price tracking

deejjjaaaa · 06-12-2009, 11:02 AM

hi,

is there a chance to get some functionality which can allow people to enter/report prices they saw on various popular equipment

for example

equipment name- date - url (the name of the shop, can be a drop down list including popular places like B&H) - currency - price

and then display this in some nice manner (graph) ?

what do you think about this idea in general ?

**Adam** · 06-12-2009, 12:20 PM

This sounds like a useful idea, but I don't know how I would implement it at the moment. We already have it for lenses in the review databases.

**Damn Brit** · 06-13-2009, 03:19 AM

There are price tracking websites, couldn't we just include them as links?

*brecklundin* · 07-11-2009, 12:07 AM

I was thinking the last few days, if it might be programmatically possible to post splits on the prices paid in reviews. Given the recent round of increases everywhere, it just seem pointless to have 2007 prices included in the average. Maybe even a rolling 12-month average and a rolling 6-month average?

The averages posted are usually really out of touch with current prices, at least with new gear. Legacy, older gear is a different story though as such finds will usually be pure chance and often at prices so low they skew the results.

I was also thinking that what Gary mentioned would be nice also on page one for each item reviewed. Heck, in fact you should be able to link those to a bit of income for referrals should someone actually buy a bit of gear clicking through from that page. Probably not a lot of cash, but over a year it might turn out to be worth it. Plus those things have the advantage of pulling the current prices from the various retailers.

And actually, more of interest to me, would be dedicated threads to each lens, a lens archive if you will. A place where people can post example shots taken with that lens. You could have a master lens list with links to the thread for each lens, body or accessory as needed. To me seeing actual real world results matter more than pricing. And oh, yeah, including EXIF intact should be a requirement. Someone can take a shot with any camera/lens combo they want and put it up there claiming it was with the lens/body of the thread. No EXIF not postie. ???

**Ole** · 07-11-2009, 01:52 AM

Originally Posted by brecklundin

...

And actually, more of interest to me, would be dedicated threads to each lens, a lens archive if you will. A place where people can post example shots taken with that lens. You could have a master lens list with links to the thread for each lens, body or accessory as needed. To me seeing actual real world results matter more than pricing. ...

The lens review database has one thread per lens:

Pentax Lens Review Database - Main Index

and this would be the place to post example photos, or links to such, for each lens you own.

Some users have done this already.

*brecklundin* · 07-11-2009, 03:33 AM

Originally Posted by Ole

The lens review database has one thread per lens:

Pentax Lens Review Database - Main Index

and this would be the place to post example photos, or links to such, for each lens you own.

Some users have done this already.

I must not have explained myself clearly enough to get the point across. A REVIEW is exactly that and few if any people actually post example images and your mindset would give a person ONE POST and that is it. Or are you suggesting people make multiple reviews of the same lens?

The purpose of reviews is exactly that and ONLY that...posting multiple pics in multiple posts is not the purpose of such threads and it would also dilute the goal of reviews.

your sandbox I suppose. I'll just bow out...thanks anyway.

**Adam** · 07-11-2009, 07:47 AM

The thing is that in the reviews, there is also a field for price. A lot of the features and facilities you asked for above are already there. So, in essence, your lens review db is used for much more than mere opinions.

If you want to write a script that polls data from each lens in the database and computes further averages, be my guest. However, I still think that the price field in the lens reviews provides an accurate picture of trends and average pricing.

As far as cameras go, however, it's another story. As much as I'd like average pricing and rating to be part of the camera review database, that hasn't been possible to implement at the moment- though I'll gladly do it in the future if an accessible method of doing so shows itself.

*brecklundin* · 07-29-2009, 08:34 AM

Originally Posted by Adam

The thing is that in the reviews, there is also a field for price. A lot of the features and facilities you asked for above are already there. So, in essence, your lens review db is used for much more than mere opinions.

If you want to write a script that polls data from each lens in the database and computes further averages, be my guest. However, I still think that the price field in the lens reviews provides an accurate picture of trends and average pricing.

As far as cameras go, however, it's another story. As much as I'd like average pricing and rating to be part of the camera review database, that hasn't been possible to implement at the moment- though I'll gladly do it in the future if an accessible method of doing so shows itself.

On the pricing, not knowing how frequently the prices are recalculated, I would assume to create a rolling average of either the last 12 prices posted or the past 12-months or whatever time frame would simply be to add a filter or conditional based on whatever the today() function is called in, what is this PHP?, and only those reviews with prices that fall within the desired period or quantity are used in the calculation.

Then again given the world wide participation here, and the huge variation of price around the globe for a lens, it might all sort of even out anyway. So....never mind...hehehehe...see I talked myself out of the idea.

**Adam** · 07-29-2009, 08:43 AM

Originally Posted by brecklundin

On the pricing, not knowing how frequently the prices are recalculated, I would assume to create a rolling average of either the last 12 prices posted or the past 12-months or whatever time frame would simply be to add a filter or conditional based on whatever the today() function is called in, what is this PHP?, and only those reviews with prices that fall within the desired period or quantity are used in the calculation.

Then again given the world wide participation here, and the huge variation of price around the globe for a lens, it might all sort of even out anyway. So....never mind...hehehehe...see I talked myself out of the idea.

And you've talked me out of it as well

Right, you'd need to use PHP to run a bunch of calculations and MySQL queries per lens to get updated stats- and those would go outdated quickly. So hence, the manual method of just browsing through everyone's review and looking at date/location is better.

*brecklundin* · 08-03-2009, 07:04 AM

hahahaha...glad I could 'help'...

Plus with the volitility of pricing today...there would be just no way to get more than a reasonable approximation, which is already there as ya point out...

betamax · 08-08-2009, 03:33 PM

Not sure if this would cover what the OP had in mind, but in some other forums for different interests of mine there is usually a dedicated subforum or thread with available deals. It is usually not really well organized, but still useful. What you often see is when something finds a good deal online a shares it with the rest of the forum, but it could be a deal at a local store as well.

And about the prices in the reviews, I often wonder how people got such good deals in some lenses. Like, the DA* 50-135mm, I can only find it above 1k these days, but then again I started out like a month ago and recently I found out Hoya recently increased prices around the globe. This I guess just goes to comment on how the prices there should probably be taken with a grain of salt.