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That's just Amazon.

• PaulHoule 3y ago
  Used to be. Amazon threatened to shut it down and then spun it off. I think the official reviews by professionals (very trusted) have affiliate links to AMZN but it is not hard to look up gear at B&H or Adorama. People have asked "whatever happened to forums?" and they are alive and well at dpreview. It's a community of photographers that inspire me and help me out in a pinch. I went to a volleyball game that was a total loss for me, asked for help, and got exactly the crystalized knowledge and perspectives that I can't get from books at the library and I'm going to back with the right gear and the right tactics and turn it around. Between the pro reviews and the contact with photographers at and beyond my level I get a clear picture of the gear and the people who are reviewing it. On AMZN or Best Buy on the other hand I have to process reviews through this lens: you get people who leave bad reviews who just don't know what are doing or don't have the correct expectations, there was the guy who put the paper in a photo paper upside down, got an inksplosion, blamed the printer and returned. Well, I put the paper in upside down and got the same results, the difference is I knew it was my fault. There's also the strange problem that a certain fraction of certain products just aren't up to spec, circa 2008 it seemed that Sigma lenses for Canon were usually good but maybe 20% of people got a bad one. I don't see a problem with dishonest reviews on AMZN for that kind of stuff but I find dpreview easy to parse.