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Perhaps at one time, when they bought it, the site might have had some relevance in bringing sales to Amazon. It was still the glorious period of forums and blogs. But now all the traffic comes from influencers and fu@@ing youtubers with affiliate schemes. It's much cheaper and that's how it all runs now. The shameful thing is that the site is really part of the global internet culture and it doesn't make sense to shut it down in a month. They probably already have a buyer. At least I hope so. Chris and Jordan can do the same anywhere and with anyone but the mountain of info accumulated over the years on the site has enormous cultural value.

Archive Team appear to be on the case. There are some other individual efforts to preserve the studio shot comparison content too apparently. https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/DPReview

I noticed a significant drop in user engagement in the forums. Maybe the site's real traffic numbers are not as high as we think it is. Of course its still higher than other photography related websites. Since January they didn't even bother to cover the news of firmware updates. It doesn't take too much effort to write an article that Z5 got a new firmware update that adds eye AF in video!

He backs his humour up with proper real world information that's why, he shows the differences, he uses the gear, he actually shoots even if its squirrels!

These are times where people use Camera Conspiracies as a serious site to get technical information...(no joke, each day I see more people using him as a tech reference)

The more I think about all this the angrier I get at the current staff there. Nearly all scurrying off the deck of the ship like DPReview is nothing but fit for the bin. If they had stuck with the site for longer than a few months it could encourage the sale to a new owner. Instead they jumped like rats off the deck and have nearly all got new jobs already. Meanwhile we're left with an empty shell of a website pending deletion. It is an absolute disgrace and a total disregard of the global camera community.

I'm actually surprised that they didn't go their own way too, though they might feel more financially secure to be on the payroll somewhere. The big difference between them and the rest of the YouTubers out there is that they're older and have families, so being on payroll somewhere might be more appealing. Probably provides more stability than having to rely on YouTube ad revenue that can really fluctuate.

My Leica M-P 240 got sold last month due to needing the money to keep EOSHD afloat and new gear coming in. Was sad to let it go but need to sell a LOT of my inventory to keep the wolf from the door at the moment. However before I let it go, made sure to do one last shoot with it, alongside my Canon 1D C and Leica M9. As far as colour science goes, I rate the 240, M9 and 1D C right at the top of the tree. The M9 has a special look with CCD but 1D C and the 240 are very very close, and much better in low light. It got me thinking, what other cameras like the 1D C better known for video, are actually really really good stills cameras? Panasonic G9 springs to mind with the amazing EVF and very responsive performance, fast bursts, all-round very big feature set for stills. E-M1 X I think is also underrated, it feels lovely in the hand, controls are fantastic, every bit the pro Micro Four Thirds camera it set out to be. Olympus colour science and white balance always nails the look you're after. But I think the Panasonic S1H takes the prize. It's better than a Leica SL2-S. Better battery life, better screen, more features. The main strengths for stills are the best EVF on the market, even better than the S1R and GFX 100. It's enormous and 5.76m dots! AF is absolutely fine for stills in S-AF mode, decent light, native lens. It's very fast and reliable. Sure it's rubbish with Canon EF adapter and in 24fps video mode but don't mind manual focus with Leica M lenses on it - much nicer, and less heavy. Dual native ISO full frame sensor, absolutely rocks in low light. 6K / 24 megapixel is enough resolution for me and makes for much faster performance, more responsive, smaller file sizes when shooting a lot of stills. It also has XPAN style wide aspect ratio settings, one of my favourite shooting styles so you can accurately compose in these modes, looks fantastic in black and white. Picture styles even have a film grain setting. Built quality is amazing, the huge top panel LCD great for checking settings at a glance whilst leaving the back screen completely free of clutter. Shutter mechanism feels so premium, better than Leica. What's more it cost me £1800. And that's before you even factor in the FX6 level video camera thrown in for free 🙂

The chroma smoothing thing is real but overblown imo. Its a pixel peeper thing, in real life scenarios it rarely matters. Skin tones when shot properly are amazing. The 4K120p is amazing. Better than the class leading A7SIII. Here is some XH2S 4K120p footage shot in 8-bit 264 standard baked profile: Yes the image is sharp but hard to beat such a clean rich detailed 4K120p with no moiré. Any other Bayer sensor camera and that fabric would be moiré artifacting like crazy. And that's in the lowest 8-bit setting.. Its easy to pick apart issues but you also got to know how to play cameras to their advantages. I prefer softening a sharp detailed image then the reverse. Just pop on a vintage / cine lens and something like a Pro-Mist filter and you'll already get a much softer image.. add some film grading, halation etc on the very chunky robust ProRes codec and you've got yourself a very cinematic image with film like grain:

I suspect they are simply going where there is another regular presenting income without having to really do any marketing themselves. Nothing wrong with that and we all have bills to pay and being a self-employed creator has as many risks as it does potential rewards. I get the impression they have gone from one regular paid position to another as one door closes and another opens.

I love my S1 with the Voigtlander 40mm f1.2 LM, I feel like I can cover anything with that combo.

Word has it that the mark 2 is imminent and will apparently have the following : 50MP sensor 8K/60 6K/8K ProRes RAW (to external SSD as far as I can tell) Phase Detect AF I suppose that would take care of your AF woes and it does all that at the current price of the mark 1 then you might be flogging off more gear to get it. It might change my Z9 plans as well.

Even less than that. For me, just add a flip screen, a tad better EVF, take off the 4k crop, PDAF, and (specially) bring some "film" recipes to attract the same target. Once I had a X100s and a LX100 - and the LX trounced it for me. Better AF, much more flexible with a zoom lens, and (surprised) trounced the X100s in low light. I know that the X100V is a different beast, but I still think that the LX100 are more versatile. Still have my LX100 MK I, by the way, is my go-to camera. Pretty, very small, you choose the focal lenght on the fly.

Exactly! And sometimes you wouldn't even need to open the link. The answer is in the search result summary. If it's a video, even a short one, you have to click past so much irrelevance from someone who's in love with the smell of their own farts before finally finding the answer (if it's even correct in the first place). Honestly, it's getting harder and harder. I was reading something a while back on Reddit where someone said they usually skip to the second page of search results as the first is just trash!

It's really short sighted. Fashion goes back and forth between YouTube and written word I think. We may be at peak YouTube, but I am also quite sick of huge sponsor midrolls, constant YouTube-fashion verbal ticks like "I don't love X feature" and "this is gonna be your shutter, this is gonna be thee battery door, this is gonna be the sensor, gonna be gonna be", and of Google answering my questions with a link to a massive video full of "WHAT IS UP GUYS SMASH A LIKE BUTTON AND BANG THE BELL" instead of one sentence that answers my f-ing question. There's seems to be a baby/bathwater problem these days as there alayws has been. Remember when manual focus photography lenses were worth very little? Remember when people gave away vintage audio equipment cos all the new digital stuff was "better"? Dumping stuff because something new exists has a habit of leading to regret. Imagine killing off the non-AI written word at this point in time :S

For the moment, I have found peace with x-h2s color smoothing. If you shoot Prores 422 or HQ in 6.2K standard film simulation, you will get color detail that is at the border to what the sensor is able to deliver. There is smoothing, but less smoothing would soon tend to unpleasant color noise. I saw that also in comparison with my G85 4K, which seemed richer than fujifilm 4K, but having a closer look also revealed "false richness" by delivering color where there is none. Regarding 4K and if you don't want prores blow your memory card, shoot h265 longGop ~200Mbps, also in standard film simulations, and you get great footage where you will not notice any lack of color detail, unless you really look for it. And you are right, you will mostly only notice lack of color detail (if any) in nature shots with little color contrast. f-log2 is less good for such shots. Along with higher dynamic range, the chroma channels are compressed as well, which might be one of the reason that f-log2 has less color detail. if you want specific modes to compare in advance to your purchase, let me know, I am happy to help. Apart from color detail discussion, what is definetly great is the 4K 120p (always record at 720Mbps LongGoP, which convert to a 140Mbps Clip, if you want best quality). According to dpreview Video Stills Comparison Tool, its even better than A7SIII in terms of details captured. I saw only GH6 might beating it a little here. The magenta cast in the reds I also noticed and don't like so much, but I understood fujifilm did that on purpose to please skin colors (see interview link below). You can easily correct in post if you want (hue vs hue curve in resolve for example). Also some of their film simulations don't have it as strong (I think also eterna tends more to red compared to provia) For skin color captures I believe there is nothing to complain. Here the smoothing tends to even give advantages. My G85 skins are clearly worse, especially at higher ISOs, where X-H2s keeps colors under control pretty well. Unfortunately I don't have its real competitors in my hand so I am limited in comparing them. The link to the interview: https://www.fujirumors.com/fujifilm-managers-talk-film-simulations-origins-evolutions-goals-misunderstandings-bold-classic-negative-and-much-more/

One good thing has come out of this… Andrew’s mention that Sigma has a blog and magazine. I’m off to check that out 👍

On this board no less!

Amazon told them in January, some left the very next week and got a new job. During these last 3 months, it appears absolutely nobody in charge has made an effort to save the site or kick up a fuss, let alone sell what is a very valuable asset for certain other companies. It's ridiculous that Amazon isn't considering a sale. Jeff must be a bigger loser than even I imagine him to be. Although not quite as big an idiot as that guy who wasted $44bn on Twitter, the likes of which can't seem to find even .00001% of that amount to preserve 25 years of photographic gear culture.

I knwo that Amazon needs to cut costs, but close a website with THIRTEEN people on staff? Jeff Bezos have a bigger crew just to clean his balls.

They are going to Petapixel.

But Amazon have almost infinity storage. They could keep the site open as an archive. (but probably they won´t because will remember everyone that they killed it)

Damn that is shocking indeed! But giving the current economy situation I can kinda see many corpo want to cut as much cost as possible.

I know everyone wasn't a fan, but one less camera media outlet is not good. Such are the risks when you sell your site to a larger company that only cares about the bottom line, I guess. Not good news for the community as a whole, and really unfortunate for all those who are losing their jobs.

I’m not disputing that the P6K may have better highlight rolloff. I have both the 6K Pro and the FX30 but haven’t done any side by side tests. I do wonder how accurate comparing two cameras can be when using a lut.

Surprisingly close (bit less detail and worst highlight rolloff) considering 6K RAW vs 4K 10-bit. PS: A is BMPCC6K & B is FX30

Yeah 4k120p seems to be the low point of the camera. It has a rather huge 1.62x crop on top of the 1.5x Super35 crop so that’s a really tiny sensor area that’s going to require tons of light not to be noisy! i don’t use 120p outside of short specialised shots so definitely not worth paying double for just better quality 120p. R5C also hasn’t got IBIS and has that terrible battery life. It’s an otherwise very impressive camera for its 8K60p RAW alone.

lol.. I do find it interesting to see these younger cats see the light so to say. But sensor size aside, the FX30 does have a more detailed 6K oversampled IQ than A7S3/FX3 and the lower 3200 dual ISO can be more useful than 12800. Only in low-light does the FX30 suffer compared to the FF versions.

I should probably mention the FX30 for me is going to be mainly as a pro tool within a certain job category. Canon is still my preferred system but I'm still undecided which route to go with them so will postpone that purchase until later. That said I am pretty excited about the little FX30. Something about that compact body and the IQ. By the way, Youtubers usually don't influence me but this guy kinda did for some reason:

Ok just thought I'd share that after long consideration of all the new cameras released these past few months (XH2/XH2S, R6II, S5II etc) I have decided to go with the lesser hyped FX30! It's kind of a weird decision because on paper the camera doesn't have any of the wow specs you expect today: full-frame, high resolution, open-gate etc. So why this choice? Well first off, I own an FS7 with some nice E-mount glass and an EF speedbooster. The FX30 is pretty much a baby FS7 so it will be the perfect B-cam or even A-cam for handheld shoots. Then there is the form factor, ergonomics and build specs. For this price its the only camera with this type of cine oriented cageless design. With the top handle, XLR unit and active cooling this camera is ready for the most rugged run & gun. Dedicated video buttons (magnification, peaking, zebras, shutter). Zoom rocker. I also like the fact the industrial pro matte grey look, it doesn't scream consumer camera like all the alternative (non cine) options. This may seem trivial but looking the part matters when it comes to certain clients. Finally of course the actual specs: 6K oversampled 4K up to 60p no crop in very chunky ALL-I 10-bit codecs. 4K120p. Cine EI. LUT support. Latest Sony AF. RAW output. Dual base ISO etc. Nothing crazy but overall solid video specs. I like the idea that its a native S35 sensor. I like to shoot wide open and this gives more workable DoF. Also opens up plenty of affordable cine lenses, especially anamorphic. And I wanna go FF with my EF glass, just pop the speed booster. The only real downside for me with this cam is the absence of an EVF and mechanical shutter. This is going to make stills shooting less pleasant, then again my phone has no EVF or mechanical shutter and I use that daily no problem so maybe the transition will be less difficult than I imagine. In any case this is a way more video oriented hybrid than lets say a Fuji XT/XH series.

https://www.dpreview.com/news/5901145460/dpreview-com-to-close

Maybe they figured they would prefer people to read reviews on amazon.com instead of dpreview.com