I ordered my piece from ac-foto on monday. UPS shipping tracking says it is on the way (between denmark and finland), so I might get it on time:). I was one of the first in pre-order list on my usual suplier but after waiting few weeks after release and the suplier did not get any 5d's at all I cancelled the original order and looked around and found out that AC-foto have them in stock. So the christmas holiday images and videos will be shot with 5d2 .

br, MjP

I run stock operations as : "Private person carrying on trade", it has own company business code, own accounting, tax and vat numbers etc but the taxes as calculated into my personal taxes even the "company" has own accounting books. The VAT reductions and possibility to buy computers and cameras and get them off from taxes is the main good bonuses. Ofcourse it help to work with other companies too. If you are planning to set up some I prefer to hire good accountist it will not cost much as you think but will help you a lot example when dealing with tax bureau.


br, MjP

Lots of earnings reported here too:). So they have something wrong... no photos.com statistics yet..

Yes the lightroom is simplified version of photoshop&bridge. It is very simple to use but with dual monitor support it beats the adobe camera raw as raw convertor (local adjustements are also very good and often use them). With its keywording and file organization/management capabilities it beats the bridge again.. It has very good web, print etc output/export functionalities as well.

All these functions can be found from photoshop&bridge compliation, but things like workflow is easier to maintain with lr+cs compilation than in brdige+acr+cs. I used to have phase one 3.7 raw convertor and after I changed it to lightroom my throughput rate increased a lot due to thigher integration to CS3 (no hasle with files, directories, jpeg savings etc). So I use it as replacement of raw-convertor&bridge. It is also a 64bit software so it can utilize modern operating system and large amount of memory. It is quite fast, but slows little bit down if lot of local adjustments are used.

I think many new photographers will find LR much easier to learn than photoshop. If you do not need to manipulate images much then you just need LR.

I like to hear other LR users workflows and comments. If somebody is interested I can write down my LR workflow.

br, MjP

No sales after 2nd of this on jupiter+ or photos.com...

Hi,

I'm looking high quality online printing lab in EU-zone which will ship printed images to other EU countries (like Finland where I live). I have so far found services like photobox.co.uk and foto.com but I do not know these places (anybody have experienced these ones?). If you know good service lab (high quality, good price value and good customer service) please let me know.  I also looked some services in USA but they are not shipping internationally (like www.mpix.com, adoramapix,com etc). If some of these USA phota labs ships as well to EU please let me know. I will mainly print my customers portrait images and I want to get good quality as possible.

Thanks in advance,

br, Mikko

Try deepmeta (http://www.deepmeta.com/), it is free. You can add files in the queue (after selecting keywords, categories, model releases) and the system will upload them automatically to Istock review queue. If the istock upload limit is full the program will automatically upload files soon as it is possible (new beta version holiday mode). You also get very detailed information about uploaded batches sales, rejections, views etc.. I have been using this program from spring I think. It helps a lot when dealing with Istock.

br, MjP

Quote from: vphoto on September 25, 2008, 18:50
I shoot mostly food and sometimes products. Does it make sense to buy a tilt shift lens?

I bought 90mm Canon ts-e last spring. I mainly shoot food and products (as you can see from my portfolio). I use the TS-E lens about 99% of time when I'm shooting still life shots. I use the lens with Kenko extension tubes. Quality of images are very good and it gives more control to depth of field, but it takes time learn to use it correctly(means lot of rejection about "focus is not in correct place" ). I have tried to use that lens for landscapes as well, but I prefer other lenses for landscape work. There is nice article about ts-e lens in FredMiranda (http://www.fredmiranda.com/TS-E90/)

br, MjP

My credits sales are about the half compared to january and february numbers. Subscription sale volumes are about 1,5 times higher than credit downloads but the revenue has not icreased. I got about 1/4 - 1/5 subs sales from photos.com rest is from StockXpert and few from jupiter. I hope the credit sales will regain but I'm afraid that StockXpert is changing to low volume subs site for some of us.

br, MjP

Different clients here:). My numbers indicate that fotolia is going to be my number one site this month. IS is going to be second and then follows SS and DT. StockXpert performance is very lousy this month compared to other sites.

br, MjP

I hope that fotolia can keep their european market share. Almost 70-80% of my sales occurs in european business hours and when I look who bought the images I can see many companies from germany.

Quote from: Trebuchet on September 17, 2008, 15:54

Quote from: mjp on September 17, 2008, 15:21

23 sec here... (quad core 6600 @ 3,15 ghz , 8 gigabytes overclocked cas latency 4 RAM, 10k os drive (wd raptor), CS3 swap disc 512gb samsung spinpoint (old generation), work drive 1tb samsung spinpoint (latest generation)). Vista 64 bit and Cs3 10.0 (no upgrades).

Wow.
Which is the difference in your opinion of that speed? the 64 bit OS?

I think the main difference for non-optimized q6600 system will be higher clock speed ( default is 2,4 ghz if I remember correctly), higher RAM clock speed. Photoshop have 3,2gb of memory, but the system has rest (over 4,5gb) and windows is not need swap anything since there is a lot of free memory left and photoshop swap file routines can utilize some of that memory indirectly even if the photoshop main process is not able to see more than 3,2gb of memory... 64 bit os will help because it allows more memory on the system. Still waiting the 64 bit photoshop.. Lightroom 64bit is very fast if you are not making heavy local adjustments.

br, MjP

Quote from: leaf on September 17, 2008, 13:37

Quote from: Trebuchet on September 17, 2008, 12:46
45 seg

47 seconds for me

23 sec here... (quad core 6600 @ 3,15 ghz , 8 gigabytes overclocked cas latency 4 RAM, 10k os drive (wd raptor), CS3 swap disc 512gb samsung spinpoint (old generation), work drive 1tb samsung spinpoint (latest generation)). Vista 64 bit and Cs3 10.0 (no upgrades).

Writing speed should be faster. It is not a problem at the moment but will be problem with 21 megapixels files (e.g. saving takes nearly a minute (images with lots of layers).

br, MjP

Anyone wanna buy my old 5D? But seriously this is a huge upgrade and I will definetly invest some money on this (reasons: megapixels(maybe longer lasting images) and ability to shoot stock footage as well (new market as well) ).

br, MjP

Few sales already. Not much but its a start:). Had to wait 1-2 years .

btw:

   * Vista Basic: 8 GB
   * Vista Home Premium: 16 GB
   * Vista Business/Enterprise/Ultimate: 128+ GB

So its depends on version actually. More information from:
http://www.microsoft.com/ireland/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/64bit.mspx

edit: Fran was faster with the answer:)

I use vista 64bit with quad core Intel (~3.2Hz), 8 gigabytes of ram. My main hard disk is wester digital raptor (drive fitted into silencer block) which seek time is somewhere ~3ms. Windows and programs are in this drive. CS3 has its swap file on (512GB sata2 drive) and the lightroom 2(64 bit version) has its catalog and files on latest samsung terabyte drive (another tera for backups). GFX card is nvidia 8800 gts. CS3 is flying and the lightroom is very fast if there is not much local brush adjustments on the selected image.

Only problem I have encountered so far is that my motherboard ethernet driver messes up  the hibernate function(crash sometimes) and my keyboard media keys stops responding when coming back from hibernate. Every program I use work nicely. Antivirus software is hard to get because not many work with 64 bit version of vista.

Have been using this system about 8 months now. Everything external has been working well (printer, spyder, wacom etc). So I can recommend to buy 64 bit instead of 32 bit since future applications can use more memory and photos are not going to be smaller since mexapixel race continues.

br, MjP

I have some panoramas or stiched pictures rejected by this reason at IS. E.g. I put two full size images together (nice image though), but they said that image was resized from original 5d resolution... Tried upload twice with better description but no go:)

br, MjP

My day job is in IT company.. So it is quite stressful . (project management and dealing with clients etc).

For me the microstock shooting is still the hobby even everything is done under my company at the moment. I set up the company because it make everything much easier to handle (like taxes, billing etc and it gives you some credibility). First thing was to to hire good accountist because they know how to get most of the every cent without paying too much taxes etc. My company is far from making profit at the moment. Every penny coming from stock will be re-invested in this year also. This means own garage-studio (finally got paperwork done with the officials), maybe new camera (waiting 5d successor), yearly computer upgrades, new lenses etc... 

But next year will show how things are going to be. Its quite expensive run a business here in Finland (due the high taxes and insurance payments)  as VikaValter mentioned earlier, but I think it will be worth of it when you have freedom to do what you want.

Maybe some day in the future I will be another full time microstocker...

br, MjP

too bad I'm not exclusive. 25th day was one of my best days in IS so far . But it was good day in other sites as well:).

br, MJP

grp_photo: Is there possibility that you share some knowledge about these places in this forum or by PM (e.g. names).

I'm also planning to split my future portfolio on two pieces (one for micros and one for RM).

br, MjP

My revenue per image per month is somewhat +-0.85$ (depends on month). It is quite hard to calculate correct amount, because each stock has different amount of images. E.g local midstock has 3k of my images and roughly returns me 20% of the all revenues. The roi is bad but there is lot of crappy images too. Istock then returns four times much as the midstock site per image but there I have only 800 images... So the revenue per images was calculated total amount of money I did in selected month and then divided by average number of photos online.

But when comparing the these figures to your figures I must be really bad shooter because the images sold so badly. I think my portfolio is little bit off from mainstream micro.

If anyone can give a hint what to do and how to market my photos better (is there market for such images anyway) please drop me a message. All critique also welcommed. You can look my latest photos from SS link above.

br, MjP

Hi,

If you could share one of your shot list that would be great. I have some kind of simple shot list of my own but unfortanetly it is in my native language (finnish) so the sharing is not very helpful:).

I use open source mindmap program called FreeMind. I make a hierargical tree of actual shot. Here is path to one shot translated to english:

Still Life --> Meals --> Desserts --> gels/jellyes --> creme brulee --> (shot description: ready creme brulee with blow torch on the wooden surface. The brulee bowl is little bit burned down. Background has few ready made brulees.)

So when I'm out of ideas I just look from list (if everything I need for to shot is awailable). My shot list is mainly focused on food items since they are what I mainly like shoot (good way to learn do food also).

I also mark shot completed when I have good enough image on selected subject.

br, MjP

Got paid yesterday(friday). So the money if flowing from there now

uups.. not working, had to add something to my profile:). Had to wait another day to get them working:).