DPReview by the numbers

As we wind down the website and prepare for our final curtain call, the DPReview staff has been thinking a lot about our time as a publication. We had a front row seat to witness our industry be birthed and grow. We watched a new generation of photographers and videographers visit our articles and forums to learn how to use cameras and improve their images. We strove to elevate our journalism and hold camera makers accountable to our readers, never being afraid to ask the tough questions or push to better understand the science and testing.

Our chief motivation was always to do right by our readers and fans. Cameras are expensive, and we never wanted to mislead someone into purchasing the wrong tools. Looking back, we’re proud of our work and grateful to the communities who formed around us.

Thanks for spending your day with us.

Over nearly 25 years we’ve typed up specs for digital cameras of all sorts, from the rise of the DSLR through the era of compacts to cameraphones, hybrids and mirrorless models of multiple marks. Taking a look at our camera database, we have 2,568 cameras.

If you’re curious, there are 1,264 lenses in the DPReview database, but keep in mind we didn’t start to track lenses until 2007. (Although we did go back to fill in 109 or so pre-2007 lenses that were then still current and popular in an effort to have a more useful database.)

The DPReview studio scene has been a cornerstone of our testing. As our cameras became more complicated, so did our studio scene tests. The test scene is arguably DPReview’s signature calling card, and we’ve been amazed to see it pop up over the years as a reference used by other websites, in YouTube videos, on Wikipedia and even by camera manufacturers.

The scene has gone through multiple iterations over the years, being updated to capture more data on color, noise, ISO performance, sharpness and more. It’s been a good ride for the old box under the lights, and we end it with 494 studio scenes in the comparison widget (2010 onwards), made up of at least 12,000 images.

Pre-2010, DPReview didn’t have a comparison widget and we often shot comparisons from scratch each time we wanted to compare two or more cameras to each other. Case in point, we recently wanted to revisit our very first camera review from 1998, the Canon Pro 70, and we reshot the studio scene in March 2023 in order to add it to the widget. There’s an unknowable number of side-by-side comparisons shot and re-shot before 2010 that would considerably add to the final tally if counted.

Over the 5 years of our YouTube show we produced about 440 episodes of DPReview TV and reached over 400K subscribers, giving our readers and viewers a new way of seeing our stories and interacting with the DPReview team. Video reviews ran in parallel with written reviews, sometimes showing up sooner, sometimes later, but as a team we aimed to always reach our highest editorial standards in every review no matter the format.

And for anyone who may have worried, video reviews never came at the expense of written reviews.

Outside the forums, our articles drew many readers to gather, discuss and sometimes argue about cameras, photos, videos and gear. As of March, our readers had posted 2,695,673 responses to our articles.

What might not be obvious now in 2023 is that comments at the bottom of articles were introduced only on July 14, 2009, almost a decade after DPReview was in publication. Prior to this date all comments and discussion took place in the forums.

Photo challenges were one of our community’s best ways to practice their photography, solicit feedback and meet their peers. DPReview had over 854,963 challenge entries uploaded across 14,084 challenges. There were 63,470 unique entrants with 17,643,827 total votes cast.

DPReview had one in-person live event in our history. PIX2015 invited visual creators of all skills to gather in Seattle, Washington for workshops, seminars, hands-on previews, and workshops sponsored by camera and lens manufacturers.

We also presented over 60 live TED-style talks presented by some of the world’s most famous photographers, which were streamed live on the internet, at one point reaching 50,000+ live viewers. It was new ground for our team and the memories and friends we made there will never leave us.