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Content
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| Quality : |
18.0 / 20 |
| Quantity : |
13.5 / 15 |
| Entertain : |
13.0 / 15 |
| Updates : |
9.0 / 10 |
| Exclusive : |
4.5 / 05 |
| Download : |
3.5 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
61.5 / 70 |
| Navigation |
| Easy : |
7.0 / 10 |
| Features : |
3.0 / 05 |
| Design : |
3.0 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
13.0 / 20 |
| Other |
| Temp Fill : |
8.3 / 10 |
| sub-total : |
8.3 / 10 |
Scoring Criteria New
New Update!
As of Aug 15th, 07, price of a site is no longer factored into the overall score/rank. |
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1. Lots of models to check out.
2. Nice photography!
3. Images are a bit larger than before.
1. I wouldn't mind some extras (model/shoot info).
2. Navigation could be improved.
"Earl Miller provides great magazine-like photos better than the magazine's sites do." |
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Earl Miller's site is all about (duh) the photography of Earl Miller! He apparently is the most published photographer for Penthouse magazine. He's been doing his thing since way back in 1972, so that should give him enough practice. Hopefully that's a good enough introduction, because that's about all they give you on the site!
The site looks a bit different than it did even a few months ago. I think the team behind the site changed, and it's run by some new people now. Earl Miller does the photography, but he doesn't know much about computers I guess, so he has people help him out with that. While the front page looks better now, and the member's area goes along with the theme somewhat, the inside of the member's area looks a little amateurish in my opinion. It's very text based, as compared to the nice graphics out front. Perhaps they'll be updating this soon too, who knows? There is a note saying they are in the middle of a redesign, so let them know about any errors, but I'm not sure if that means they're done, or it's coming soon.
The focus of the site is obviously photos, so that's where you'll likely first click once inside. They have a few ways to browse: by name, hair color, action, or collection. The easiest would be by name, or hair color if you ask me. Each girl basically has her own cell in a table, with her galleries listed underneath a thumbnail. Most galleries have two size options, 800(x512) and 1024(x655). From here you can click on a link, and it'll open up in a new (very large) window. Personally I don't care for the way they present their galleries. There's a small menu down the left, and the main picture opens on on the right frame. This reminds me a lot of Homegrown Videos, who does it the same way; it just feels really antiquated for some reason. Plus with the larger pictures, you want to see them full-screen.
The pictures themselves are obviously pretty great. While I wish there was a slightly larger version (bump the 1024 up some), it's not too bad at all. The pictures look very much like they belong in magazines, which is where a lot of them end up I'm sure, so if you're into that look you'll be happy here. There's a little airbrushing going on in some of the photos it appears, but nothing too dramatic at all (barely noticeable). Unfortunately for me, the photography style looks a little dated, maybe because it reminds me of the porn magazines I used to look at when I was younger. It's lacking the fresh pop I see with some stuff others are putting out. Still, the pictures look very nice quality-wise, it's just personal taste about the actual content in them.
They have a few videos available, although not too many. They're basically an artsy, behind the scenes look at a photoshoot. I felt like I was watching a video I bought from the magazine or something. They are in Quicktime format, and are at (or sometimes under) 320x240. Quality is real good, although I couldn't double size them or anything which I missed. There's a few other extras to check out, basically other collections or info to keep you busy in between updates.
They have a bit of a weird pricing structure, which is $30 initially recurring at $20 a month. $20 a month is good, $30 is not. I can't really tell when they update, since there are no dates on the galleries that I saw. This is a tough one to score, mostly because of my personal likes/dislikes. If you're into the magazine girl look, Earl Miller provides this type of stuff better than most of the magazines do themselves. The few things I'd want to see fixed before I really enjoy the site are the member's graphics/design, the gallery pages, larger images, and cheaper ;-) Regardless, he does what he wants to do pretty well.
| 1st Follow-Up Review |
Review: 11-17-04 |
If I just write the word "ditto," does that count for a followup? Looking around the site again, my praises and complaints are much the same. While they've been updating with new sets regularly, that's about the only major change here (which isn't even really a change at all). They also added a Windows Media option to the videos, which was much needed.
I'd still like to see some better navigation features and design here, but the photographs are top-notch in most respects. They didn't take my advice of larger pictures yet, but it's not overly-important either. Overall, still a decent site that's probably worth a look if you're into nice-looking photography.
Score increased from 82.9 to 83.6.
| 2nd Follow-Up Review |
Review: 11-18-05 |
Well things look pretty similar around here at first glance, but thankfully once you dig a little deeper there are some nice changes in store for you. First, the price has dropped for our users from $30 a month to $20 a month all the way around, which is good; this basically brings the price back down to what it was originally, instead of paying 50% more had you not found our review! The other "con" of mine that got fixed was my request for a little larger pictures. He now has a third size option at a bit over 1200x800 which is definitely a nice addition. Besides some of those photography sites with huge (3000 pixel) images, these are about as big as you normally see out there.
That leaves the site itself which still looks about the same. It works, but it could work better than that's one area that hasn't been improved yet. The growth here has been nice and that's always good to see. A good join here for fans of his content for sure.
Score increased from 83.6 to 85.3.
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