Snapsort's Blog

We updated Snapsort.com last night, the new release includes: discussions/comments on comparisons and cameras, prices from more retailers including Amazon.com and B&H Photo Video, more detailed comparisons, and new cameras.


Discussions

Every comparison page and camera page now hosts a discussion forum powered by Disqus!


For example, you could discuss the Canon T2i vs T1i (two of the hottest SLRs from Canon), or discuss the Nikon Coolpix P100 vs. the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX1 (two super zoom compacts that record HD video).

Individual cameras also get discussion pages, so you could for example discuss the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ10 (a great travel zoom feature 12x zoom in a compact body).

As our discussion pages mention: the intention is that these be used to discuss the cameras (your opinions on them), and but not for feedback on Snapsort, please discuss Snapsort itself at our support community.

Improved Prices

Snapsort now includes prices from Amazon.com, the Amazon.com marketplace (e.g. 3rd party stores selling through Amazon),  B&H Photo Video, Calumet Photographic and more.

We're excited to have these great stores on Snapsort.com.  Having more options means you can find the best place to buy your camera for you, whether that means a store you trust, or a store that has good shipping and/or return policies, or just the store with the best price.

Our pricing pages for SLRs now give some indication as to what lenses each kit includes or doesn't include, by showing an illustrative graphic.

Finally, through amazon.com and their marketplace, we now have a fair number of used and refurbished listings. These are clearly marked.  Buying used can be a great way to buy an older camera or get a great deal on a new camera.


More Detailed Comparisons

Our comparisons now consider a few more features including: the size of the camera, the frames per second they record video at and for digicams their best aperture at full zoom.

For example, when comparing the Canon Rebel T2i vs T1i Snapsort tells you that "The Rebel T2i records at a slightly higher frame rate" pointing out that the T2i does 1080p video at 30fps where as the T1i only does 20fps.

As another example, when comparing the Canon Powershot SX1 vs the Panasonic Lumic DMC-FZ38 Snapsort tells us that "At full zoom the Panasonic DMC-FZ38's lens captures slightly more light (0.7 f-stops)".

New Cameras

As with most of our updates we've included new cameras that have been recently announced or released.

Snapsort now includes a link from the main page to show you some of the most recent cameras.

New Logo

We've also got a new logo now!

Today we released an update to Snapsort.com.  It includes: prices for most cameras currently available for sale, links to buy those cameras, recently announced cameras, and a few small updates.

Pricing 

Snapsort.com now integrates pricing data from a few retailers, allowing us to do two things:

• Include current street prices in camera comparisons
• Give links to buy cameras at online retailers

For example, if you compare the Canon Rebel T1i to the Nikon D90 snapsort.com will tell you that the best price we've seen for the T1i is $146 less (as of today).

You can now click through to a page about any specific camera, so if you look at the page about the Rebel T1i you'll see that we have pricing for the camera body only, and in kits, from a few different retailers!

• Canon Rebel T2i (vs. T1i)
• Nikon Coolpix P100 (vs. P90)
• Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 (vs. DMC-ZS3)
• Fujifilm Finepix F80EXR (vs. F70EXR)

Camera Pages

As I mentioned above, snapsort.com now has individual camera pages - previously we had only comparison pages.

These pages are fairly bare bones at this point, and we'll be filling them out over time.  They include a brief overview of the camera, specifications, prices, and competitors.


Small Improvements

We've made a few other small improvements.

Camera comparisons now include a few more features in the differences and similarities section: widest aperture, RAW shooting capability, price and annnounced date.

For example, if you compare the Panasonic DMC-ZS3 to the Canon S90 you'll see that Snapsort points out that the S90 has a wider aperture (f/2 vs f/3.3) which lets in 1.4 f-stops more light!

Other small improvements include a couple bug fixes and image improvements pointed out by users at our support community.

Stay in touch

If you'd like to hear about future improvements, there's a whole ton of ways to stay in touch with us including: following @snapsort on twitter, subscribing to our blog, or becoming a fan at facebook.

We'd also like to hear from you!

Snapsort.com went live about three weeks ago. We thought we were launching such a small set of features that not many would be interested in. Our goal was to see if we could get some organic google traffic. Somehow we attracted thousands of visitors!

Backstory

Our vision for snapsort.com is a site that gives personalized unbiased camera recommendations, we imagine it being a bit like a conversation with a good friend who knows a lot about cameras (see my blog post).

Instead of spending ages building this incredible site and then releasing it all at once, our plan is to release little pieces of it at a time, and get feedback as we go. On January 6th we started by launching a camera comparison feature.

Traffic

We didn't expect many people to visit our site. We thought the camera comparison feature was slightly interesting, but didn't really think anyone else would find it useful on its own, to us it was just a step along the way to our vision.

We hoped we might start to get some traffic from Google, and we thought our friends and family would visit. And on the first few days it was just friends and family visiting. But a few days later, a few photography sites found the site, and blogged about it, sending us thousands of visitors over night!

We've now had over 49,000 visits to our site according to Google Analytics. Now many sites receive way more visits than that every day, but its way more than we thought we'd have at this point.

Traffic has since died back down, but we've now gained a small audience of interested users, and found out that if you build something interesting and useful that people love they will tell others about it.

Usage and Feedback

During those 49,000 visits, we've had over 6,000 separate combinations of cameras compared!

Shortly after launch we added a feature to show the most popular comparisons on the our home page, and on each comparison page shows a list of other popular comparisons for each of those cameras.

Whats Next

We're still working away on new features for the site, so stay tuned!  Feel free to join in the conversation at our support site, or follow us on facebook or twitter.

We've made another minor update to Snapsort.com today!

Here's what's new:

1. Popular comparisons on the main page


The welcome page on snapsort.com now features the 6 most popular comparisons by users!


Right now it looks like its quickly become dominated by SLR-SLR comparisons, though for a while the Canon G10 vs Canon G11 was quite popular, and you can see the Canon G11 vs Canon S90 on this screen shot.




2. Popular comparisons for each camera on comparison pages

On each comparison page, we now show 6 popular other cameras that each of the two has been compared against, so you can see what other people have been comparing that camera to.

Here is a screen shot showing the current popular cameras that people have compared against the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1.







3. Quick access to launch a new comparison

We've added a comparison search on the top right of the comparison screen, which we hope will make it faster/easier for you to change one of the cameras in the comparison, say you're comparing one particular model against a number of other models.







4. A laundry list of small fixes including:

• Adding the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1, this seems to be a popular camera!  Here is a link comparing the GF1 vs the Olympus PEN E-P2, also a Micro Four Thirds camera.
• Fixed some data mistakes

5. Small tweaks to the SnapRank algorithm

Point and shoots used to have an unfair advantage against SLRs, that has been improved now, but it still needs work.

6. Added a slightly humorous page to show you if you try to compare a camera against itself 

Try it!

We've just pushed a couple of tweaks to snapsort.com!  These are pretty minor, but we felt they needed to be addressed quickly.

Getting the comparison you asked for

A few people had pointed out to us that when they'd requested a comparison of one camera they might get a comparison of another camera. 

Behind the scenes there are a number of cameras that are given different names in different geographic regions, for example the camera known as the Canon Rebel T1i in North America is known as the Canon EOS 500D in Europe.  Initially we had this represented as just one camera in our system with two names, and one of the names was chosen arbitrarily as the main name.

We've improved how this works now, representing alternate names as separate (but related) cameras, so people who ask for a comparison of the Canon Rebel T1i vs the Canon Rebel XS will get the comparison they asked for!

Improved Comparison Search

The comparison search boxes will now find the camera you're looking for even if you don't type in (or use the auto completion) to find the full name.  For example, if you type in "Canon 40D" and not use the auto completion, we'll now find the right camera without you having to type in "Canon EOS 40D".

Improved Autosuggest

Previously when you typed in something like "Nikon" into a comparison search we'd show you a rather arbitrarily sorted list of cameras.  Now, the list of suggestions is sorted first by match closesness (as it was before) and then by new-ness of the camera, so if you type in "Nikon" you'll see a list of the the most recent cameras released by Nikon.

Keep the feedback coming, thanks!

	Before we launched the site, we needed some photos for snapsort.com. They say that constraints inspire creativity, and indeed they do. Our office is rather small and unglamorous, and the only nice light seems to be from the front door. I had to squish up against the wall and lean over my desk to get a photo. On the left is a shot of our setup (taken on an iPhone).
	Here is one of the final shots, taken with my Nikon D700, at 85mm, f/3.5. I took the initial shots at f/1.8, but the depth of field was SO narrow that I sometimes got eyes out of focus but eyebrows in focus :)

Yesterday we released our first feature up at http://snapsort.com. Using the site you can compare any two digital cameras and get a concise summary of the differences and similarities, and see which camera snapsort.com thinks is better overall.

For example, my brother is looking for a new camera, he's looking for a camera with a lot of zoom (since he finds his current camera's zoom rather inadequate). I recommended two cameras to him, each with different strengths, so I sent him a link comparing the Panasonic DMC-ZS3 vs the Canon SX20 IS. You can see a number of major differences. The SX20's major advantage is that it has 20x zoom compared to the ZS3's 12x zoom, but the ZS3 is much smaller (good for travelling), and has a better screen, faster continuous shooting, etc.

I also suggested he might compare the SX20 IS to the Panasonic DMC-FZ28, the FZ28 has almost as much zoom, but faster continuous shooting, is lighter, and has better low light capabilities.

So, the great thing about this is, you can compare any two cameras on snapsort.com, and quickly see the differences. For example, you might wonder what are the differences between the Canon SX10 IS and the newer Canon SX 20 IS which I compared above.

You can even compare older cameras. Years ago I bought the Canon S1 IS, for its great zoom and movie capabilities. Its now been replaced by the SX 20 IS, snapsort.com can quickly identify whats changed between the Canon S1 IS and the newer Canon SX 20 IS. Its interesting, the SX20 is better on almost every feature, except for continuous shooting speed, even though its 4 years newer. The SX20's bigger brother the SX1 IS is faster than the S1 IS though. Unfortunately we don't yet have pictures of the older cameras.

We'd love to hear any ideas and/or feedback you have, and we'll keep you posted as we add more to snapsort.com in the future.