Trustworthy reviews, where?

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Soeren

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Sometimes the need to look up a review of a new lens , a camera or somthing else make me google the name of the item and look where it takes me. Sometime I see discussions where people claim "this or that is better than..." and and links to some site to validate their argument. All this make me wonder who we can trust, which photographers or sites actually know what they are doing and don't care if its Nikon Leica or panasonic.
What do you guys think?
Best regards
 
Soeren said:
All this make me wonder who we can trust, which photographers or sites actually know what they are doing
Click to expand...
As a general rule: 'Trust no one'

It's not because malicious intent is supposed, but because everyones needs are different. Even if a certain photographer knows what he/she is doing, that usually translates into their equipment choices and reviews being biased towards their line of work. Start the other way round.. begin with sites that are about the subjects/interests that you're pursuing, not those that are photo-equipment centric. From there you'll usually get a grasp of what matters in the field, and mostly it's not about the equipment..
 
I usually take a look at Flickr, if you keep in mind the quality of your screen and the many factors that have an influence on the image you see, this gives me a general idea.

I like Pvdhaar's advice to.

W
 
Reviews are all rubbish, trust your eyes.
A 'great' lens is a lens that you like, not some person on the payroll/bribe books of manufacturers telling you this lens is better than such and such.

What defines 'better' anyhow? I find the best way to look for a lens is to look at work done with it, flickr helps. Look at how the lens works and decide if it's right for you, don't read what other people think. It really doesn't matter how much some graph and/or person says a lens is sharp etc. if the image result you get isn't what you're looking for.
 
After the fall of 2006 I decideded never to pay for reviews unless there is some form of editorial supervision in place. I don't see how working in a vaccum can produce the highest quality work. The results speak for themselves.

As far as free reviews go, since the fall of 2006, I have the most respect for the Luminous Landscape site. I pay attention to dpreview's comprehensive reports as well. Photozone is useful for contemporary lenses. The DxOMark site is more controversial, but I look at their data too. Specialist such as Erwin Puts and (for Nikon)
Bjørn Rørslett and Thom Hogan are reliable. I'm sure there are similar people for Canon and other vendors as well. I even read what the controversial Ken Rockwell has to say.

I also study larger images found in Flickr searchs to get a feel for lens performance.

Many sites such as B&H, Adorama and Amazon have user reviews. While the signal-to-noise ratio is poor, these sources are useful. Finally prices for used equiptment in places like KEH also provide useful data. In general better equiptment is in higher demand so prices are another indicator.

Of course reading all these sources takes time. However I contend that collecting data from diverse sorces reduces the risk.
 
Read as much as you can about a lens before you buy. But, like reading newspapers or magazines, no-one is objective, so you have to filter accordingly. In this sense, also additional information from strongly biased reviewers is good. Ideally buy a lens that you can return, samples are always different. Test yourself. It's like a car: nothing beats a test drive. Still you want to know about reliability, fuel consumption, etc.

I also subscribe to Reid Reviews.

Roland.
 
Read them all, and get a general sense - ignore love/hate extremes in poster comments. Take a look at Flickr. Use the "RottenTomatoes.com" technique... be your own "Tomatometer" and decide it it's "fresh" or "not fresh". Generally, there's an element of truth in the most critical of reviews and the most positive reviews. The reason why they don't seem all that trustworthy at times is that everyone values the feature and attributes of - whatever - differently, so it can seem they're talking about different items. (Like movie reviews, when you ask - "Were we watching the same thing?") A lens that is not "the sharpest" (say, a Leica Summar) or has contrast loss at wide aps might be deemed unacceptable to a person who values extreme sharpness and contrasty-ness in a lens. Someone who values "3D effect" and prefers lower contrast in people shots would rate that lens stellar.

I read the major ones - Imaging-Resources, Steve's Digicams, blah, blah, blah... I tend to like Ken Rockwell's reviews... Expansive, thorough, honest, fun to read...
 
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Soeren said:
Are there some kind of phrases in reviews that makes you disregard them as a default?
Click to expand...

Not phrases... photos (or lack thereof). I dont know why I should bother with the opinion of someone who doesnt interest me as a photographer. If they make crap photos and I follow their advice, guess what kind of photos I'll start making... and I dont care if they have a phd in optical science. This is why I'm not interested in Ken Rockwell, dpreview, Thom Hogan (cant see his photos anywhere) and various IT professionals who decided to buy a lens testing software and start a dot com with lens reviews.
 
Spyro said:
Not phrases... photos (or lack thereof). I dont know why I should bother with the opinion of someone who doesnt interest me as a photographer. If they make crap photos and I follow their advice, guess what kind of photos I'll start making... and I dont care if they have a phd in optical science. This is why I'm not interested in Ken Rockwell, dpreview, Thom Hogan (cant see his photos anywhere) and various IT professionals who decided to buy a lens testing software and start a dot com with lens reviews.
Click to expand...

Yeah I totally agree with this too... Sometimes you can get away with judging the lens on it's technical merits based on example shots, but generally I'm much more interested when a good photographer posts a review in the form of amazing work down with the gear.
 
Understand the parameters that are important to you, then read all the reviews you can find, and make up your own mind. Once you can understand the elements of a piece of kit most important to you, then you can weed out the fluff.

Good few sites I would check out, although am sure I am missing out a few, and in no particular order:

bythom.com
kenrockwell.com
dpreview.com
fredmiranda.com
photozone.de

To be honest though, I will read any review I find, and hold none of the above up as any sort of gospel.
 
There are two ways to review things. One is to make a living by doing reviews, and the other is to review what interests you. I've never understood how anyone could stand the boredom of reviewing a minor variation on an earlier, equally dull camera, let alone comparing near-identical DSLRs from Canon and Nikon.

But of course, those who review only what interests them are likely to be predisposed at least moderately well towards the subject of the review. Thus, I'd cheerfully review an X100, but not a mid-range DSLR.

The only hope with a review is to try to find reviewers whose biases and preferences you can get to know. Oh: and I disagree completely about judging on results alone. Few of the pics with which the late Geoffrey Crawley illustrated his reviews were great works of art, but as a reviewer, he was justly respected as one of the best in the business, if not the best.

Cheers,

R.
 
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