MicrostockGroup

Hi,

Maybe Im crazy, but... what . Ive just put some photos from Phase One P65+.
Quality is awesome of course. Check full at http://www.fotolia.com/id/12081951

That's some ugly moiré in the upper left corner...

I sense some envy here.  If I had more cash I´d get the best equipment on the market.  Are we supposed to have cheap stuff in micro industry? why?

Dash! If I ever become single I´ll come and visit you. (and some of your models)

Such an easy to see technical problem on a crop like this...

Looks like the picture is too sharp, we can even see small hairs on her chest !

Well, It´s about the quantity in micro.  It´s not like you sell 10 images/year?

Do you have your wife spying on you on the Internet

If you can sell 120,000 images per $0.33 it's would justify to use this camera for micros :-)

On SS: 150k photogs x 120k images per month = 18g images per month. That's 18,000,000,000. I suspect the market doesn't absorb that. My point is that many "for fun" photographers don't count. But then, also Ferraris and Maseratis got sold

Well my rant was inspired by looking at my Dreamstimes sales, just to find out that I only had subscription sales for the last 5 days, one of them 24 cents. I remember a post of Achilles somewhere in 2006 where he advised to upgrade our cams to 10MP since we would make up by XL earnings. That was hardly the case, and then they introduced subsciption after the fact... That's why I was so pissed off at Crestock too, after finding out they give away top sellers for 25c.

I don't mind subscription at all to honest sites that tell in advance that subscription is their main business, like Shutterstock. That's fine and they get a minimal size of 5MP. What's happening now is that for me, SS sells much more on demands and extended than DT, but SS has my 5MP and DT has my 10MP.

There was a thread in the DT message board where a designer (0 upload, 0 sales) said that customers expect value for money, and they don't expect quality from microstock, not at 1$ per download. I answered that he might be right and that uploaders would probably quit uploading full sizes and the best at microstock, and that if DT continued to be predominantly a subscription site, I would only upload 4MP in the future. Of course, I expect that my post will be removed.

I'm more and more inclined to do volume shoots, process 10 minutes maximum (levels, cloning) and leave all the other stuff like noise reduction. Then downsize to 4MP to subscription microstock (included DT, StockXpert) et voila, all noise gone and tack sharp. The very best ones, let's say 10%, I will only upload to midstock, or even iStock with minimal processing as they like. I guess many came already to that conclusion. Subscription is not viable for contributors in the long run. The extra quality microstock now wants, compared to 2005, takes extra equipment and extra processing time. It should stay worthwhile or nobody will upload any more in the long run.

Fun? Deviantart was fun. Stock isn't that much fun, it's work.

SS (yellow) vs DT (red) earnings in Feb 2009. Will the real subscription site please stand up?

Cant speak for the 65 but I wasnt impressed from the last model .. I just thought hmmmm this is a stupid waste of money. On a side note Dash doesnt need one anyway .. his pictures rock regardless