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I've been reading this guys reviews of camera equipment lately:
In fact I (re-)stumbled over his review for the Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 and remembered that I got mine based in part on his review and in part from the reviews on B&H's website. His reviews also helped me reaffirm my desire to get the Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR when I can afford it and decided that the Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 DX isn't worth the money and weight compared to (surprisingly) the Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 DX kit lens that comes with the D60... at least for the sort of photography that I like to do. I did some checking elsewhere to be sure of course. Another thing I have noticed is that although he has highly detailed reviews and picks up on little things that are important to people who spend a lot of time with their cameras, his reviews are also highly schizophrenic and he has a tendency toward extreme hyperbole. To demonstrate both points, he says that there is no reason to get the D300 because the D90 is cheaper and newer technology (by about a year and there is some truth to this), but of all the Nikon cameras he prefers the D40 (which is cheaper and about twice as old as the D300) because it is light, and five mega pixels is enough for everyone. No professional photographer would take that advice seriously, but it actually makes a lot of sense for a lot of non-professional enthusiasts. His chart of Nikon lens compatibilities is the best on the Internet (I've been using it since before I even started reading the reviews) and he has an intimate knowledge of everything Nikon based on (as far as I can tell) buying pretty much everything they make/have made, reviewing it, and either keeping it or selling it back usually for about ~70% of the original purchase price. I take a lot of what he says with a grain of salt, but it's interesting reading regardless if you are a Nikonian amateur photographer such as myself. He has a couple of reviews of other manufacturers gear, like the Leica M7 and the Canon 5D, but the main value of his site is to Nikon owners. He even has a page explaining how to save money, as an explanation of how he gets to play around with so many fun expensive toys, but of course there are some oddities to his advice as he 1) tells you to tip well, which, while nice if you live in a country where waitresses aren't paid even the minimum wage, doesn't really save YOU money and 2) not to have kids, despite the fact that even a cursory reading of his website will reveal the fact that he hasn't followed this rule himself. But that is Ken Rockwell dot com... schizophrenic to the last.
This site:
takes a much more clinical, detached, scientific and less emotional approach to camera and lens reviews. Each review goes on for about 20 or 30 pages and I usually skip around or even go to the pros and cons in the conclusion, but it's great for in depth pixel to pixel comparisons. It's also good in that when they review a camera they compare it to the same class cameras by other manufactures. They have a few lens reviews, but not nearly enough to be useful yet.
Most people who are serious about photography have bought into one system or another, but it'd be extremely handy for people who are deciding on a first DSLR (compacts are a different because you're not buying into a system there). I picked Nikon because they have a manual focus 50mm f/1.2 lens that I love (Pentax also used to sell 50mm f/1.2, but its been discontinued and Canon used to make an even faster AF 50mm f/1.0, but that thing was way to big, heavy and expensive to be useful), and that I knew would work with auto focus cameras if I ever bought any of those (unlike Canon's manual focus lenses) and at the time I was starting to see the limitations of Minolta. I think it was a good choice for me. Nikon has superb quality and the equipment keeps its value better than most manufacturers if I ever need to sell any of it.
