[Klaus]

It would make sense to lower the costs by cutting out readers that only generate costs.

I'm a bit curious about the 30.000$ costs. Didn't costs went down with Amazon hosting and the like?

 

Nah, the hosting costs are a comparatively small portion of this. While we'd certainly like to use Amazon AWS (or the Google Cloud) their pricing is prohibitive for a website with high bandwidth requirements. We are using "Hetzner" in Germany. They offer unlimited traffic. We are also using dedicated servers. That isn't perfect in terms of contingency/migration but again - it is a MAGNITUDE cheaper.

 

The primary costs come from the camera/studio gear and the extra room for the studio/office. Honestly I can't imagine how to cut costs further. 30.000$ is the minimum. Again this is just to keep thing running and without having any profits/salary. So in part time mode and effectively two persons in the boat, we are really talking about 80.000$ p.a. that have to be generated. Let's face it, we will not spend several hours per week in front test charts for absolutely nothing ... Taking sample pictures is fun as is chatting to you folks. However, the rest is work really. 

 

PS: We are at already far below those 80.000$ nowadays.

[Klaus]

A number of news papers in the UK allow a few articles to be read before the pay wall kickes in. Maybe that could be an option, new users are not alienated, but users wanting to read a number of reviews are required to pay up?

 

With 3-4 reviews per month, that approach wouldn't really work well I think.

It's, of course, easy just to push slightly enhanced Reuters news to a website to generate articles (which is what most of the news site are doing nowadays) but we can't do that. The required efforts for a review are a little higher in our case ;-)

[JJ_SO]

There's another Lenstest startup: http://kapipal.com/projects/the-ultimate...of-lenses/

 

Currently they are looking for finance, but if they make lenses comparable indepedent from sensors (which lenscore.org also does try to do), they might have a chance to do more with less effort.

 

mo offense meant, but at the moment the tone is very Italian: Starting with my Grandfather at 1894... best attempt... best software. Okay, it's no crime not to lack of self-confidence  :lol:

[Klaus]

A while back I had a chat with a fellow who explained how do it (other than using a MTF bench).

The problem with this is ... you just don't take pictures with a lens only.

 

I reckon we also have to come up with a more fancy UI. Not a big effort ... assuming you have the time ...

[Guest]

Is it possible to improve the pipeline? Lensrentals with their new - and expensive - equipment can analyze a lot of lenses. Of course there are limitations - no body/image, focal length limitations. But it certainly is interesting to see the lens copy variation results.

 

I was once contemplating making an automated pipeline using micromanager or Endrov imaging analysis software (open source, can shoot Canon tethered) to measure IS performance of lenses.  The idea was to shoot a certain sequence of images, and the software would do all automatic analysis.   I guess Imatest can do batch analyses - but there might still be substantial human intervention. Question would be if improving the pipeline would help, but more reviews wouldn't harm.

[popo]

Late to the thread... I will state I do use adblock (abp + ghostery combo) as standard on my personal computers, but on my work ones ads get through. If I load the front page on my work laptop (can't remember exact CPU, it is a dual core Broadwell with HT) with all ads showing I hear the fan spin up and CPU usage goes to 30%. Close the page, it goes away. So I'm in the group "I'm not against advertising, but I'm against intrusive advertising", and my threshold of what counts as intrusive might vary from others.

 

Where does that leave ad supported sites that I visit? I've not come across any site yet which I think I'd want to use enough to go through a paywall. I have done one-off donations to some sites before, but dislike that paypal seems to be the only option as IMO their fees are disproportionate compared to the rest of the banking world. I do shop using Amazon affiliate links where available. On that note, is there one still here? It has been a while since I used it, and in a quick look I can't find it again. Or has it been adblocked?

 

I'm about to enter the other side of the argument myself. I'm looking to start a youtube channel, with exact content direction to be decided. My other interest is computer hardware, and I've two directions to go at the same time. 1 is really deep analysis of impact of parameters in various use cases, where I've been benchmarking ram influence for many weeks already and I'm probably not even half way there. The other is the sillier side. I can't afford to break stuff for fun, but some of it will be higher risk involving watercooling, but not as you know it. I will try enabling built in youtube ads with a long term view this might provide supplemental income leading to a longer term ability to cut down my day job. However... I do recognise the chances of success are not high given the vast quantities of others already doing similar, and video work is taking considerably more work than expected for a decent production quality. Content quality also needs a lot of work before I even publish my 1st.

 

As there are lots of people doing that already, I can look at the more successful ones, and see how they generate their income. Now, I don't know many regular visitors photozone gets, but it looks like on youtube you've really made it once you reach about 100k subscriber level. At least, that's my definition of success. They use every trick and then some, which I admit can work with video but not necessarily photozone style content. They get sponsors, integrate ads into the videos, various premium accounts with some benefit over free ones, merchandising, affiliate links to pretty much anything that will take one. That's on top of the separate ad networks. The other difference is most of those regularly produce a lot of content. It's like people lose interest if the pace goes too low.

 

Could any of that be applied here? How about "Photozone TV" with say a weekly review of what's happening in the photography world? I haven't checked if there are other channels doing something like that. Photography news is slower though so maybe weekly would be a challenge outside of the major events.

[Klaus]

Late to the thread... I will state I do use adblock (abp + ghostery combo) as standard on my personal computers, but on my work ones ads get through. If I load the front page on my work laptop (can't remember exact CPU, it is a dual core Broadwell with HT) with all ads showing I hear the fan spin up and CPU usage goes to 30%. Close the page, it goes away. So I'm in the group "I'm not against advertising, but I'm against intrusive advertising", and my threshold of what counts as intrusive might vary from others.

 

Honestly, I just can't imagine myself in the role of TV presenter ... 

Even if I considered this - I would have minimum quality requirement and a creating quality TV review requires SOME efforts in excess of the time required for the reviews alone.

 

Of course, ads consume bandwidth and load on your systems. However, coming back to the core of all this - PZ is, just like all the other content sites, not a free service. That is a misconception. The ads and all their related costs (bandwidth, power consumption and, yes, also the annoyance) are the price tag. It's an implicit price tag but nonetheless a price tag.

Regardless of the reasons behind all this, the ad blocker battles are part of a "war" that cannot be won by either side because most of the relevant sites will either have a paywall (which is what no publisher wants) or are gone forever. At the end of the day, ad blockers are a lose-lose technology. Of course, it is completely senseless for me to argue here - I am well aware of this. I've even received messages about this topic which are way, way beyond hostile.

[chrismiller]

A big part of pz for me is assessing older lenses that are affordable for me (sony f1.8 lenses for £1k + - who are the kidding!!). Perhaps you could do a couple of things to make this better:

1) provide scores with older lenses on various sensor sizes / pixel densities. eg 5* on 5diii, 3* on 5ds, 4* on 80d, 5* on 7d etc

2) have tie ups with camera stores that sell second hand equipment. So for example have links to a used lens for sale in the country of the viewer next to the review of that lens.

 

I realise the impact of rehashing the tests would be significant and negotiating with camera stores might prove tricky, but it would be useful.

[popo]

Honestly, I just can't imagine myself in the role of TV presenter ... 

Even if I considered this - I would have minimum quality requirement and a creating quality TV review requires SOME efforts in excess of the time required for the reviews alone.

 

I'm certainly more comfortable behind a camera than in front of it! And yes, video quality is more of a problem than I ever imagined now I started to try it seriously myself... but still, it is an idea.

 

Regardless of the reasons behind all this, the ad blocker battles are part of a "war" that cannot be won by either side because most of the relevant sites will either have a paywall (which is what no publisher wants) or are gone forever. At the end of the day, ad blockers are a lose-lose technology.

I don't see it quite as badly as that. There will be pain on both sides of the war, and there will be casualties. I think given time, it will force a change in the nature of advertising and everyone moves forward.

[Reinier]

Sad thing is with the internet, most people think everything is for free. You see it with the millions of people who download films, software, music, photo's and all other things illegally.

 

Of course we don't steal from Photozone, but we must understand that it is fair to support the guys who put in so much work to this site for us to enjoy. If you want to play football, you have to pay it, if you join any other sport or club or union, then you have to pay. Here it is voluntarily on Photozone, but I hope that doesn't stop us to support these guys for their great work with Photozone!

 

Kind regards,


Reinier