Good news — the camera feature search and all data is saved

[quote="@petergreen"]
Hello everyone! With my first post, wanted to share some positive news. We (small team of DPReview members who are also experienced web-devs) were able to preserve all of the camera data, re-build the camera feature search and quick search are now fully functional.

The data/search is now live here digicamfinder.com/

I’ve already made the same post on dpreview, but will summarize it here (going to have to live on both forums until April 10 😄)

Our goal is to take over the data part of DPReview’s legacy and carry it forward.

Why is this important, if the data had already been saved on archive.org?

While Archive.org is great and ensures the data isn’t totally lost, it’s still very hard and slow to access. Also the site’s functionality (like search) often just doesn’t work at all. So our goal is to not only preserve the data, but also to keep it easily accessible.

TO SAVE CONTENT

Tried to post this at DP Review but with likely reduced staff, still awaiting approval:

All thanks to gregalus of SoftArchive for this suggestion:

This may help
archive.org/web/web.php
Again, huge loss.

All Thanks to Rrigan at SoftArchive for this suggestion:

it possible to save entire website offline using www.httrack.com/ its free or copyweb www.cyotek.com/cyotek-webcopy

if small amount pages, no need to install software, I think web extension good enough, I often use this
save-page

to archive (save page to public online database, so we can access it online) there are
web.archive.org : chrome extension
archive.today

note: archive only save single page, for example: abc.com will only save abc.com not abc.com/a, abc.com/b,
to save entire webpages online you need to input each urls

All thanks to bcb at SoftArchive for this:

scrape the whole site with wget:
wget -t 0 -r -l 0 -k -L -nH web.address.somewhere

Excellent news and many thanks!

I delve into DPReview's camera information part ever so often,
just as often as I dive into Imaging Resource's lens information treasure.

That's fantastic news! And thank you so much for doing all this. I use both the camera database and the lens database on Dpreview all the time - so its a relief to know that all the information will remain in tact and still accessible. You've saved the day!

I'm glad to write my first post on dprevived as a big Thank You for this great initiative!

That is amazing. Absolutely amazing. This is one feature I used to use a lot, and I was sad that it will be gone. Now it won't.

You guys have a made a lot of people very happy Peter & Daniel. God bless and Godspeed.

Any idea if the camera and lens sample images can be saved? That is a whole lot of resources, but the tricky part is to get the links :(

Power is hard to let go of, that's why. Honestly many of the mods there ruined the place, and there's one in particular that goes way above the others in that realm.

Ha-ha. For your guys pleasure, this is the post that I wrote in the that was deleted in this thread. Literally it looks like ~30 people in total had seen the announcement on DPReview forum, for which it was originally made and intended. Pretty funny.

Also happy to share that PP has written about us! petapixel.com/2023/04/03/digicam-finder-is-a-new-resource-that-replaces-dpreviews-camera-library/

I believe the Archive.org team is working on it — we're relying on them for archiving the bulk of the image data, and we'll be able to link to them once they are archived.

Fantastic work - thank you to those involved

I want to thank you for this work and why you have done. What a truly great thing to have done. Thank you.

Another good coverage!
www.vice.com/en/article/ak3dp4/dpreview-alternatives-dprevived-digicam-finder

Is the camera search database complete? I searched a few cameras that did not show up (IXUS 255 HS for example) and searching for certain product lines, like Powershot, seems to produce much fewer results that I would expect.

It's also possible im doing it wrong!

Regardless, thank you so much for all your work getting both the forums and database up and running, as well as the future plans. It is a shining light during some pretty dark weeks!

You folks are awesome!! Thank you so much for saving all that valuable info and making it available for everyone!!

Hi @Callus!
There should be no "doing it wrong" for the user in a good app. 99% of the time, it's the app that is wrong :)

Searching for IXUS 255 HS does bring a result immediately for me, however, is it not for you (see below)? what browser/system are you using?

Re: powershot - it is true, the quick search has a limit on the # of results it will show, and a better one is needed, with full results. Something we have on our roadmap as well. There are definitely many more powershots there. For now, you could specify more parameters to bring up more results, like this:

Its great!
But the cameras have Amazon links to purchase....just sayin

Fantastic effort. I appreciate that you've decided to make all the data open-source. And the filter options are great!

I do have a few suggestions for improving the user experience:

1. Let the visitor set the default sorting method. Right now it's set to Shuffle but I would personally prefer it to always sort by Newest.
2. Instead of a grid with images, offer the option to show the items in a list.
3. Dark theme? :)

Also, what would really be cool is a comparison feature, where you can select multiple cameras and compare detailed specs side by side.

Just my 2 cents. Excellent website already though!