That's true but there's also an alternative argument that a fixed length forces you to think more carefully about what you are seeing and, rather than just taking the obvious shots, can lead to some good pictures that you wouldn't hunt out if you had the ease of the zoom. I guess that depends on the individual user's way of handling the restrictions it imposes - or, indeed, their self-discipline in seeing while using a zoom. I know I approach things differently, depending on what I'm using

yeah but i'm a zoom guy, i can't get fun without a zoom, primes are ok indoors but no fun in outdoors as far as i'm concerned, so many times i shoot a building or a monument and there's a road in the middle or electric cables or whatever other distraction .. with a zoom i get the right shot, with a prime i would be forced to find a plan B or to crop in photoshop but is this photography ? photography to me is first and foremost a good framing from a good position, distance, point of view, etc

nobody is forcing us to do stock forever, i'm actively studying the art market for instance and if possible one day i see myself doing exhibitions and selling prints at 1000$ a pop, maybe i'm wrong but from what i've seen fine-art photography is 70% mumbo jumbo and marketing BS, 20% photoshop, and 10% creativity, if those punks can do it, i will do it and while i'm at it i should start painting and drawing again too, my biggest mistake was to give up art for high-tech jobs years ago.

ok but what's the point having a small camera if you lose many good shots due to lack of zoom ?

if a D5200 is overkill try with a D3200 or maybe a Sony NEX ?

Quote from: Xanox on July 30, 2013, 15:02

in my experience with a good tripod there's no problem, the big issue is shooting handheld especially moving subjects, these new sensor are unforgiving to shakes and slow shutter speeds

True if you look at 100% crops. But what microstock site is it worth uploading 47MP to? Or even 20+ MP? And you certainly don't need that for your family snaps.

Any resolution like that would only need to be sharp for the most extreme enlargements.

Or, in other words, the MP race is no longer of the slightest significance to microstock. In fact, I gather that uploading more than 12MP at iS actually eliminates you from the high-price/commission rate TIFF upsizing facility they offer. Not sure if that's right or not.

as a plus, with a 48MP sensor you could shoot handheld with a fast shutter speed by night in ISO 25600, downsize to 6 o 10MP and have a decent image (but horrible colors) that with some luck could pass QC.

yeah, no idea who needs 48MP on micros or even macros if that matters but it's a non issue, the entry level camera are already 24MP, the nikon D5200 for instance and it costs just 650$ + kit lens .. in 2-3 yrs the entry level could be 36MP as well.

I made this point before, but I'm not sure it ever got much traction...

I think it is about scalability. If you want to double your earnings at a site, it seems much more feasible to double you sales at a site that sells 100 images a month for $10 a piece than it does to double your sales at a site that sells 1000 images a month for $1 a piece.

YES !

but the moment the agency mess with the search engine your views/zooms/sales can go down up to 80% overnight, that's a realistic scenario i've seen on Alamy for some time and it takes months to adjust.

on paper it sounds good to walk around with a retro camera and a nice prime lens but then when you're in the field you quickly realize how limiting and frustrating is to work with a fixed focal lenght and how many good images you lose because there's no physical space to "zoom with your feet".

as a low-profile walkaround setup i would stick with a cheap D5200 + 17-55 kit lens, the sensor is almost as good as the D600 and you will look like a random tourist, nobody will notice and you can get it new for around 650$.

in daytime you can make kicka-ss images with the D5200 sensor, better than Fuji by all means.

Quote from: SC on July 29, 2013, 17:24

We don't need more pixels - just better pixels

This is exactly right. Give me better DR, less noise at high ISO, etc.  The MP race should transition into the better pixel race.

bigger resolution is the only answer to noise as it allows for denoising + downsizing and you have a very good output which is still in high-res and doesnt need any sharpening too so the best of both worlds.

All these little startups that seem to miss the point that the reason buyers shop at established locations or with known photographers, is to avoid any legal issues.  Otherwise, they might as well just grab stuff from google.

for startups it's a non-issue actually, their only goal is to be sold for a profit, they will not be the ones responsible for any legal troubles.

and if we look at Pinterest i haven't heard of any big fat lawsuit against them, quite the opposite many photographers are into it to promote their images, they see it on par with posting lowres cr-ap on FB.

Jon Arnold is certainly among the top sellers of all times but these famous stockers never discuss in detail their earnings and tend to keep a rather low profile.

by the way, who's gonna stop scammers from selling pirated photos on PicFair ?

I completely agree. If app store has 70% (because they want good content, Steve Jobs), then something is out of balance in our industry. Will it stay that way? Let's get a proper discussion going.

because Apple and Google are two of the biggest brands in the world, their costs to acquire a customer are minimal because of their brand power and identity and moreover their stores are an integral part of their own products, that's the lock-in and therefore they have no direct competition apart a few dodgy stores for hacked android apps or jailbroken iphones.

they don't need to invest 30-40% of their earnings in advertising as SS or iStock, it's like comparing apples and oranges, even if they spend billions to advertise their products and their brands of course but that's another story ... selling apps and games and ebooks is relatively easy, selling stock images is hard and that's exactly why nobody can afford to give us 70-80% of a sale, even Tony Stone couldn't do it during the golden age of stock.

i mean if selling stock was so easy you wouldn't even need Getty and you could get rich just with PeopleImages alone.

Getty is the only one who really knows the score, all the ones bashing Getty here are just foaming from their mouthes because Getty relegates them to istock or thinkstock.

all i can say is ... Getty is not a closed fortress like Corbis, study carefully the Getty site, make a new portfolio and apply to Getty, if they like your stuff they will take you in.

Except when they're investing in weird stuff of doubtful use connected to mobile phones:
http://www.alamy.com/Blog/contributor/archive/2013/07/04/5411.aspx
being discussed here:
http://discussion.alamy.com/index.php?/topic/629-manything-blog

it just shows they've no idea how to further expand their core business (editorial) and on top of this now they claim to become soon a "creative" agency without even clearly stating what they define for creative, many contributors have just got their whole portfolios labelled as creative including images of their dogs taking a poo .. talk about strict selection !