Quote from: epixx on February 19, 2007, 07:25

No camera can show you the consequence of changed shutter speed, since it includes movement. In that respect, our eyes are too fast: they will not see blur until it's on the photo.

For still images of objects in my light tent, the electronic viewfinder of my Canon S3 does a pretty good job at indicating the exposure effect of the selected shutter speed in the viewfinder (assuming a constant aperture for this example).

Except for some artistic photos, I'm usually not shooting many if any (fast) moving objects for Microstock (given that Microstock is our focus in this thread).

All the best,
Michael

What the camera shows you is the exposure. You read that from the meter of a DSLR.

Most DSLR's have a button to stop down the lens to working aperture. Only DSLR's can do that, and it's the only way to see the real depth of field (DOF). No camera can show you the consequence of changed shutter speed, since it includes movement. In that respect, our eyes are too fast: they will not see blur until it's on the photo.

Some of my top sellers are shot with an "old" Canon A95, one even at ISO 400. Still, I find it much easier to control all parameters with my DSLR's (I have a Fuji S3 and an Olympus E-1). Added to that is the fact that the high quality lenses that are available for DSLR's gives better contrast and colours out of the camera. It saves me a lot of time during post processing, since there's simply very little that needs adjusting.

Any debate around cameras for stock photography will sooner or later boil down to a question about lenses. If the p&s or prosumer camera has a top quality lens, it's really up to the skill of the photographer.

Corbis is not so great at the RM business either.  I ve read somewhere that only 5 percent of the photos in their database see a sale, whereas with Getty its something like 95 percent. 

There's also a rumour that they have never ever made a profit. It might just be a rumour, but it makes one wonder if they have the ability to pull this off, even with more or less unlimited resources. Buying IS may have been the smartest thing Getty has ever done. Other candidates don't look nearly as attractive.

In addition to a few large, international agencies, I think we will see smaller ones catering for local markets and special areas. We have that in traditional stock already, and they obviously have an important function. An agency in Bigtown, USA will never be able to get a grip of what's going on in Smalltown, Northern Norway. There are different tastes, different needs, local motives etc.

Typically, around 50% of what I sell on Scanstock are Norwegian motives. In Asia, a similar situation will probably arise. Almost all of the Asian motives in the agencies are more or less tourist related. For those of us who live here, it looks kind of odd. Asian customers aren't more interested in buying images of temples than western buyers are in images of churches.

... but in general he is just a bigmouth IMHO.

Ummm... have you looked in the mirror lately?

I found another way to get rid of the dust spot problem: I bought an Olympus E-1 a couple of months ago. Fantastic camera, weather sealed body as well as lenses, and no dust whatsoever   

I've given up keeping trace of all the changes at IS. I just upload and pray 

They apparently have a deal with one of the micros, and may even have the same owner as one of them. Something similar to the one that sells photos from SS on a per picture basis.

That was to be expected. The full price market is bound to shrink, so they had to do something. I believe that Corbis is owned by Bill Gates though, and not by MS as such, but I'm not 100% on that one. That may be important with regards to future policies.

If I should guess, they will probably start their own. They have the resources necessary, and making an existing, more or less successful agency very successful, probably takes at least as much resources as starting from scratch anyway, particularly if they want to establish a certain standard, and I'm sure they will, or at least they will try.

Although they will probably not break any barriers with regards to commissions, they will at least have to offer more than IS (shouldn't be too hard) to attract some of the best photographers, and maybe some that have been opposed to microstock until now. Exclusivity will quite obviously be a part of their package, but the question is if they can offer a package that is attractive enough for that. The exclusivity deal on IS reminds me more about religious faith than economic realities. You have to believe very hard to make it look profitable 

Are you uploading new photos to them?  My sales are good this month but I have been sending them new photos all the time.  My sales did slow down once when I took a break from uploading.

Every day, except Saturdays and Sundays. It's interesting to see where that has an effect and where it doesn't. On DT, the effect has been great, and obviously on SS, while on IS, it doesn't seem to matter at all. At StockXpert, I start to doubt it, but maybe I have the wrong kind of images there. I notice that some of those that sell there, stand completely still at other agencies. Maybe their customers just have a weird taste   

They are one of my absolute slowest, but they are new, so I'll give them more time. They are also very friendly, accept editorial pictures, and pay well, so it may well be worth the wait.