Shocking

[canon_stu]

I have not bought digital camera magazine for a few years now due to half of it being advertisements or reviews and the other half being regurgitated items from previous issues. Today i thought hey look at that, new look digital camera magazine as decribed on the top of the plastic bag and spotted the item on the bottom of the cover on "Creativity - portrait cheats" where it described " get the home studio look with just one flash" so being interested in portrait photography i bought the mag on the strength of this cover article and not being able to check it out first due to it being in a plastic bag which is a masterstroke as on getting home and looking for ages for the article i found it on page 30 and was furious that it is just a paragraph on the bottom of one page basically advertising lastolite ezybox softboxes. The rest of the magazine is no different to years ago and is basically five pounds worth of drivvel. How ripped off do i feel? Very!!!

[Geoff Harris]

Dear Canon Stu
First of all, I'm sorry you're disappointed. Can I answer your points one by one?

1) As with all other photography magazines, we have a lot of content to sell on the cover. We presented the 'Portraits Cheats" on the bottom bar, ie, not as a main cover feature. So sorry for not making that clearer. That said, I don't agree it's just an advert for a lastolite ezybox softbox. We recommended this product as it's a useful and cost effective solution; furthermore, we provide technical tips on how to use it, along with tips from a well respected portrait pro. Again, I apologise if you feel misled, but magazines will often mention relatively short articles or tips on the cover, without any implication or suggestion that it refers to a major feature inside the magazine. We would have been seriously at fault, however, had we 'sold' something on the cover that wasn't in the magazine at all.

2) As for the bag, again, we used the back of the bag to reiterate the main features inside the magazine. So the back of the bag mentions the main features, which are Gear of the Year, Using Exposure Compensation, using a reflector, etc

3) As for the magazine not being 'new look', this does not bear scrutiny. There has been a root and branch redesign of the magazine since issue 101, so it looks very different from it did six months ago, never mind a few years. Sure, reviews and advertisements are present, but we would be a rather odd photography magazine if we did not carry reviews of cameras and kit. Advertisements also provide a genuinely useful service for readers, and make the magazine financially viable, so again, I can't think of any consumer magazine that can survive without ads.

Again, I'm sorry you are disappointed with the magazine. What do other readers think?

Geoff Harris, Editor

[GeoffWessex]

Blimey! You can't please everybody. I'm in Canada and see DCM as the best of the bunch - most UK magazines are way in front of the US and Canadian ones and DCM is top of the tree because of its broad coverage of the subject and market research..... it knows its readership.

I made the mistake of picking up a Canadian magazine based on the biggest headline on its front cover, promising "Successful Bird Photography Guaranteed".... then found that it was three quarters of a page, plus one photograph. And such basic 'hints' that it wasn't worth reading about.

A couple of the US magazines still have their articles spread over three or four sections, so you get things like "turn to page 78", then "turn to page 122", then "turn to page 124" - something that disappeared from most UK magazines decades ago. The paper and photo printing is of a lower quality too.

Of course, all magazines of the DCM type tend to go round in circles to some extent (it seems about every three years) but if they didn't they'd soon become so high-brow and technical that any new readers would be lost. This inevitably leads to each reader eventually getting to such a point that they need to move on to something more specialised.... but the DCM and others like it will have done all they can.... they've put the budding photographer (or carpenter, or knitter, or gardener etc) on the right track and covered the basics.

I now find that, while I still enjoy DCM, other magazines are more suited to my own interests - 'Outdoor Photography' and 'Black and White' are my current regulars. By the way, the last time I got DCM in Canada it cost me $17... that's very nearly 11 GBP!