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Messages - BaldricksTrousers
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276
« on: July 11, 2017, 23:42 »
Thanks, Wordplanet. My daughter has a large print of that shot hanging on her wall. A final word about the R4s - my example was almost certainly unused old stock, but even so the light seals disintegrated into slime shortly after I got it. They're cheap (on ebay) and easy to replace but that's probably a problem you should anticipate if you take that route. Of course, there are lots of other small 35mm film cameras and some good, reasonably priced lenses for M42 screw-mount cameras, like an old pre-bayonet mount Pentax or even the super-cheap Zenit range (which may come with the quirky Helios-44 lens). A 35mm Flektogon, a 50mm Tessar and a 135mm Sonnar would be a good set of lenses for an M42 - though, oddly enough, a similar set of Nikkor lenses for a Nikon F or F2 would probably cost less and be more reliable than the Zeiss Jena M42s, where drying grease sometimes makes focusing stiff and aperture blades can be a bit sticky. This site http://www.naturfotograf.com/lens_surv.html gives reliable reviews of a huge range of old Nikon lenses - anything he scores as 4 or better is going to be excellent and the large production runs and durability of Nikkors have kept the prices well down.
277
« on: July 11, 2017, 14:49 »
If you go for an R4s make sure it is either Mod 2 or Mod P, that's the updated version from the end of production, the original R4s had a reputation for failing. And look at the price of lenses - they can be very expensive. The 50mm Summicron-R is standard (and I think it needs to be the 3-cam version but I can't remember what it is the third "cam" controls), with the 90mm Summicron-R as a highly regarded portrait lens - but it costs a lot. There are lots of other lenses of course.
I should have said Mamiya C33, forgot to put the C on.
FAA is OK but they don't do marketing, they expect you to push your own images, so random sales are few and far between. I've had just two sales there this year, one for $30 and another for $120 without making any effort at all. I've got 845 images there. I'm not using their "stock" option because I wasn't happy with their approach to it - I thought it was unprofessional and the licensing was a mess. Anyway, I've found it worth paying the membership fee for unlimited uploads.
278
« on: July 11, 2017, 09:36 »
When I dont shoot on my Nikon D810 I shoot on my Leica M10 with 35 summilux, 50 APO, 75 APO.
Its not street though! Still only commercial valued shoots, but it A PLEASURE to work with.
Yeah, well, at $7,000 the Leica should be able to take commercial shots. It certainly makes the Nikon look cheap. My Leica is an R4s Mod P, which cost me about $100 and is also a pleasure to use. It's small and light despite being an SLR.
279
« on: July 11, 2017, 05:21 »
I sometimes use Peak Imaging in Sheffield. They're not cheap but they are very good indeed (though I still found that I could improve on their scans using an Epson V600 at home, but their scans are probably as good as any other commercial processing house). They've got a website with all the details of pricing.
Medium format is probably a good idea. I've got a couple of MF files among my best-sellers on Shutterstock. It's obviously easier to get a scan from MF though without running into grain rejections than it is for 35mm.
For art it's really just what you prefer to use. I've got both film and digital up on Fine Art America. Some people will think film is more artistically authentic but that's just pretentious. The larger neg gives a different look, old lenses are often lower-contrast due to poorer coatings, some old lenses have aberrations that are a distinctive signature - the Helios 44 is noted for its swirl, Tessars have a slightly harsh clumpiness and so on.
The trouble with having a DSLR and film cameras is deciding which to take with you, since taking both is rather impractical.
For MF the Mamiya 33 is one of my favourites. Built like a tank and the only TLR with interchangeable lenses. The long lenses are small and light, too, because of the bellows extension instead of having a metal tube. i don't know if you could find anyone to clean and lubricate those lenses, though. I checked the shutter speeds with a little test kit plugged into my computer and one of them was accurate from 1s to 1/125 then 250 came in at 125 before the speed picked up again with 1/500 actually being 1/333. The 1/500 speed is usually slow.
280
« on: July 11, 2017, 02:29 »
Brassai would have been using a very large format camera, of course, so 35mm isn't going to get the same effect. Wasn't he the guy who continued making salt prints all his life, even after far easier and more efficient processing was invented? Salt prints are basically a contact printing process so you need a huge negative. Large format is a world of its own, you need to be very disciplined to get the best from that - but the best is amazing. I've done a bit with an old Crown Graphic 4x5 press camera and when it goes well the results are impressive. There's a steep learning curve. This is probably my best large format, and full size you can see the superstructure of the ship on the horizon in the depression between the two hills on the left https://fineartamerica.com/featured/cloudscape-at-three-cliffs-paul-cowan.html. It was shot with a 90mm Angulon and an orange filter. Black and white can be a lot of fun but it's getting harder and harder to get stuff processed and find the films - and chemicals, if you're home printing.
281
« on: July 10, 2017, 12:07 »
Nowadays, it is again supposed to be that undisambiguated words don't show.
That could explain the collapse in my sales. Like you, a lot of my keywords are things (places, species) that iStock's never heard of and I couldn't be bothered to send endless suggestions (they could, after all, just copy the entire index of The Times Atlas of the World if they had any intention of making the geographical tags comprehensive) so many of mine main keywords probably don't produce results any more. To compound the stupidity, I once sent a suggestion that something - I think it was Akrotiri, Crete - should be added as it was a peninsula north of Chania, and they did add it... but they deleted Akrotiri, Cyprus (which is the site of a British military base) at the same time. As for the number of White Mountains there are in the world, most of which iStock knows nothing about....
282
« on: July 10, 2017, 10:38 »
I've got - and from time to time use - a pile of old film cameras. I'm not sure how discreet they are given that they look rather novel these days, so a rangefinder might get you noticed more.
The main issue for stock, though, is the scanning of the negs and the processing of the resulting digital files. Commercial image scanning seems to me to produce poor results, even from specialist companies, so I need to do it myself. Dust is a problem and making sure that that resulting file is clean of spots is time-consuming.
On most microstock sites quality standards seem to have dropped a lot in the last few years, so the risk of grain being mistaken for noise may have receded, but there is still a risk of rejections from that (especially if you're using high ISO film).
I don't know what camera/focal length you have in mind but a possible alternative to a rangefinder for street work would be an SLR with a waist-level finder, such as a Nikon F2 fo which there are plenty of superb, cheap Non-Ai lenses available these days (or even go medium format with a 6x6 TLR like a Mamiya 33 or the more basic Mamiya 220 for an old-fashioned look to the pictures.)
I hope that's of some use to you.
PS: Of course, modern street photography is done with a smartphone which would attract no attention at all. The fact you want to use film suggests you are looking for something more than just a record of street life, what that would be only you know.
283
« on: July 10, 2017, 00:56 »
I haven't uploaded anything for at least a year and scarcely anything for two or three years but I do have something like 6,000 images there.
My concern is not over uploading but over whether they are expecting us to go and do something to thousands of old files, the way they did when they brought in disambiguation (I still have several hundred files that were never disambiguated). I have seen my sales there collapse since the wonderful revamp in January, so I thought perhaps they were punishing people who didn't spend solid months redisambiguating everything in the hope of picking up an extra $20 a month.
284
« on: July 09, 2017, 09:49 »
Oh, lord! What is "keyword refine"? Is this just the old system of having to select terms from their approved vocabulary lists or is it some new rubbish that they expect us to do? (As you can tell, I'm not paying much attention to what they are doing over there).
285
« on: July 09, 2017, 07:33 »
I chipped in to Microstock when the deteriorating of iStock was very well underway and I haven't experienced the "Good old Times" 
Hard luck. They were very good indeed. I was making something like 20 or 30 times as much per image then as I do now. It really was worthwhile uploading. Woo Yay! Then too many people climbed on board and the agencies started cutting what they paid out.
286
« on: July 09, 2017, 07:19 »
In fairness - as a former newspaper editor I would rather have a current pic of people on a beach than a stock one which might be years old to illustrate a heat wave. People would be likely to spot things which date an old image and wonder why you paired it off with a current news story.
I wouldn't mind using a file photo to illustrate a climate change story, for example, but not a "Phew! Britain sizzles" one.
I notice that there are a mixture of editorial-type and general stock-type captions in that portfolio, so he's not pushing his ice creams through live news.
288
« on: July 09, 2017, 04:50 »
The British are obsessed with the weather
Because the weather in the UK and Eire is so very changeable like the song you can get 4 seasons in one day
Or is it because it's such an inoffensive topic? You're probably better when dealing with strangers to say "Funny old weather today, isn't it?" than something else, such as "It's the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne on Wednesday, will you be marching to celebrate?" Though there may be a few churches where the second is as acceptable as the first.
You really need to understand the British relationship with the weather 
As their weather comes off the Atlantic it's usually unpredictable and can have a direct impact on daily life.
The shots are usually for fillers in papers or "Phoar! It's a Scorcher!" when the sun comes out.
They can be used as feel good shots of people enjoying the weather or doing stuff.
Or bad weather can be news worthy like snow in june or flooding and major storms etc.
Born and bred there....... My original post wasn't objecting to the idea of weather shots being news, it was objecting to the idea that a macro of a honey bee on a blue flower was a valid news image, while a picture of flags used to show loyalty to one side during a current international crisis (Boris Johnson flew in for talks last night, I think Tillerson is coming today, the German FM was here a couple of days ago) was not a valid news image. There was absolutely nothing in the bee and flower picture to indicate location or the date on which it had been taken. The same was true of the lone swimmer in the open sea with absolutely nothing but a distant unidentifiable swimmer and an expanse of water.
289
« on: July 09, 2017, 03:16 »
Or a baby. Babies are even better than dogs as a topic for chatting with young women. However, pretending that you've lost a baby is less likely to win female sympathy than pretending you've lost a dog, so there's not much to gain from wheeling an empty pram around.
290
« on: July 09, 2017, 02:27 »
The British are obsessed with the weather
Because the weather in the UK and Eire is so very changeable like the song you can get 4 seasons in one day
Or is it because it's such an inoffensive topic? You're probably better when dealing with strangers to say "Funny old weather today, isn't it?" than something else, such as "It's the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne on Wednesday, will you be marching to celebrate?" Though there may be a few churches where the second is as acceptable as the first.
291
« on: July 09, 2017, 02:15 »
. (In my recent experience, files submitted on Friday afternoons are accepted the next Monday p.m.)
Yeah, they are still stuck in QC and were uploaded very early on Friday. Incidentally, one problem with them is that since I have concentrated on the pro-Emir posters the pics will not have a long life-expectancy, since when the crisis comes to an end the pictures of him will come down and my images will cease to be representative of what Doha looks like. Stock with a short shelf-life is pretty useless.
292
« on: July 09, 2017, 02:11 »
Though given they are living up to the promise of doing QC in 24hrs is it much of a disadvantage....is "live news" marketed differently for example? Actually what the British are interested in is nubile females hot sun being a useful excuse in these PC times...along with the exam season where it appears about 98% of those taking exams are female ;-)
Live news are fed direct to media outlets. There's a guy who mostly shoots in and around his home town and has made $350,000 taking photos of people going about their daily business plus the weather of course
Wow! I didn't know that.
293
« on: July 09, 2017, 01:12 »
We either accept it and do the best with it or leave altogether...
What I'm trying to say is that I'm tired of all the nagging about iStock!
The nagging is part of the process of trying to understand what is happening (well, some of it is, anyway, another part tends to be mourning for the good times that there used to be). You either have to accept it or leave the forum altogether, I suppose.
294
« on: July 08, 2017, 16:14 »
It's time to accept the market we are in and make the most of it, or leave altogether and make a living in a more "fair" market...
Why? Why should we have to leave altogether? As I said, I don't consider iStock to be worth uploading to any more but I don't feel inclined to leave when I'm still getting a little bit back for effort I made in the past.
295
« on: July 08, 2017, 05:39 »
I believe it is called "opportunity cost" in economics... It is actually costing you money to upload there.
If you could predict that an individual image would only earn you 0.0000000001 cents over your lifetime, you wouldn't bother uploading it.
Unfortunately you don't know in advance which pix will sell and which won't.
So if you stop uploading because there's a chance you might lose money on any individual image, you will refrain from uploading other images that may make good money unexpectedly.
yes need to look at total time in vs total income out and decide if its worth it for you. If you can use that time more effectively elsewhere then go for it ;-)
Yup - but, you need to take account of how earnings have changed over time. My earnings per file look OK overall, but the picture is skewed by far, far better days in the past. If I look at EPF for last month it's about 1c per file, so I would need to add 50,000 files to make $500-1,000 a month. That would mean working full time, flat-out for five years just to get not enough to live on. It's simply not worth uploading for that. But there doesn't seem to be much point in pulling down what is already there and getting nothing for it when it's still paying for a few days' groceries.
296
« on: July 08, 2017, 05:19 »
Some money is better than no money. :-(
Not if you're cannabalizing earnings with the same images elsewhere.
The trouble is, if you remove your image to prevent cannibalisation, there is very little chance that your picture elsewhere will pick up the sale you lost on iS. That sale will go to somebody else - probably on iS, but maybe elsewhere. Even in the unusual case of your image being truly unique, the odds are probably still against it being found amidst a gazillion files on some other site, amid scores of different sites. And how many pictures are so unique as to not easily be substituted by something else?
297
« on: July 07, 2017, 09:38 »
Thank you, but the subject of the thread is *Ring Flash* (tube and led),
I did some reading about LED ring flash a few weeks back. I came away with the impression that LED was not a good option, but I can't recall exactly what it was that put me off, so I can only suggest that you research carefully if you feel inclined to take that route.
298
« on: July 07, 2017, 07:26 »
Though given they are living up to the promise of doing QC in 24hrs is it much of a disadvantage....is "live news" marketed differently for example?
You can search by live news, which excludes everything that didn't go through that feed in the previous 48 hours. I presume the aim of that is to attract news organisations and if it's working it would potentially give a significant boost to sales for hot news topics. (Aren't nubile young females heavily over-represented in stock photos and adverts worldwide?)
299
« on: July 07, 2017, 06:50 »
The British are obsessed with the weather
It's because we can't talk about anything that involves emotions. (Unless it involves the fate of one of our photos, of course)
300
« on: July 07, 2017, 06:49 »
Every year in the UK the fact it can be warm in summer is deemed newsworthy......anything going on in foreign parts is considered irrelevant unless a Brit stubs his toe....hence the famous Times Headline "English Channel Fogbound Europe Isolated"
LOL - yeah, I realise that. But it's not the fact that it's UK weather "news" that galls, it's the fact that the bee and flower and the lone swimmer could have been shot anywhere in the world at any time in the past. Now, a stony beach packed with ghastly necrotic-looking bodies trying to get sunburned I could understand as a UK weather "news" picture. Qatar's crisis is hard to photograph because the only visible signs of it are flags and pictures of the emir plastered around the place - oh, and Turkish products in food shops (but that's hardly an obvious change as far as outsiders are concerned). The only hard news pictures to be had are of officials sitting round tables or holding press conferences. Here are a couple of the Alamy non-news shots: https://www.dreamstime.com/earning_det.php?imageid=95662083https://www.dreamstime.com/earning_det.php?imageid=95662052
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