Originally posted by JPT I agree with this. I don't understand why the site is so demonized here. It's still a useful resource.
I remember the K-5 II and K-5 IIs reviews from this site and DPR. The DPR review was very positive, saying it was great camera and spending time on Pentax features like composition adjustment and Astrotracer that most reviews ignore. In contrast, the review here seemed to suggest that little was changes and buying a discounted K-5 was the better option. Given the solid reputation of the K-5 II among forum members, I think the DPR review was fairer. I also think DPR's coverage of the KP was quite positive, while it was getting a lot of criticism in the forums on release.
A lot of the time DPR gets Pentax users angry by pointing out things like limited lens line-up, non-defeatable noise reduction, uncompetitive AF and lack of video features. But the thing is these exact same limitations are often voiced in this community and are objectively true (at least until the K-3 III). So it's alright if we criticize but not DPR, is it?
I feel that their main fault is omission. The reviews are late and sometimes never come. They tend to criticize the full frame lens options, but they never gave credit for the APS-C lens line-up. They had a policy of not reviewing medium format cameras, until Fuji started making them and all of a sudden they did. They review cameras with the default JPEG profile, unless the maker calls it a "film simulation" and they they will wax lyrical about the different profiles. I think this is because their mentality is to let their criteria be defined by what the big players are doing. It's just conformity and lack of imagination, not malice.
I agree it's not malice, I don't think it's anything intentional and thus we should not claim it is.
They also aren't all the same. There was the "WaterFAILS" article - remember it? Someone dissed the Pixel Shift basically because the Adobe software did not support motion correction. Simon Joinson apologized for it, and took it down. He didn't push back (like Rishi would), he just saw the glaring problem and corrected it. And apologized. Yes, I have to say this again.
I'm not demonizing DPReview; that would be stupid (and would give some credence to the "Pentax fanboys! Pentax fanboys everywhere!" shouts of various other brands' fanboys
)
But I'm not ignoring the many issues with their reviews and articles either. The "WaterFAILS"? That's harsher than what they said about Sony's own Pixel Shift implementation (you know, the cumbersome one). The "non-defeatable noise reduction", what they said about it
can't be seen in their own samples, and they lied that it's "Star eater on steroids" and no, they didn't test that, it was cloudy
Speaking of their own samples, it's typical that they'd publish a first set of blatantly wrong ones, push back when that's pointed out to them, then finally redo them. The K-3iii's samples suffer from shutter shock, something many other cameras have, too - but we wouldn't find out from the DPR article. They didn't replace them with ES versions. I've seen people speculating the K-3iii's review "must" be delayed because of some horrible problem resulting in blurred pictures, and Ricoh Imaging "must" be struggling to figure out what's the problem. That's insane.
The AF tests, there was a lot of talk about these because there are valid questions like "where did you put the AF point" and "why are the settings different".
That medium format wasn't interesting until the Fujifilm? Typical. Pentax has something, it's not interesting - or even bad. Other brand gets said something, wow! Let's call this a slight consistent inconsistency
And the K-3iii review? Said to be days apart - few months ago. Then it was basically ready, just some text to write. Prioritized lower than anything, and I mean
anything.
In other words, there's no malice - that's just how they treat a brand with a small user base. And I bet they're thinking they're doing us a big favor just by covering the brand at all.