watch youtube, call people, see what you log into, what you buy, where you go, they want you to be their information feed and active reimbursement for any quibble in their lives. If anyone at their office inconvenienced them, they need to take some long winded vacation on some island somewhere in south asia and they need to burn down part of a company in order to do so.

So, rather than actually think about any of the industries that these people have an effect on, these mindless money barons that D Ride the banks harder than MoistCritikal rips off inside edition, and when they can't do that anymore, they rip something out not actually knowing anything about what they are effecting.

Who needs a camera anymore? We have smartphones!

Oh I dunno.... Photography companies, high school / college film students, literally normal people.

But not only does this actually mentally deficient supplanted fetus that somehow stayed alive and made a billion bucks not understand what focal length is, they don't even understand what a good or bad picture is. As long as their stupid face is the only thing visible in the picture nothing else matters.

These are selfish, self centered people that don't understand the very aspect of being creative. They don't understand humor, they don't understand what NORMAL SOCIETY IS. These are people who could buy Kelloggs for what, to them, is 15 dollars, change it from a cereal company to a steak house because they know some shit about ranches out west, and then crash everything when nothing works out and honestly not give a damn about anything, moving on to the next venture. Literally, Donald Trump is the loudest example of this, he tanked Indonesia's economy over a fucking golf course. They can have millions of people scream in their face, it does not matter, these people are so self centered and toxic to the very environment they rot in that they only have to think and a new black hole is ripped in the fabric of reality that is the basic consumer market, whether its jobs, sales, information, you name it.

Strictly, this is a problem of money = power. Fascism. If everyone is going to continue to value money more than the time they spend having fun with a camera and laptop they got for 15 dollars on ebay to give to their 7 year old to learn photography together... y'know, its just money slavery at the end of the day. Buy more phones, get more eyes on the bleep bloop blinky light machines, and more people buy more trash.

Australia and Brazil are literally ripping apart their rainforests to create houses nobody will ever even live in JUST to land bank it. I think LMG knows how much of a waste of space that is, all over stupid, fucking, money.

Seriously. If you people don't let this shit go and stop worrying about money and buying shit so much, we would still have DPReview. Next we lose sites like Oz Robotics, a website that has existed since '96, or even older organizations that have existed since BBS days. I can't think of the name of it but I'll append it later. They do Mac Repairs though.

The very idea that nobody wants anything old is not only childish, its abusive to teh environment, people's perspectives, it persecutes passively while stomping out actively, its ignorance and arrogance breeding a new wretched child of hell.

Stop buying stuff. Actively go out and find something that actually fits your needs and costs literally nothing because everyone is too stupid to try using it anymore. You have all sorts of computers to choose from to use for dev platforms rather than spending 800 dollars on a single ras pi dev setup. A _RAS PI DEV SET UP_

_RAS PI_

Get a bloody pentium 3 and actually learn how to do your shit.

X out

CommanderAlex · March 29, 2023

35 minutes ago, XZDX said:

So why would they close this staple website?

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Well son, I really hate to break it to you, but corporations like Amazon want your money. Not only do they want your money, but they want you to buy more and more beep boop pachinko machines to watch youtube, call people, see what you log into, what you buy, where you go, they want you to be their information feed and active reimbursement for any quibble in their lives.

Corporations are in business to make a profit to share with their shareholders, good ol' capitalism. They need to make money to survive and continue to make money. That's just how it goes and when bigger, more profitable companies buy up smaller companies, they're usually the first ones to go if they don't make money for the parent company anymore. That last part is where social media comes in and they share the data of what YOU do and sell to other companies to gear advertisements to you, to convince you to buy something you don't need, all for the sakes of profit (Get the trend here yet?).

Digital photography sales have been declining since nearly the time Amazon bought DPReview and with current economic conditions, Amazon decided to shed some dead weight and DPReview was on the list to let go.

XZDX · March 29, 2023

35 minutes ago, CommanderAlex said:

Corporations are in business to make a profit to share with their shareholders, good ol' capitalism. They need to make money to survive and continue to make money. That's just how it goes and when bigger, more profitable companies buy up smaller companies, they're usually the first ones to go if they don't make money for the parent company anymore. That last part is where social media comes in and they share the data of what YOU do and sell to other companies to gear advertisements to you, to convince you to buy something you don't need, all for the sakes of profit (Get the trend here yet?).

Digital photography sales have been declining since nearly the time Amazon bought DPReview and with current economic conditions, Amazon decided to shed some dead weight and DPReview was on the list to let go.

That may be true, but theres a difference between equal profit to output and then actually raping people

As well, theres been a trend to go back to real cameras. Cheap or not. I happen to go down the route of cheaper stuff, but thats me. thats my market. Other people are looking for Canons from 10-13 because you can install magic lantern and get crazy shit out of them. It legit doesn't matter what the trend of the market is. That will change in another year and oh whoopdy do now we have AR glasses with cameras and your phone is irrelevant.

Like come on thats a bullshit argument. The problem is people with money controlling the market. Theres other interest in other things.

Genuinely I think theres a lapse in society that has misplaced people. Either berause connectivity has gone up, or because theres just so many more things making noise, theres flat ass people just in the wrong place. Theres people working in mechanics shops that can't think how an engine works, and people in banks doing flat math that would rather be doing shit involving physics. Like hello, swap these people's positions and they're happy.

You don't think products have been manipulated the same way? Yeah sure, you don't need an MP3 player. Spotify on a phone may work for many, but not for all. Yeah sure you can shoot a youtube channel on a phone for a while, but if you ever go farther into it past a boring 2D image, even the S800C I showed above is enough to do cinematic shots with. Hell in the upload history of the camera, thats exactly what the person was doing with it.

The fact of the matter is that theres different market segments that have been ignored or erased because oh look my phone does it half assed thats good enough right? Now you get a portable billboard that tracks all your data that can be sold off.

Like hello?

You can use a knife as a screwdriver, do you actually WANT to though?

thrasher_565 · March 30, 2023

shar holders want 50% each quarter or they will go invest els ware. not saying the company dose not make moeny just not 50% witch is unsustainable. also ceos dont give 2 shits most of the time weather the company survives or not they still get paid. there plenty of times them doing fraud and getting a slap on the rist and nexed moth have a new ceo position... also can be said about people safety but that a different topic...

Omon_Ra · March 30, 2023

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink...

Comrade, these things you go on about are inherent problems of capitalism; infinite growth on a planet with finite resources, the placement of profits over people, etc. The majority of people don't care about what you COULD do with old gear, they want the easiest path possible. I still have and shoot video with a Panasonic GH2 because I hacked the balls out of it, cranked the bitrate, pushed all i-frames, and so much more. But it isn't practical, nor exactly reasonable for someone who isn't a complete video nerd to invest their time into. I still use a Blackberry, because it suits my needs better than any new smartphone (physical keyboard > all) and I can still do nearly everything anyone else with a smartphone can do. Yes, people should research more, learn about the tools they're using, how to better spend their money, all of that. However, you are falling into the same materialistic trap that you rail against. It isn't the gear you use, it's how you use it, how you connect with people, and the community you create. Think globally, act locally.