MicrostockGroup

that's the batch I'm talking about. Photos are of a set of in-the-ear hearing aids. I looked at their portfolio(and of IS, of fotolia, of DT) as far as I can see there's nothing like mine, and I think they can sell since they are unique. There are more photos of that set, but approx 24 photos there's 24 rejections. while they maybe OK to reject(though I don't really think so) I'm most puzzled by the pieces I attached. All my rejections are marked for low commercial value. Any ideas? Should I submit them back? Can you see any technical errors? Is there anything I can make them better if I shoot again? As a note they are brand new: it's how they are made.
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to me the top one is cropped a little tight, the bigger problem I think would be the lighting. Personally I'd be tempted to reshoot or photoshop to isolate them on pure white

Apart from the things mentioned above: Why would you submit 24 pictures of that same hearing device? Go for the best 3 or so..?
Maybe the reviewer felt it wasn't their job selecting the best ones out (rightfully so) .

Vacations?

Exactely my point

nehbitski, I cannot speak for SS, as I don't contribute there. But speaking generally for any site, I
 would try to submit difference objects in a batch. if you must repeat the object, maybe have no more than 3 of the same . it will give you better results of getting some if not all approved.

nehbitski, and now here, a bit OT but related.
i like to point out that this following paragraph is not about your images, so please do not take offence
as it is not about you. ..
but more so to what stockastic said about identical images:

I would take that even further stockastic. I think a reviewer should , even if the photos are outstanding, approve only a couple of those photos of the same objects. Especially when it 's the same shot with a slight variation. This is to prevent anyone to abuse flooding the pages of a keyword search or new images with pages and pages of his or her own images which is the same image but each one having a slight change in colour here and there. Absolutely redundant . Is it no wonder how some "large" portfolios can say they upload 1000 images per week. All the same shot with minute changes in colour ?
That is pretty much SPAM of an image, if you ask me.


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First off, never submit more then five images of the same thing.  If you want to you need to space them out, almost every company will start to reject based on that. 

Other things that stood out right away is every picture only shows one item really focused.  You should expand your depth of field to show both hearing aids as crisp images.

Finally, you white background is not even at all.  Most reviews like to see a solid background as its distracting for an isolation image. 

Overall I think its a good subject, just needs some tweaking.

I'd like to correct a misunderstanding here(my fault, of course) there are no  24 photos of aids, just five of them and four of them are here. all other batch consists of different objects, some travel photos, although i got many worse travel photos in and sold them. it's not that I'm not puzzled about it, just the photos you are looking for are most unexpected. for other proble s reviews are probably true. I'll find a less textured paper.for white balance my camera(d50) dont accept gray cards. for lights,i think i need to find real spots, rather than desklamps on steroids for depth of field, these objects are TINY, i mean, in sub-cm level. i have no macro lens, I used macro rings instead. eats a lot of light. I maxxed out aperture to smallest that'll not cause diffraction and can be held by hand. (plastic squeaky tripods wont really help in situations like this) this is the max DOF i could get. anyway, a poor workman who blames his tools. I'll try to fix them when I get home though. any advices about equipment that can return money spent? I'm just a starting photographer, my gross total is $10 thanks for all the help.  

Here is some of my "poor photographer" help kit 

If you need more lighting , the cheapest would be to buy the 6000K+- daylight bulbs .
(Don't use houselights incandescent due to the colour temperature, nor is the light intensity sufficient.) I can't remember the wattage, 500w ??, it's been over 20 years since I used them as a poor photo student. I am not even sure anybody uses them either. But that was what this "poor photographer " used for lights, when money is an issue.
These lights are hot and very bright. Hot , as in chances of fire, so be careful where you use them . 

If you prefer the safe less hot lighting. You can try to get small speed lites (electronic flashes), and a couple of slaves. Then use your on camera flash to trigger these remote flashes.

White background. A white poster board is cheap and you can buy them at any art store. You don't have to spend too much on background paper, if you know how to add light to the white to make them seamless. It merely a case of adding more light to get it to be textureless white. (zone 7 texture white, zone 8 textureless white ).

Most often the problem of getting off white background is that your exposure reading. Also the lighting . If your lighting is insufficient or improper, you take an exposure reading from your subject. Whether it is reflective or dark, or light, it will give you an improper exposure reading. What I mean is, taking a light reading on a dark image can get an OE, and conversely, a light object or a shiny object an UE.

What I suggest is to arrange a basic setup with your lighting equipment all well placed. Put any object, a neutral object is best, something like a plain wooden board for example, which will give you a proper zone v reading.
make a note of the exposure setting. 
make test shots to find the one that give you a well lit object with white background.  then make a note of the f stop and shutter speed. then set your camera to manual and shoot at this setting .

if your object is well lit, but the white background is not white, you will have to add more light to the background. or use layers during post processing.
but best to get it right on camera.

once you have the empirical f stop and shutter speed. you can easily transpose the fstop and related s speed for your sweet spot aperture that your lense will give you the sharpest and best depth of field.

the sweet spot will depend on each lense. so you will have to make test shots to find what is your sweet spot of your working lense. usually it's 21/2 - 3 stops from wide open.

Lenses.
you really don't need anything more than a prime lens . a zoom lense is not only more expensive, it is also slower (lower effective aperture) and never as sharp as a prime lenses.  a zoom lense will also have more cases of CA and edge distortion or vignette.  You can even find a used prime lense to do the job well,
without needing to buy a new one.

Well, that's my poor photographer starting kits help list.
Hope it helps.

Other than this, I guess the only thing left to say is, make lots of test shots
until you find the right combination for a constant studio set up for still life , or isolated product shot.  Since you are not using existing light, the exposure will not change . you can mark this and work with your camera mode on manual.
and get correct exposure all the time.

Cathy's right.  Small batches are more likely to be accepted. 

Also, I am not sure if those are supposed to be shot over white?  They would look a lot better if you lighted and exposed them so that the white is actually white, rather than bluish gray. 

Put yourself in the reviewer's shoes.

You look at mostly "crap" all day then you see a batch of multiple images that don't seem to pass the muster. Of course you would reject them too =)

It's hard to see it from the other side of the fence but when you're about to submit, put on a reviewer's glasses and really try to see. Self critique can be hard but it's a lesson we all need to perfect =)