We're sad to report that Imaging Resource, one of our most longstanding (and very friendly) competitors is set to close at the end of 2019, after more than 20 years. In a lengthy message to friends in the industry, founder Dave Etchells confirmed that while the site will remain available through at least spring next year, content production will most likely cease by the end of this year.
Well, it is quite bad surprise and for me it looks more like minute emotions.
Yes, industry is falling. But still, I-R is quite reliable and superb small thing.
The news became official earlier today when founder Dave Etchells sent an email to some of his friends and colleagues in the industry.
It is little not nice, as it will look like he does care more about tight internal press circles more than about site audience now.
"The simple fact is that the current market just can’t support the kind of deep testing IR has always done, nor anything close to the staff of employees and freelancers that we’ve carried."
And most fun fact is that David not understand that he is fighting with algorithms, as it is them who now decide that search result to show and they prefer simple and entertaining one, plus optimized for SEO.
And it is algorithms that also rated I-R articles lower and lower, while all people who checked them likes them a lot.
This is really a loss.
It is. David had been best among the tight and early information press pack.
In my personal opinion this means that being part of such pack he, at least partially, played on the other side, side of companies.
I strongly oppose such NDA based early access approach (and all this "ambassadors" institute also).
Whole industry need to find strong and nice alternative for this outdated approach.
One thing I love is he strong logic and strong engineering approach that always saved him to falling into dark side and constantly keep readers interests as first priority.
He knew his play, he also knew that PV type guys are not much welcome.
For me or our teams he was not much friendly, if at all. But it is only very small personal thing, as most other responses differ from mine, may be we are just too new to the show.
Now companies found themselfs new better girls and boys, ones with youtube and instagram channels with around 80% of indian controlled bots among subscribers. may be someone told him that I-R just won't be invited to some major camera introductory events (they are all private and tightly controlled) and this became some last straw or he is just too tired to fight very hard and long fight.
Really hope that I-R team will keep working in the industry, love their reviews and interviews.
I always appreciated IR as the only reliable and complete source of information on the actual burst/high speed performance (fps, maximum number of frames) of photo cameras in JPEG and RAW. Sad to see this go.
IR is the best review site, much more accurate and technical than DPReview.
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