One of the things I noticed when I came back online is that one of the many sites I follow hadn’t published an article since the middle of April. That site? Imaging-resource.com.
Like dpreview, I-R was a "cover everything" site that featured a number of key elements that digital camera cognoscenti relied upon—e.g. standardized test images from new cameras—and had a long history dating back to the early days of digital imaging.
The I-R site was already struggling to maintain its financing and staffing back in 2019, and was eventually sold to another company (Madavor Media) in 2020. That put Outdoor Photographer, DigitalPhotoPro, and I-R all under one roof. Earlier this year, another company (BeBop [BBOP]) came along and bought Madavor.
The last article posted on I-R’s site was April 18th. Today, the site no longer shows up. Basically you get a Cloudfare time-out that says the host is no longer responding (Cloudfare provided security protection for the I-R site).
Sadly, this seems to mean that two great resources for doing comparison shopping based upon not just specs and reviews, but also being able to examine actual visual quality, are now gone (though dpreview is still on life support for some reason).
I have press inquiries into both BeBop and I-R. If I hear from them, I’ll update this article.
