What happened to old.photodo.com?

What happened to http://old.photodo.com ?

It's now redirecting me to the new site, which is *dramatically* harder to use for finding MTF charts for lenses (no offense, but I *never* recommend your new site to anyone looking for lens information, as it's pretty bad compared to the old site).

The last time I pointed users to http://old.photodo.com ,it still worked. I'm the Forums Manager/Administrator for a major digital camera review site, and lens questions come up often. In the case of lenses covered by old.photodo.com, I post links to MTF charts. For newer lenses, I post links to http://www.photozone.de or http://www.slrgear.com

I never post links to your new site at http://www.photodo.com (it's just too hard to navigate).

But now, trying to use http://old.photo.com is redirecting me to the main site at http://www.photodo.com (which is not very user friendly for finding MTF charts for many lenses).

It was my understanding that you guys were going to keep the old site working by letting users go to http://old.photodo.com

If not, please let me know, so I don't accidently post links to tests here again.

JimC

I'll ask and get back to you.

John

Hi Jim,

We had found that after 2 years very little traffic was actually going to old.photodo.com and thus was not worth keeping it on. The data on the site was very out dated compared to the new site and extremely difficult maintain.

We have done our best to try to redirect all the old links to the matching new link, but obviously some of it is not possible.

I find it surprising that you feel that the new lens search is difficult to use. Would you like to elaborate on why you find it difficult?

Took away the old photodo rating--Your new format just plain Stinks---

The Old Photodo Rating is still there. It's clearly displayed on the main Lens Search page and at the bottom of the specs table called 'photodo MTF score'

Hey Dave:

Personally, I find the new format is just too difficult and time consuming to use.

So, I normally go to sites like http://slrgear.com or http://www.photozone.de to see lens tests and ratings.

For older lenses, I've always preferred the old photodo.com layout (that you guys kept with http://old.photodo.com ), since I could click on a lens manufacturer and easily see a list of lenses and ratings, and see more detail and MTF charts with another mouse click.

But, it's just too time consuming to use the newer format. For example, I was just visiting the site here to find MTF ratings for a Tamron 35-105mm f/2.8. With the old site, that would have only taken a few seconds.

With the new site, I ended up setting up filters for Tamron only and browsing through a long [unsorted] list of lenses just to find it; and even when I did find it, seeing MTF data is not very inituitive (I finally found it under the "Images" choice).

No offense. But, I really dislike the layout compared to the old photodo.com. Ditto when comparing it to other lens review sites. So, I very rarely visit this site anymore.

Problem solved (by using waybackmachine.org )

See this post, where I was able to reference the old pages so that I could see MTF Data and Charts on the same page (using the data mirrored from the old photodo.com site):

http://forums.steves-digicams.com/general-discussion/181141-full-frame-lenses-aps-c.html#post1176315

But, it would still be nice if you guys put the old site back online. How much space can it take, given the number of page on it?

Sometimes, simple is better, especially when users are comparing older lens models. ;-)

JimC

While I too miss the old site, (we all miss old stuff) I will abide.
However, one change that is really annoying on photodo 2.1, is that your lenses are sorted poorly. Your sort algorithm needs to account for NUMERIC differences in the lens focal lengths. It looks at 100mm lens as coming between a 10mm lens and a 12mm lens. It is not anywhere close to the 85's or 90's. While I have used photodo since before I went fully digital, this problem drives me away every time.