[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by carthick1000

A very sad news. Dpreview is closing.]

That is sad news! I have been following their reviews for years.

Jeroen

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by carthick1000

A very sad news. Dpreview is closing.

Indeed it is sad news. The loss of the forums is a terrible thing.

Amazon is the parent company. I'm sure that assurances would have been made and are now being betrayed. I'm also sure that (if they were accountable to anyone, which they are not) they could probably scream economic justification. It smells of corporate vandalism.

Am I going to stop being an Amazon customer? Well...

[Samfromindia]

I came to know about the same through this video:

https://youtu.be/gObQ5FgHsZE

[Samurai]

I am very sad to read about DPreview. I purchased every one of my digital cameras, going back to 2001, after extensively researching on DPreview site.

In fact, I just ordered my latest OM System OM-5 last month after seeing that it got Silver award from DPreview reviewers. Even before it was delivered to me, DPreview site is gone.

Why didn't Amazon consider selling it instead of shutting it down, I can't figure out.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Why didn't Amazon consider selling it instead of shutting it down, I can't figure out.

I feel that hosting a forum which becomes the collected contributions of thousands of people is a responsibility. The content created by paid staff is one thing, the content created by unpaid public contributors is another. Maybe they gave assurances when buying the site. Whether or not they did so formally, it is an betrayal of the many members past and present. Ownership of such a thing is not ownership, it is custodianship. For goodness sake: what is the actual cost to them to, at least, providing hosting? On their scale of things, negligible.

I have read elsewhere that the one single reason for Amazon's ownership of DPReview has been that it gives them a second bite of the sales cherry. That it served as a big sponsored-link machine with the referral fees staying within the Amazon organisation rather than being paid to others. This is possibly their reason to not sell it: the referral payments would continue.

Amazon only cares about the money in Bezos's pocket. Let no single cent get away!

I don't buy photographic equipment from Amazon. Even if I buy online, I do so from camera shops. Any item (for example, cocoa, spices, etc from Kerala) that I can buy direct, I do buy direct.

[Samurai]

This is my mirrorless family built since 2010.



The OMD EM5 from 2012 still works fine. But the EM5 MKII from 2015 has gone bad, battery can't be removed and the camera can't be switched off. So it is hardly usable. It has been 8 years since I bought a new body.

Olympus camera system doesn't exist anymore. Now it is called OM system, which has very limited sales and support in India. So what are my choices?

Since I had so much investment in good m4/3 lenses, I couldn't really afford to switch the family to either Fuji or Sony. These other families are very expensive, I would need 3L and more to attain similar lens quality. So the cheapest option would be to extend the life of my existing lens collection by upgrading to OM System OM-5. It is the natural descendent of EM5 series, which is extremely familiar to me. So I don't have to re-learn much, not even the menus.

Here is the new addition to the family.