I know that nothing helps more when buying a lens to test it out yourself, but getting more than one perspective is also helpful. In particular, I run into Kenrockwell.com a lot when trying to get info on a lens. When I Google a lens, Ken Rockwell's site is usually one of the top results. A lot of people reference his reviews. However, the site also gets a lot of hate from many places (notably #photogeeks on freenode). Their reasons usually include:
- An oft-cited phrase in his About section says that he 'adds satire and fiction to the site,' although virtually all of his review pages are extremely dry reads.
- I cannot find a reference offhand but if I recall correctly, it is known that Ken Rockwell published 'reviews' for equipment which he has not used.
- There are virtually no sample pictures, and the ones that exist are heavily scaled and at best only questionably demonstrate equipment's behavior.
- His pictures are snapshot-quality.
- He openly claims to make a living off of the site. Pages are polluted with affiliate links, donate buttons and 'grassroots mom & pop'-style solicitation (thinly veiled panhandling).
I figure that the same might be true of many other websites. (bythom.com comes to mind)
Despite all the hate, KenRockwell.com is still extremely popular. Are websites like KenRockwell.com reliable sources of info?
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