I have a new 40D. I upgraded from a 350D and I can make comparisons between these two, but not a 400D. I have had the 40D for only about 3 weeks or so and I am still getting to know all the features.

With my 350D, I left it on ISO 100 almost all the time. If I shot at ISO 200, I noticed a pretty big drop in quality. WIth the 40D, ISO 200 is my standard ISO. This is mostly because I like Highlight Priority mode and this is not available with less than ISO 200. The ISO 200 quality is great, much better than 350D ISO 200. So far, I have not played much with higher ISO than this. I will soon.

The auto focus is also a big improvement over the 350D.

The custom controls C1, C2, and C3 I also like very much. You can use these to store any combination of camera settings. Then just turn the dial and you instantly are ready to go.

QuoteYou'll love that camera!  Enjoy!

I do! It feels very comfortable and solid in my hands. I have to try post processsing a bunch of photos that I took today at an old iron works village. I have not loaded them to my PC yet. But operationally, it is great. A big upgrade to the 350D I was previously using.

I just hope something is worked out soon so I can use Lightroom with it.

Thanks for the reply.

I do not load from the flash card with it in the camera. I have a reader built in to my PC.

After researching this further I have found out about the new V1.0.4 firmware version which is causing the problem. Lightroom will have a fix for this out sometime this month and Canon will have another firmware version out at the end of the month to fix it too. For now I will need to use DPP as my RAW converter b/c it works ok with that. I will probably convert to TIFF and then import to Lightroom that way. But I hope there is a fix out for this real soon.

I am off now to try the camera for the first time other than reading the manual and trying the functions out which all I have done so far.

I found the answer. 40D's are now shipping with an "upgraded" version of firmware. This is V1.04. This firmware version is causing problems for Lightroom when reading the RAW files. Supposedly there will be a firmware update to fix this by the end of the month. I am dissapointed. I guess I cannot use Lightroom with the new camera for a while.

I just bought a new camera. Canon 40D. I tried a few test shots and tried to import into Lightroom but I get an error about an "unsupported color mode". Photos were shot in RAW (not sRAW). Color mode was Adobe RGB. Version of Lightroom is 1.2 (the latest).

I find other people that had this trouble when doing a google search, but usually they were using sRAW and were ok when using RAW. I tried reinstalling the latest version of Lightroom. Still does not work.

Can anyone help?

Thanks.

Yep, me too.

I submit to Canstock first. This may sound strange but I do it for a specific reason. Once my photo is prepared and I have added all keywords to EXIF, I submit to CS. This is because they suggest new keywords that I may have missed. If I like any of the keywords that they auto suggested, I add them to my image and then submit to all the rest in no particular order.

I guess I will just accept it as it is then. I am not going to add keywords back one at a time. It seems silly though that a picture of what is known as The Burren in Ireland would have the keyword Burren removed.

Thanks for the response.

I uploaded a few images to SV when they first came online but stopped since they did not read IPTC data. Since they now do read IPTC data I figured I would start uploading again.

I uploaded 15 images this past weekend and they were approved today. However, only a limited number of keywords exist for each photo. All my keywords were read when I uploaded, but it seems that either they were later replaced by new ones or they only took some of them and deleted the rest. Is this the case with everyone? Do they limit the keywords?

As an example, some of the keywords that were deleted for the below photo of The Burren in Ireland are: Burren, rural, scenic, Galway, and several others.





NOTE: I put the photo here from SS b/c for some reason the one from SV was not displaying. Also, I checked all 15 newly uploaded photos and 2 of them contain all the keywords I supplied. The other 13 have been limited.

IS - 27%
SS - 21%
XP - 19%
FT - 12%
DT - 9%
BS - 6%
123 - 5%
other - 1%

First time for me that SS has dropped out of the lead.

QuoteYou've got a point, Lee!   I know guys who sit around and argue who paid the most for the same tie and are proud of paying more.  Go figure!.

Someone once told me that it was my job to get my photos exposed to buyers in as many ways possible. He said I don't set the prices (at some sites you do now) at the sites so I should upload to all of them no matter what they set the prices at. I do not upload to Alamy but maybe I will try them.

QuoteSorry, sbonk,  good point.  No, not making a thing at NLS yet,  but there I'm not expecting to anytime soon.

Just checking. I have a small amount of photos on NLS and thought maybe I should get the rest of my nature photos there too if others were getting sales.

aka-Tom, does that mean you are making money at all of the rest? I ask because I see NLS in there. Are you making money there?

I emailed Fotolia again last night to specifically ask about reordering keywords and if it should be ok to do so and have it work. They responded that you cannot do this at this time. I then went to my portfolio and saw that the update key is disabled.

Thanks redhat. I checked a few stores (Home Depot, Lowes, etc.) and they do not stock white acrylic (only clear). I am about to order online from usplastics. I'll get the 1/8 inch and the one that allows more light to pass.

I emailed Fotolia about search problems and recieved a quick response back that they are "aware of the situation".

I want to buy some white translucent acrylic to try lighting from behind for some isolation shots. I have found acrylic that allows 20-29% of light to pass through and one that allows 40-49% to pass through. Which one of these would be best?

Also, would it make a difference if the acrylic is 1/8th inch or 1/4 inch?

Thanks for any help.

One thing I like about Dynamic Photo HDR is that there are tonemapping options that create results that look more like a traditional photo than typical HDR. This does not cause problems getting accepted at any of the sites. But I input multiple 16 bit tiff images and get an 8 bit image out. So further post processing is then done in 8 bit mode when I want 16 bit.

Here are a couple examples. What do you think? With one exposure rather than HDR, the sky is totally blown out if I keep details in the cliffs.

I have tried Photomatix and like it. Recently I have been trying out some other HDR software too and found one that I like. It is DYNAMIC PHOTO HDR by Mediachance. I used the trial which leaves a small watermark on the image. I like it enough to pay the $40 for it except you can only save output after tomemapping in 8 bit mode. I emailed them and asked if there are any plans to allow 16 bit tiff output to be saved and got an answer that I do not understand as far as why it cannot be done. Maybe someone can explain it to me. Photomatix allows you to save 16 bit output images.

Here is the response I got back. I may go ahead and buy it anyway.


The output before tonemapping is saved to HDR file. (that's more than
16 bit) The tonemapping maps to 8 bit.
You cannot tonemap to 16 bit, the whole process is based on the idea to compress high dynamic range into 8 bit - compressing it to 16 bit would simply make the image look more-less like the HDR file before tonemapping.

Thanks for the reply. Maybe I'll wait before continuing to reorder.

Last week I started going through my Fotolio portfolio and making sure that the most important keywords are in the top 7. I had not been doing a good job of this in the past when uploading.

However, when I do a search using keywords that I have now placed in the top 7, my photos are still not coming up. Is there a way to successfully reorder?

Holy Cow! I never noticed that. Thank You!

I think my photos prior to disambiguation that were auto-disambiguated must be all screwed up. I check each submissions keywords carefully now but the ones that were auto-disambiguated have problems.

This is going to be a very time consuming task.

Thanks for feedback!

QuoteWhat this number possibly says is that your 400+ sales on IS for 150+ images is less-than-average performance.

Any ideas why my istock performance is poor? I think my technical quality is ok. If it was not the photos would not be accepted. I think my keywords are ok. So I assume that it is the subjects and/or compositions not being the best suited for stock.

I sure would appreciate any comments, tips, or opinions.

Wow, I am really doing bad. I am reading this as income per photo online. Not income per photo sold. This is correct, right?

Overall, I average around .75 per month per photo that I have online. What can I do to get it to the $1- $2 range?

How is everyone doing now with review times? I have a batch that has been waiting 8 days (submitted 8/18). It just seems strange since they are usually reviewed so quickly.