Recommend me a good photography forum

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drmaxx

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Can you recommend me a good and friendly (digital?) photography forum. I am an advanced beginner who wants to learn from other peoples mistakes :naughty:. Something like cpf with lots of friendly and knowledgeable people would be great.
 
Haven't found any that were particularly great myself but I've been in and out of various ones over the years. Photo.net used to be a good resource, not so sure it's as good anymore, but there's also photography-on-the-net which bills itself as a Canon forum but is large and covers a lot of ground. I've found it's generally pretty friendly but like a lot of forums it suffers from too may cliques.

Tread dpreview with caution, my friend, with caution.
 
DPReview is a bit snobby and there are snarky but ignorant people. Someone once posted a really good explanation - from a signal / image processing point of view - of why more megapixels doesn't necessarily mean more noise at the same spatial scale. The people that didn't understand it kept arguing and arguing, pointing out a certain test by DPReview that used image scaling to try to disprove the original poster. DPReview's test methodology was wrong because they used the wrong type of scaling filter for what they were trying to determine. And the wrong posts were just filled with snark.

I got shot down once when I said that I don't buy refurbished cameras anymore simply because it's hard to tell how much wear and tear they went through. I said I previously bought one from Best Buy and that was all they needed to conclude that I didn't know what I was talking about. Because apparently Best Buy gets crappy refurbs from somewhere, whereas whatever darling store they used gets them straight from Canon. Except Best Buy's refurb actually comes from Canon with a 6 month warranty from the manufacturer itself.
 
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Dpreview is full of a lot of different opinions, but if you have a thick skin and can sort through a lot of answers then it's probably the best information forum on the internet.

It really depends on what you need help with. If you have a legitimate and specific gear question that isn't a cloaked editorial or lecture, then you can typically get a good answer.

Dpreview's challenge galleries also feature the most diverse and best amatuer work I've seen on the internet. One way you get to be a better photographer is simply look at work better than yours but taken with the same level gear.

For photographic technique and improvement, you'll have to look elsewhere.
 
Try photography on the net:

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/

While it is primarily a canon site, the photography content applies generally to all the cameras. Very friendly helpful people and lots of content/reviews/how to's. They have weekly photography challenges for fun in almost every catagory of photograpy, and a very active B/S/T that has very good people.
 
Dpreview does have good information but, as some of the respondents here have indicated, can be abrasive...but not always. I find it most useful for reading others questions and the resultant answers. Yes, there is snobbery there....as there is here...but here to a much lesser degree. It's ALWAYS good advice to read for some time---"lurking" if you will--to gain a good idea of how YOU think the individual forum operates and whether YOU will feel comfortable posing specific questions. CPF is VERY closely monitored for such negative activities and the moderators here are very quick to act. Makes us all feel a bit safer I guess.....:)



Karl
 
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I used to spend many hours at dpreview. Now that Amazon owns it and I feel they really concentrate on the higher end cameras, I don't go there as often.

They used to to really good reviews on all cameras. Now they appear to only do group reviews on the sub $400 price range cameras. That's the price range of the cameras friends are looking for. I don't think their group reviews are as comprehensive as there individual reviews used to be.

I used to send people there but no longer do cuz of the "snarkiness."
 
Thank you all for these insights and recommendations. I'll check them out.

@Colorblinded: I really like your site. The pictures are way out of my league. Nevertheless, I took some ideas away for interesting photo projects. And of course, as somebody that hangs out at cpf I really appreciated the focus light idea. :thumbsup:
 
I would also recommend Photography on the Net (POTN).

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/


As has been mentioned it's not just for Canon users, but the equipment sections are Canon only. There are plenty of other sections for general photography discussion.

There are one or two irritating 'experts' on there, plus a couple of arrogant smart-arses that are posting all the time, but as far as forums go it's quite an easy-going place.

:)
 
Not exactly a forum, but I like this guy's style of photography. And he has a lot of interesting articles.
 
Nitro said:
Not exactly a forum, but I like this guy's style of photography. And he has a lot of interesting articles.
Click to expand...

Ken Rockwell seems to be someone photographers either agree with or hate. Many photographers are quite critical of his advice.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=357406

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=346458&highlight=rockwell

http://www.dpchallenge.com/forum.php?action=read&FORUM_THREAD_ID=334007&page=1#2051636


Here's one forum that I personally like: http://photocascadia.wordpress.com/

Also, here's their website (link to blog is above): http://www.photocascadia.com/

One last link (Photo SIG): http://www.photosig.com/go/main
 
Erich1B said:
Ken Rockwell seems to be someone photographers either agree with or hate. Many photographers are quite critical of his advice.
Click to expand...
That's one of the reasons I like him. He tells it like he sees it, and get's under a lot of so called photographer's skin. :twothumbs

Photography is an art form. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I like his work, along with a lot of other people. Anyone who criticizes him has an inferiority complex, and needs his advice more then the rest of us. :rolleyes:

Who's more pathetic a guy who's blogging about something he likes doing, or a bunch of guys nit-picking everything he says? :crackup:
 
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