It's long been obvious that the existing dpr review format - even in its seriously truncated 'concise' form - is unsuitable for the majority of what can be broadly termed 'point and shoot' compact cameras, and I've been wanting to develop a group test format for some time now. There are simply too many compact cameras released each year for us to keep up with (even the most basic camera takes a minimum of a week to put through our battery of tests and to produce a gallery), and the truth is that image quality amongst competing models doesn't - for the most part - vary that much. But there are always going to be exceptions, cameras with image quality that falls well below or rises way above the mean, and unless we test a far higher proportion of the models on the market there's a risk we'll miss these occasional stars and lemons. The group test format may not give you as much detail about the individual cameras, but it does give you a much better idea of the relative quality of a far greater number of competing models.

Ten years, nobody who starts a web site can honestly claim to have an accurate vision of what that site will be like ten years down the line.  When I wrote my first digital camera article and dropped it onto the now defunct photo.askey.net URL I had no intentions for it to be anything more than an opinion piece of my purchase. But then a funny thing happened, I began getting emails, lots of them, all asking about my article and what I thought of other cameras.  It seemed that this "digital camera thing" was becoming popular and what people were looking for was a site which was always up to date and could deliver honest, detailed reviews.  I went out on a limb and spoke to several manufactures, to my surprise the majority were extremely receptive and before I knew what was happening I had a steady flow of cameras coming my way.  Over the next couple of years I developed the primary site features (camera database, forums, news, etc.) as well as gradually improving the testing methodology (but at all times trying to be consistent).

In my last blog post, I rambled on about the challenges rendered by, and insight that comes from, having to become familiar with the interfaces and operating systems of all the different manufacturers.

It's a learning process that makes you realise that, while some are more awkward than others, most of them are in need of some work. Without question, all the current DSLR user interfaces (particularly the menu structures), are struggling under the weight of all the additional features that have been introduced. And it's not just DSLRs - I’ve spent this week working with a compact that requires nine button presses to change exposure compensation. I don't envy the task of trying to sensibly prioritise and structure so many features in a menu system, but I wonder whether it couldn't be done better...

Hot on the heels of publishing a new lens review (the Tamron 18-270mm F3.5-6.3 VC), I thought our readers might be interested in getting an insight into the overall review process and the amount of work involved. While some of our more naive forum posters appear to labour under the misapprehension that our reviews are just a few days work conducted entirely in the studio, the reality is that the process is a lot more complicated than that. In fact the experience gained from going out and actually using the product is also very important, and informs the final conclusion just as much as all of that studio work. So in a nutshell, here is what the review process actually involves.