The Maze

[Bill Pierce]

There are a huge number of websites that review a variety of new cameras. Face it, it’s a difficult job, especially if you are a one man band. Mixed among the good reviews, are reviews that do little more than list the features and give the tester’s opinions after a brief period of use. And, yet, there are one man bands that are among the best that succeed by spending a longer time with the gear and limiting the brands they test to ones that they are familiar with.

One of the best is Reid Reviews (https://www.reidreviews.com), a paid site that directs most of its reviews to Leica equipment with occasional forays into other equipment such as Fuji, all equipment that Sean Reid actually uses. A large number of test images and photographs accompany each review. Phillip Reeve, along with 4 friends, limits his site (https://phillipreeve.net) to Sony gear along with the lenses of other manufacturers that work on Sony gear. Once again, you are getting information from photographers with considerable experience in using the gear and looking at many of the images that inform their reviews. Jonas Raskin (https://jonasraskphotography.com) limits himself to Fuji gear and lenses made for Fuji by independents. Once again, considerable time spent with the equipment and a considerable number of images that informed that opinion.

Those are sites that I know of. They are also sites whose truly informative reviews I have come to trust as more than PR for the manufacturer in return for a free camera for a few weeks. These are sites that I stumbled upon doing web searches. There have to be other sites of this quality for a variety of cameras. I just don’t know about them. But, if you have a site you have found useful in guiding you through the equipment maze, I think everybody here would appreciate your sharing it.

 

[Dogman]

I don't really know any websites that I would totally trust for reviews of cameras. About the only time I read camera reviews is when I'm pondering a purchase. Since just about everything I buy is older second hand gear that has been on the market for several years, there's a lot of information to Google and read. Most of it pretty much useless but sometimes you hit a site where someone has used the gear for an extended period of time and is articulate enough to describe it. That's getting lucky.

Lenses are a bit different. There's Optical Limits and Lenstip.com for lab reviews and just about everywhere photographic has opinions posted. Lens Rentals is another good site for more info on optics and build quality. I do trust Roger Cicala's opinions from the Lens Rentals site.

 

[Horatio]

I used to regularly visit DPReview, but I think only a few cameras get in-depth evaluation.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

If I want to know about unknown to me digital camera here is how I do it.

I check how it looks like and specs in DPReview reviews or/and at BH product page.
I'm also using https://camerasize.com/compare/ to compare unknown to me camera with cameras I know.
For users impressions I use search in YouTube and Google.
For real life images examples I put camera name and flickr in google search. This often brings Flickr groups for known cameras with thousands of pictures, including highres.

Sometimes it is bad approach. Deep in my heart I knew what Leica X series are great cameras on output files. But Flickr groups showing them as weak cameras with blownout highlights and so so colors.
But then here are this guy son, cats and else photos with X2:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/138168860@N07/50493510972/

More less same applies for lenses. Ken Rockwell has good lenses photos and specs.

 

[back alley]

on youtube...

Three Blind Men and An Elephant ...hugh brownstein

sean tucker

 

[Sonnar Brian]

The Leica M9 is the newest camera that I own that you could download the full specification sheet for the sensor. Kodak aimed their sensors at the scientific market, and published details on performance. The M8, same level of detail. Without having a real spec sheet- nothing but hype from the manufacturer. So that leaves the reviewers, which are essentially reverse-engineering performance numbers.

For that- my favorite is dx0mark.

https://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/

I also found some good metrics for comparing sensors here:

https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/Sensor_Heatmaps.htm#mode=23,camera=Leica M10-R,suffix=14

I've made the statement in the past that the M Monochrom (CCD Version) has the lowest non-uniformity of any sensor that I've used. I started using digital sensors almost 40 years ago. The table from the website: the last two columns are dark signal non-uniformity (DSNU) and Photo Response Non Uniformity (PRNU) is - like Fixed Pattern Noise (FPN) - a way of expressing errors in the output from sensors. The lower the value, the better the raw image.

Lenses- not all newer lenses are as good as the ones they supersede. The Micro-Nikkor VR 105/2.8 is not as good optically as the AF-D Micro-Nikkor 105/2.8. Looking closely at numbers on Dx0mark verified that for me, the CA of the new lens was much higher than the old one. The new lens was made for Digital, where a "profile" can be used to correct CA- so why do it optically. The new lenses are not as reliable as older lenses, VR and other electronics "pack it in".

https://www.lensrentals.com/

https://wordpress.lensrentals.com/blog/2013/08/lensrentals-repair-data-2012-2013/

Roger Cicala did an excellent report on lens reliability. I would not buy a Nikon VR zoom after reading it.

 

[farlymac]

I've not come across any of the three sites you mention, Bill. Usually I look at DPReview and a couple others when something comes out new, then later on will go searching for those who have been using the gear for a while. Since I normally buy when something is close to its replacement date, or used, I'm far enough behind the curve that there are lots of sites to get good user information from.


PF

 

[joe bosak]

The Maze

The most useful sites I've found are probably phliipreeves (sony lenses), ken rockwell (lots), ming thein (general thinking), camerasize, flickr (same as ko.fe), some old sites about IR (wrotniak, jen roesner). Often I end up poring over DP review threads and googling for specifics.

I don't find youtube or camera reviews much use any more. I think you get to the point where you can see half a dozen reviews, and start to read between the lines what a camera is really going to be like in your own use case. That can be tricky when you have only been through a few cameras, because few reviewers are going to use a camera the way you will end up doing.

 

[raydm6]

As I buy mostly vintage, I do try and peripherally keep up with what's the latest and greatest and visit some of the sites already mentioned here.

I have nothing new to add other than mentioning RFF is also a fine place to glean experience and information about new and vintage cameras and a lot of you folks have helped me tremendously.

I thank you.

 

[Bill Pierce]

Having one of those "scheduled power outages" that California specializes in. Hopefully will be back here this weekend.