What about Sirui?
Seems to be a Gitzo clone.
They give guarantee for 6 years to the tripod and 2 years to the heads.

Their collection seems very complete with specialties like a series that have one leg that can be disconnected to use as a monopod, or a series that can be totally  flat folded ( 4 cm) and some can be very short shove in (42 cm) by using 6 segments while still being 1.69 cm high.
Has someone any experience with them?

I'm using a Sirui at the moment - its well put together with 1 major flaw - the rubber on the outside of the grip becomes soft after about 12 months which makes tightening and loosening anything a pain. I've removed the rubber, but the knobs are all smooth underneath.

Quote from: holgs on February 09, 2012, 08:41

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on February 07, 2012, 18:00

Quote from: traveler1116 on February 07, 2012, 14:04

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on February 07, 2012, 14:00

Besides, at this point does anything beyond 20MP offer any financial advantage to the contributor? Isn't the highest commission threshold around 20MP? So a 36MP would give the buyer a much bigger image for the same price and the contributor still gets the same XXXL commission for dropping $3K large on a sparkly new camera. Or am I missing something?

XXXL square compositions will be possible now with a little room to spare.

I must be missing something. Why is the ability to make square images worth me spending $3K?

Probably not by itself, but side by side the 5D II looks and handles like a 4 year old camera. We'll see what Canon comes up with this year, but the Nikon has improvements in almost every respect over the 5D 2, even if it doesn't necessarily look that way on paper.

I looked at a couple samples and the noise patterns were kind of funky. Some of the darker and bokeh'd areas had noise somewhat similar to point and shoot. Kinda chunky and blobby instead of grainy.

I had three Nikons and never really liked my D300. The image quality was just off. I'm not jumping ship anytime soon unless Canon decides to do what Nikon did and wait for 2-3 years to release a higher-res DSLR.

To be honest I haven't really been looking at image samples from any of the new cameras lately to try to work out the tiny differences between different ISO values. For me the quality of the sensors on all DSLR models is high enough to produce the sort of results that will get accepted on all of the agencies, even at moderately high ISOs. I'm still going through some batches of older files shot with things like an Olympus E500, an E30 and the GF1, but haven't had any noise type rejections in a long time. Unfortunately we work in an environment where images are rewarded by size - if not for that I'd happily shoot with something smaller than the 5D II.

Its pretty clear though looking at the D800 that Nikon has put in a lot of work to try to get hold of the 5D II's market share. The other thing they're having to do is to try to put a significant gap in IQ between full frame DSLRs and compact system cameras. I'm not about to jump into that system either, but I can see that it would be worthwhile for some.

After playing with the new Olympus OM-D, I'm seriously thinking of switching back to that system. The new focus and IS system really is quite freakish. Its really hard to tell from testing out cameras at a photo show, but to me the focus felt much faster than the 5D 2, and even a bit faster than the 1DX and D4. Having several stops of IS even on wide angle lenses is also a pretty handy trick.    

Quote from: loop on February 08, 2012, 12:18

Quote from: Noodles on February 07, 2012, 17:57

So how is February going for everyone? Excellent sales in January are continuing into February in my case. I have noticed its mainly new files that are selling.

Certainly it could be better, but not bad.

Sales are below average overall here. some days are fine, then others are terrible. the files selling are a very weird mix, lots of old with first downloads. they're clearly fumbling around with the collections.

Yeah all over the place for me too - last couple of days have been low on DL numbers, but had 2 ELs on the 7th worth $137 that made the days totals look good.

Thanks for the responses! Fortunately it seems that whatever was affecting sales on Friday seems to have changed. Maybe it was just a freakish day, but I ended up with more sales on Sunday, and Monday was back to about the usual level with about 5x the number of sales.

Anyone in the market for a used 5D II???   (just kidding... sort of)

I guess things are so bad that everyone is finding reasons why we shouldn't stand up and protect our rights.

Sorry if my post came across that way - I think a small claims procedure is a very good way of making it easier and more efficient to enforce our rights, and definitely a worthwhile change if the lawyers don't trample all over it first.

Lisa FWIW I'm also not trying to convert you - although I have often looked at the stats and wondered how much the decision to remain independent has cost in $$ over the years. None of us really know what the future holds, and the problem with this system is that there's no way of knowing which way is the better until after you've taken a very serious decision. Even then a few shifts in the best match and it can make a massive difference to the end result.  

So an approximation of my stats for the month (based on TS & Getty income being equal to December)

Compared to Dec 2011:
$$ -7%
DLs  -1%
 
Compared to Jan 2011:
$$ +138%
Dls + 71%
(portfolio +106%)

I also had 2 footage sales this month on each of Pond 5 and SS, so its nice that those are starting to tick over a little bit.

Was just curious about RPI over time. Was it still 50c when you had 1,000 or 2,000 images? Go up/down?

From my stats, the only possible trend I can see is that there is a drop in RPI if you don't upload for an extended period - but it drops and then stays steady. In the time I've been exclusive now, the RPI has moved in a range of about 25% from the lowest to the highest value, but there doesn't seem to be any general trend even though I've gone from ax. 1100 to 3000 images in that time.

BMY at all sites!!!

Yep same here!

Quote from: holgs on January 31, 2012, 20:34

Nor do they try to work out who appears in other advertising to see how many blemishes have been photoshopped out.

They absolutely do:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/dec/16/twiggys-olay-ad-banned-airbrushing

Its different when you're selling a product and claiming that it has that result. They don't apply that standard with food or beverage advertising.

Really the whole story is just odd - someone uses photoshop as part of an advertising campaign? I'm shocked!

Why should the photographer identify his model just because a paper wants to do a grubby article like this? If he's a busy commercial photographer then he probably can't remember, and isn't going to go digging around in his file in response to a question that's probably over the phone. They don't go and call all the attractive people who act in McDonalds advertising to see if they really eat McCrapburgers do they? Nor do they try to work out who appears in other advertising to see how many blemishes have been photoshopped out.

Why should the standards be different just because someone is promoting a health issue, rather than trying to sell children sugar?

Quote from: helix7 on January 27, 2012, 09:59

Quote from: THP on January 27, 2012, 01:08

iStock. Worst I.T. Department Ever.

I don't suspect that their IT crew is any worse than any other microstock IT dept. But they're not sufficiently capable enough to handle the complex system istock HQ wants to employ. If they want to have the most complex and feature-rich site in the business, they need to have the best talent available for this sort of thing. Obviously they don't. Their IT folks may be good, but they might also not be of the caliber required to pull off the vision HQ has had for the site for years.

It's more an issue of knowing your limitations and working within them. Aside from the fact that such a complex site is probably not even giving them a competitive advantage anyway, a smart company knows when they're in over their heads and when to pull back on an aggressive development plan. istock will never admit that they can't do everything they want and keep things humming along smoothly, so they'll always stumble along like this with constant bugs and an almost monthly major issue cropping up.

I'm not sure that they aren't worse, from what I've seen, the IT dept in IS couldn't implement the changes we've seen over at SS - the map, tracking your sets, the darkroom features - certainly not smoothly and without a ton of new bugs being introduced. 

There's nothing particularly difficult about showing this sort of data on a map or displaying statistics from a gallery. The gallery material can be quite easily reproduced on IS with a few greasmonkey scripts such as this one from Sean: http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=271062&page=1 which is much more useful than the limited information on SS. There's a whole lot more data SS could give us, but they choose not to. The strength of the SS system is that its really simple, not that it employs any amazingly innovative features.

The complexity at iStock is from them trying to factor in search and purchase results in re-weighting new searches and making these more customised at a geographic or even user level, combining that ambition with a controlled vocabulary, and then trying to optimise the whole package to maximise the amount that customers spend. Throw into the mix that the whole site allows for statistics on a per image basis, different pricing structures that can change, commenting and rating on images, and direct communication between contributors and sellers, not to mention allows for a variety of file types, not just images and the sum total is a site that is a lot more complex than the other microstocks. Whether this is a good thing is debatable, but I think the previous comment is spot on.