A major feature of this blog is reviews of old film cameras. I’ve reviewed 146 cameras so far! See the entire list here.
Thanks to Internet search, camera reviews drive a great deal of traffic to this site. It’s interesting to track the reviews that have gotten the most views here over the years. Here are the top five most viewed reviews since this blog’s inception:
The most visited reviews so far in 2021 is a very different list, however:
When I look back at 2015, the list is:
I’m curious to understand how these cameras end up ranked as they are. I know some things about it. For example, the Nikon Nikkormat EL couldn’t possibly have made the 2015 list, as I didn’t review it until 2016.
Also, my Yashica MG-1 review, which is from 2010, was very likely the only review of this camera on the Internet for many years. But since then, several other photobloggers have reviewed this camera, giving it competition. Moreover, search engines prefer newer articles — my 11-year-old article is positively ancient.
I’d love to say that a growing interest in 35mm point-and-shoot cameras is what’s pushing my reviews of the Pentax IQZoom cameras and the Nikon Zoom Touch up the rankings. This could play a role; the Nikon Zoom Touch review is from 2014 but has only recently started to get this much activity. But my other popular point-and-shoot reviews are all from the last couple of years. A review can’t rank if it hasn’t been written yet!
None of the cameras I use most — the Pentax ME, the Nikon F3, the Olympus XA, the Yashica-12 — make even the top twenty in any given year. I believe it’s because so many others have reviewed them. When you search for “Pentax ME” on Google today, the number one result is Ken Rockwell’s review. My little site is always going to have trouble competing with Ken Rockwell’s well-known and popular site!
So if there’s one lesson to learn from my stats, it’s to review cameras that have few or no other reviews yet!
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