DPReview has posted an update saying they are still alive, for now. Since the first announcement that DPReview was due to be shut down on the 10th of April, it’s a mystery as to what is actually happening, as the site is still up and running, the forums are still active, and DPReview staff are continuing to post new stories and articles, including news of the new Leica M11 Monochrom (read our full review).
Producing a first look review of the Leica M11 Monochrom is interesting, because it doesn’t seem like something the editorial staff would have originally planned to do, based on an April 10th content freeze. So it looks like something more could have changed, beyond just keeping the site online longer to create an archive.
DPReview update on closure, 6th April 2023, source: dpreview.com
Since the announcement was made on the 21st March, key staff such as Chris and Jordan (the stars of DPReview.TV) have now moved over to PetaPixel. Chris and Jordan produced a number of YouTube videos reviewing cameras and lenses, and this also gave DPReview written content and sample photos from the cameras tested.
DPReview say they are creating an archive of the site so that it will still be accessible somewhere – details have not be fully explained publicly, but you can read about various different things if you search the the DPReview forums.
Others have tried to step in to replace the forums with dprevived.com, which is accepting new members, and up and running with an active forum.
Digicamfinder.com – screenshot April 2023
Another set of people have saved the camera data by setting up digicamfinder.com which aims to keep all the camera (and eventually lens) data, such as specifications and release information. Digicamfinder has 2,569 cameras in the database. (via PetaPixel)
Other sites with camera databases include ephotozine.com, which has over 3,300 digital cameras in their database, as well as over 2,300 lenses listed. Another site with a big camera database is the website pbase.com – with thousands of cameras listed, both digital and analogue cameras.
This is another stark reminder of how easy it is for web sites to simply disappear when it becomes no longer profitable to maintain. Other big digital camera websites to disappear over the years include Steves-digicams.com, DCViews.com, Megapixel.net, DCResource.com (Jeff Keller moved to DPReview), and there are no doubt, countless others, with some, such as LetsGoDigital.org moving away from cameras to smartphones.
In answer to the problem of disappearing websites, the Internet Archive exists as a digital library, setup in 1996 to archive the internet.
Amateur Photographer has been running since 1884 as a weekly magazine, with records being kept in The British Library. Our website has posts dating back to 2005, (with the announcement of the Fujifilm FinePix F10 being one of the first posts on this site), and we have over 750 full reviews.
Related reading:
- Amazon’s closure of DPReview is a sad loss for photographers
- Read our reviews of the latest cameras, lenses, and smartphones
