Ken Rockwell

Ken Rockwell website provides detailed camera information including manufacturing country. By giving his unbiased opinion based on years of experience his candid views can be very helpful. See no particular reason for people not to like his fact-filled website.

Ken's technical reviews *can* be good as long as he sticks to the facts and doesn't drift off into the lunatic fringe and injects opinions tainted by bias. He also pushes a lot of photo technique approaches that most pro photographers I've spoken with write off as rubbish, e.g., his assertion that you don't need to shoot RAW... all you need is JPG. I followed this advice many years ago and quickly came to regret it. So, approach his reviews with a great deal of caution... and be sure to look elsewhere for other info to be sure you get a good flavor of what you're trying to learn.

For those who did not shoot raw.you should have shot both raw and jpeg.that's what I did.don't just follow blindly.

But I agree.where are your new artistic photos? They are the same old same old.but the final straw was the photo of Yosemite with the fake sky.OMG that was such a rubbish photo...

Ken has been around for years and I always pop over to his site to get another opinion before I buy any camera equipment. I'm a Nikon user and I find his reviews pretty accurate so I do end up usually taking his advice. Never been wrong yet! His knowledge of the different models of Nikon lenses is invaluable and has prevented me from buying anything S/H that I regret.

Keep up the good work Ken!

I used to visit Ken Rockwell's website frequently in the past. Especially when it was Nikon oriented (many years ago) He was critical, and I bought what he recommended. But I've seen him shifting his judgement on specific lenses very often (from bad to really good). Following Ken Rockwell did cost me money
(I know, my own mistake :-)

Nowadays Ken Rockwell is nothing more than an ordinary 13 in a dozen advertisement site. "But this one, I did!" . He's getting very lazy. Limited, standard copy and paste reviews. You hardly see any decent photography either. Come on, look at the ugly brownisch colours of the interiors he photographs...

But It used to be a fun site in the past, long ago... And the old reviews might still come in handy. Maybe he can retire from his earnings, I don't know, I hope so :-)
Otherwise I think it is an ending story...

Ken is kinda filled with a bunch of hot air. Some of it is tongue-in-cheek (like "best camera ever made" about a relatively ho-hum camera he likes for a dumb reason)
It's ok information if you don't take it too seriously- However, many people think in absolutist terms.
The BS about "free digital camera" is stupid (he's talking film cameras, neglecting the cost of film and processing)
He'll nix a camera if it cannot use a lens made in 1972, but he'll ignore the fact that it has 10 other horrible features. His photography is totally cheezy. His choice of automobiles speaks volumes. Probably compensating for his small penis.

I've read Ken Rockwell's reviews on just about every piece of photo equipment that I've purchased over the years. I don't agree with everything he says, but he gives pretty good advice. If I am looking at a piece of equipment to buy I read every review that I can find, not just Ken's. I appreciate that there are entrepreneurs out there in the world of photography that are willing to share there expertise... For Free! Thanks Ken.

I like a lot of what Ken says and he is right about many issues. However his vendetta against Nikon isn't justified. He may be a photographer but so are many others and not many share his one sided view. Sony and Nikon make good products. Period! I know some camera models have features that set them apart, but these features are not unique to just Canon. I shoot Nikon AND Canon and find them very similar in many respects. I don't shoot Sony but have seen very impressive results from them. I personally own the R5 and while it's a great camera, it isn't the second coming. I also own the Canon 6D and a Nikon D750, both about the same price, but the Nikon is a much better buy. Try sticking to just the facts and leave your sales commissions out of it Ken.

When i first started reading about and learning about DSLR cameras, this guys site would pop up a lot in search engines. At first I thought it was usefull because he had a lot of reviews about things I was looking at. But the more I read his reviews the more I started to really dislike his website. He rarely has anything good to say about any product. I have yet to read a real review instead just his opinion which I don't really care for. Someone please crash his site so it will stop popping up in search engines!

Ken is enthusiastic and very opinionated which is fine, hey that's a lot of what the internet is, but I had to deprogram for quite a while after reading his articles as a budding amature. Things like "don't waste time with RAW formats" hurt my image quality for a long time. I had no creative control over the image after capture and my subsequent edits ended up damaging the original image (jpg) or introducing such horrendous artifacts that the images were unusable. As a real estate photographer and astrophotographer, it would be unconscionable now to shoot anything but RAW as that is how the highest quality, most accurate images are produced from our limited photographic tools. I would never be able to sell a single image if I had continued to use this misguided advice and relied on a lossy format and limited exposures that don't represent the true dynamic range of what the human eye sees when looking at an interior space with widows. Now when I read Kens stuff it's to get a laugh at how wrong a lot of his posts actually are from a more experienced, holistic perspective. Ken has his place in the internet world, and as he points out every chance he gets, he's trying to make money, but seriously. If you are a photographer just starting out, take ol' Ken with a healthy heaping spoonful of salt. Ken comes off as presenting his reviews and advice as photography gospel which is just misguided and often horribly wrong. Read him if you want but he really got me off to the wrong start and I've learned so much more from broadening my search to professionals who actually make a living with the lens.