[filmmaster]

....except they've got market share and RnD budgets that Pentax can only dream about. Just saying.

they have the biggest names in photography hooked... that alone ensures success in what they do

[biz-engineer]

The best news (for m4/3 users) isn't the camera per se, but that OM Digital Solutions appears to be willing to continue; there's the OM-1, and one new lens (plus an updated one).

Typically, the OM-1 fit the current consumer market trend very well: small images (posting on web, phone, prints media disappearing), light weight and very quick bursts and auto-focus tracking for dogs, pets etc.. it's IMO the perfect consumer / hobby camera kit, perfect for DPR audience. Then the rest of us who want top notch image quality / large format film kind of imaging, we've got to carry the burden of huge prices.

Another thing. A lot of people think DPR review product for free, but that's naive. One of the most significant source of revenue is camera reviews, so if Ricoh doesn't pay money, K3 III won't be reviewed, DFA21 won't be reviewed either. OM probably paid a ton of money to get their new camera in front page of DPR for a few days.


---------- Post added 15-02-22 at 20:27 ----------

they have the biggest names in photography hooked... that alone ensures success in what they do

Film era systems were much more diverse, from small to very large camera systems. In the digital era, the market find its direction according to masses, currently it is full frame 3:2 only, everything else is insignificant, such situation is decided by two players who dominate the whole market, it used to be Canon and Nikon, and now it's Canon and Sony, whether we like it or not, we must use full frame 3:2 cameras, no 1:1, no 5:4 , no 7:6.

[house]

Another thing. A lot of people think DPR review product for free, but that's naive. One of the most significant source of revenue is camera reviews, so if Ricoh doesn't pay money, K3 III won't be reviewed, DFA21 won't be reviewed either.

Got anything to back that up?

It's highly unlikely that they get paid for reviews. They do produce paid content but then it's labelled as such. I suspect that dpreview like all other sites are paid for by the ads.

[biz-engineer]

Got anything to back that up?

I don't have evidence, but very strong hint from DPR commercial offering (for business clients, not for photographers). If you have a product to advertise, just contact DPR sales and they'll reach out to discuss the content creation options and pricing. I suppose DPR has direct contact with marketing departments of main brand of cameras and accessories, there's nothing wrong about it.

From my experience in consultancy business, it would good like this:
- my company designed a new camera bracket accessory that I was to be show cased on DPR website
- I'd like to have articles written about it, to have my target market become aware of the existence of my product and benefits (push & pull marketing)
- I'd like a video review as well to complement / reinforce the articles,
- I'd fill the request form found in DPR web site, I'd provide my contact detail and my marketing budget
- DPR sales will contact me back to discuss my requirements
- DPR makes an project proposal including an NDA, an agreement to supply the product for review, delivery draft proposal, reviewing the material with correction, and a date of publication, and price per service item
- Price would be something like fixed cost , plus additional cost based on how many people clicked on product links, measurable indicators etc...
- I'd ship my product for a limited time frame to allow for review, making sample images, articles and video content
- DPR would submit their articles and video script for review, I'd ask for corrections so this I believe are correct and send the content back to them
- DPR to upload content about my product on the front page of their website
- DPR to send an invoice to my company for marketing service provided
- my company to execute the payment for DPR service

Online marketing is a real industry sector, a lot of money in invested, and that how Google and other web companies can employ and pay so many employees.
A lot of people don't realize that reviewing products is a full time job and it's a marketing service.

---

Last edited by biz-engineer; 02-16-2022 at 01:48 AM.

[Kunzite]

Are you talking about sponsored content? Reviews are not that, AFAIK.

[biz-engineer]

Are you talking about sponsored content? Reviews are not that, AFAIK.

I hope DPR salaries aren't paid with sponsored content only, otherwise I think Chris and Jordan could spend the rest of their time in front of churches to collect money from people passing by. The "Sponsored" articles are rare , and often sponsored by pro photographers who certainly don't have the PR budget of a Canon , Sony or Nikon. My take in this is , reviewing a new main brand camera model and lenses, probably cost 30 000 to 90 000 kind of price bracket, so if they review 10 camera systems a year, that's enough to paid the small crew. Of course I have not evidence of this. But I don't see a pro photographer paying 100 000 for a sponsored article.

Why is this a such a problem if camera reviews / web marketing content are actually financed by product supplier?

As customers, when we buy products, we pay for everything (included in product price), we paid for the raw materials used to manufacture the product, we pay for employees who assemble and calibrate the camera on the assembly line, we pay for logistics, we pay for the marketing & sales of the product (the product manual, the reviews, the after sales services), we pay for storage, we pay for interest rates of the capital used to operate the company, we pay for everything. So when we buy a camera , included in the price is a fraction of the cost of the reviews. A customer may feel odd when becoming aware that he's paying for the salary of the salesman for selling him a product, but that's how it is, not only for cameras, it's for everything .

[house]

But I don't see a pro photographer paying 100 000 for a sponsored article.

It's not the photographers paying. It's the brand. I'm guessing dpr pitches a video with a photographer they have access to. Advertorial content is sometimes preferred to pure ads as more people are fooled.

[biz-engineer]

It's not the photographers paying. It's the brand. I'm guessing dpr pitches a video with a photographer they have access to. Advertorial content is sometimes preferred to pure ads as more people are fooled.

My point was that if we consider a company is a black box with money inputs and outputs, there are only two sources of input money, they are customers and investment (equity, banks). Banks and investors tend to get more money out of lending or investing than they put in, they won't get back their investment minus the cost of marketing. So the remaining source of input money for a company is money from selling products. The cost of marketing and selling the products is included in product prices, there's no other choice.

It's not the photographers paying. It's the brand.

and the brand charges customers via product prices.

[Rondec]

I hope DPR salaries aren't paid with sponsored content only, otherwise I think Chris and Jordan could spend the rest of their time in front of churches to collect money from people passing by. The "Sponsored" articles are rare , and often sponsored by pro photographers who certainly don't have the PR budget of a Canon , Sony or Nikon. My take in this is , reviewing a new main brand camera model and lenses, probably cost 30 000 to 90 000 kind of price bracket, so if they review 10 camera systems a year, that's enough to paid the small crew. Of course I have not evidence of this. But I don't see a pro photographer paying 100 000 for a sponsored article.

Why is this a such a problem if camera reviews / web marketing content are actually financed by product supplier?

As customers, when we buy products, we pay for everything (included in product price), we paid for the raw materials used to manufacture the product, we pay for employees who assemble and calibrate the camera on the assembly line, we pay for logistics, we pay for the marketing & sales of the product (the product manual, the reviews, the after sales services), we pay for storage, we pay for interest rates of the capital used to operate the company, we pay for everything. So when we buy a camera , included in the price is a fraction of the cost of the reviews. A customer may feel odd when becoming aware that he's paying for the salary of the salesman for selling him a product, but that's how it is, not only for cameras, it's for everything .

Back when magazines were still a thing, brands that advertised in the magazines got better coverage than those that didn't. There was still supposed to be a division between the advertising arm and the reviewing arm of the publication, but reviewers still had to know that if they panned a new product from Nikon, it could hurt advertising sales in the future.

I'm guessing there is still an uneasy relationship in most reviewing sites, making them less likely to destroy a new release from a brand that has featured advertising on their site. You can still tell when a reviewer really doesn't like a product but, doesn't want to say straight out, "You know, this camera sucks." Probably for smaller brands, like Pentax/Ricoh, this becomes a bigger issue because they don't spend much on advertising and therefore don't get soft pedal reviews that the bigger brands do.

[Wheatfield]

Typically, the OM-1 fit the current consumer market trend very well: small images (posting on web, phone, prints media disappearing), light weight and very quick bursts and auto-focus tracking for dogs, pets etc.. it's IMO the perfect consumer / hobby camera kit, perfect for DPR audience. Then the rest of us who want top notch image quality / large format film kind of imaging, we've got to carry the burden of huge prices.

This is more than a little condescending. I've seen fairly large prints (13×19") from OM cameras that stand up just fine.

As an aside, I have prints on my wall shot with both 6x7 and 4x5 sheet film. There is no discernable quality difference at the print sizes I was doing (20×24").

[texandrews]

This is more than a little condescending.

Agreed. Something I find amusing/annoying/peculiar about online discussions over sensor sizes is that very, very few people print or otherwise view their images at the sizes necessary to discern significant differences between 4/3-m4/3, APSC, FF, or medium format.

I've seen fairly large prints (13×19") from OM cameras that stand up just fine.

Agreed. In fact, I have printed larger than that with Oly files and the prints looked fantastic. Now, this is also heavily dependent on the subject matter, the paper used, and more. But for the record, 13x19 isn't "fairly large" AFAIC---and wasn't even 30 years ago, although probably approaching the limit for most 35mm.

As an aside, I have prints on my wall shot with both 6x7 and 4x5 sheet film. There is no discernable quality difference at the print sizes I was doing (20×24").

Of course not. In my experience, that size isn't quite pushing the limits of 6x7, and certainly not 4x5.

Also, FWIW, "back in the day" the key limiting factor with regards to large prints had less to do with the film-camera-lens combos than with the darkrooms. 4x5 enlargers were the limit in the darkroom I designed and did the purchasing for for the college at which I was teaching, and 16x20 prints were the biggest things we could do and make use of the archival washer, 20x24ish for the drying racks. Up past 16x20 things got a lot less manageable and a lot more expensive as you probably know. I knew artists who needed to use rigid baby pools to make their prints.

[Wheatfield]

Agreed. Something I find amusing/annoying/peculiar about online discussions over sensor sizes is that very, very few people print or otherwise view their images at the sizes necessary to discern significant differences between 4/3-m4/3, APSC, FF, or medium format.


Agreed. In fact, I have printed larger than that with Oly files and the prints looked fantastic. Now, this is also heavily dependent on the subject matter, the paper used, and more. But for the record, 13x19 isn't "fairly large" AFAIC---and wasn't even 30 years ago, although probably approaching the limit for most 35mm.

Of course not. In my experience, that size isn't quite pushing the limits of 6x7, and certainly not 4x5.

Also, FWIW, "back in the day" the key limiting factor with regards to large prints had less to do with the film-camera-lens combos than with the darkrooms. 4x5 enlargers were the limit in the darkroom I designed and did the purchasing for for the college at which I was teaching, and 16x20 prints were the biggest things we could do and make use of the archival washer, 20x24ish for the drying racks. Up past 16x20 things got a lot less manageable and a lot more expensive as you probably know. I knew artists who needed to use rigid baby pools to make their prints.

I found 35mm pretty much ran out of steam at 11x14 or 12x18.
Scale that up to 6x7 and 30x40 should be perfectly acceptable. It turns out that oversized display prints that a local store commissioned from me were printed to 40 x60 and were excellent as displayed, with some grain showing of you stuck your nose into the print. Except for the stuff I shot on Ektar 25. It was just plain smokin.
I never did figure out how big I could print from 4x5.
My own work rarely took me larger than 11x14, and never bigger than 20x24.

To me, as long as one is within the envelope of the format, there isn't much point in moving to the next format unless there is dome unrelated reason to do it.
I moved from 6x7 to 4x5 because it was easier to control depth of field with the 4x5 not because it necessarily gave superior results in other metrics. Quite often I shot with a 6x7 roll film back on the 4x5, especially colour work. It gave me the best of both worlds.

[texandrews]

I found 35mm pretty much ran out of steam at 11x14 or 12x18.

Again, depends on the subject matter, film, developer, lens---although in general I agree with you. I never advised my students to print larger than 11x14 with 35mm unless they had some doggone good reason.

Scale that up to 6x7 and 30x40 should be perfectly acceptable. It turns out that oversized display prints that a local store commissioned from me were printed to 40 x60 and were excellent as displayed, with some grain showing of you stuck your nose into the print. Except for the stuff I shot on Ektar 25. It was just plain smokin.

Sounds right to me. I was ramoing up

I never did figure out how big I could print from 4x5.

Me neither, for the stated reasons!

To me, as long as one is within the envelope of the format, there isn't much point in moving to the next format unless there is dome unrelated reason to do it.
I moved from 6x7 to 4x5 because it was easier to control depth of field with the 4x5 not because it necessarily gave superior results in other metrics. Quite often I shot with a 6x7 roll film back on the 4x5, especially colour work. It gave me the best of both worlds.

Again, sounds exactly right. I quickly (after several years) abandoned 35mm for everything but some artwork documentation--slides and "performative" things, and went straight to 4x5 after a quick unsatisfactory stop with a 6x6 TLR. But in the end I went back to 6x9, as it was pretty much 1/2 the size of 4x5 and so yielded great negs and suited my shooting style at the time much better and also gave me great transparencies for artwork documentation. I was ramping up to use that and scan in the aughts, but then got to FF in 2010 and then the Z in 14. I traded in that 6x9, an all time fave camera, to help fund the Z but also because then it was looking like film supplies might get dodgy. Now I want that camera back again to shoot B+W. But the Z I think gets real close to the quality of those negs rez wise (of course that's not the only reason to shoot film in such a format).

[biz-engineer]

This is more than a little condescending. I've seen fairly large prints (13×19") from OM cameras that stand up just fine.

You are right. But who print more than 13x19" these days? Very honestly, I find the OM-1 type system is spot on for people who want to take pictures but are limited by their smartphone due to lack of zoom and focus tracking/fast actions capability. I guess the theoretical market for OM-1 is huge (selling an OM-1 to every smartphone user who want to photograph for posting images on the internet). If I print 30x40" I'm an outlier of the consumer market.

[Wheatfield]

You are right. But who print more than 13x19" these days? Very honestly, I find the OM-1 type system is spot on for people who want to take pictures but are limited by their smartphone due to lack of zoom and focus tracking/fast actions capability. I guess the theoretical market for OM-1 is huge (selling an OM-1 to every smartphone user who want to photograph for posting images on the internet). If I print 30x40" I'm an outlier of the consumer market.

Again, you are being decidedly condescending. Since you don't know who the market for the OM series cameras is, just say you don't know rather than tossing out spurious semi insults that are not constructive.