DPReview: Some personal thoughts on a sad day…

This is a sad day...

It’s hard to convey the sense of shock and dismay I felt when a message from a colleague appeared this morning, telling me that DPReview was closing. I’m still trying to process it.

IR and DPR grew up together as the industry matured from the days when a megapixel was the norm and two was something to shout about. (I launched IR in April of 1998, and Phil Askey launched DPR in December the same year.) As both sites grew, the other was always there, and I myself have and continue to use the DPR site as a reference and resource.

It’s hard to state the sense of loss I feel, trying to come to grips with DPR’s closure. It leaves a gap in my world, as over-dramatic as that sounds. It’s true though.

I think most people imagined us as competitors, and we were to an extent, but it was a very friendly competition. The photo business is an unusually congenial and friendly one to begin with, and I counted many on the DPR team as good personal friends. Despite ostensibly being competitors, we often cooperated behind the scenes; my third factory tour of Sigma’s Aizu plant would have been devoid of photos if it hadn’t been for Carey Rose from DPR sharing some of his with me after I stupidly deleted mine from the memory card without backup. Many times, one or the other of us would get the only review sample in the US of a new camera or lens, cram all our tests into a single day and then overnight the item to the other’s headquarters. Sometimes one of us would find something strange in our testing of a new camera and email the other to see if they’d encountered it too. It felt more like we were comrades-in-arms than competitors.

The people are the biggest part of what I've always loved about the photo industry. There was a free-floating group of us that would always show up together at various trade shows and product launches; we counted each other as friends, even though we only saw each other in person a couple of times a year. The DPR people were very much part of that for me, I was always happy to see whoever it was again, wherever it happened to be.

Pretty much everyone in the photo business is here because we have a passion for photography. Our love of the craft unites us and cuts through a lot of things that separate people out in the “real world”. (The tour bus on a product-rollout junket may be the only place you can pack Democrats and Republicans shoulder to shoulder without violence or even argument these days ;-)

The relationship between the IR and DPR teams went deeper than that though; you have to be a special kind of geek to care as much as we did (and still do) about the innards of cameras and lenses, the picky details of image quality and usability and everything else that makes a camera or lens suited to the craft. We all shared a love not only of photography but of the gear itself, and likewise shared a commitment to accuracy and precision in our testing and reporting. I could see that people at both companies carrying a weight of responsibility, knowing that readers would use the information we provided to decide how to spend their hard-earned money.

It's hard overstate the respect I’ve always felt for the work the DPR team did.

I find I'm struggling a little to convey just how personal the sense of loss is that I feel, and how warm my memories are of so many of the DPR people over the years. Phil and Simon, Barney, Rishi, Wenmei, Allison, Jeff, Carey, Richard and Dale, only the last two of whom are still there; I have special memories with each of them. (In fact I just shared a very enjoyable meal and fine Japanese sake in Yokohama Japan with Dale, less than 4 weeks ago.) I’ve also known and worked with Scott Everett, their General Manager, one of the sharpest and most sheerly competent people I’ve ever met.

I could write more words, but don’t think any of them would capture just how personally I’m feeling this, and how much nostalgia I’m feeling for all the times I’ve shared food, drink or photo gear with members of the DPR crew.

It appears that Amazon is going to simply shutter the site and delete all the content at some unspecified time. The site itself will be locked and made read-only as of April 10, and while no time has been set for taking everything offline, the clear implication is it won't stay around forever.

I realize that business is business, but this would be an incomprehensible loss to the photo community. Even if it remained online in a read-only format, the forum content especially is an invaluable resource. How much could it cost to keep at least the forum system online as a read-only archive? On the scale of Amazon’s resources, it would be the figurative bump on a gnat on an elephant. (Maybe a molecule on the bump...?)

The struggles of IR and now the demise of DPR speaks to a general problem in the photo industry, and I suspect many others as well. Some companies were happy to reap the benefits of the vast work that went into sites like ours, but then treated them as if they were only vehicles for a handful of banner ads. If banners didn’t click, then the site must have no value, right? This is what happened to both sites. At one time at least some manufacturers realized the true value and supported us with advertising to maintain it. As times got tougher, though, that spirit faded and one result is what’s just happened to DPR. Hopefully the industry will realize from this what they’ve lost and look to support high-quality review sites like IR and some of the excellent independent blogs that exist before they too meet the same fate.

Overall, this is a sad day for the industry, the community, the people at DPR and myself personally. It’s going to take me a while to come to terms with it, but meanwhile I send my very warmest best wishes and encouragement to the entire remaining team at DPReview. - And sincere appreciation and thanks for the good times I've spent with all the others who already moved on in the past.