"You are only partially correct. Medium and Large format were used for stock photography, but so was 35mm. How do I know?  Because I used to browse the submission requirements of various RM stock agencies.
"

Hi Duane,

if you have experience with stock, why are you asking all these simple questions??? Your film portfolio must have already been ported to digital a long time ago. Either by yourself or by your agencies. Why don�t you just give us a link to your website, so we can see what you do? It is a lot easier to give advice if we now the subjects your shooting.

istock also accepts film scans, by the way. On uploading you can choose between film and digital media. They have special reviewers for film.

In the days of film the commercial stock photographer was using medium or large format cameras....besides film has been the Dodo for at least 6 years commercially.  A century on the internet.

A Canon Digital Rebel will easily do the trick. Even a simple Canon G12 will work for stock. But will it work for your stock??

Sean is right, this will be fun.

My workflow: From Raw to Tiff, process in Photoshop CS5, inspect at 200%, save only as jpg at highest quality. No upsizing. No sharpening of any kind. Also turn of all sharpening in the camera.

Please show us your portfolio when you get online.

Oh come on, I also thought Sean was strange when I first got on the forums. He is a complete newbie asking simple questions. He wil learn about us all pretty soon...;-)

And probably as soon as he realizes how much work it is...probably move on..and tell everyone that there is no money in stock...

"m not alone in my thinking, its become an issue in the IS-forum as well!  at the moment it really looks like dot 1, is the cheapo leftovers, doesnt it, especially since the message is: cheaper files."

The customers have eyes to see, don�t they?

I mean, they click on the dots and immediatly get the results.

I really don�t think you can fool them to believe that the cheaper file is "amateur work" if it clearly isn�t.

Exclusive files are in every search at every price point...

A lot of community activity has moved to facebook. I have daily contact with istockers from all over the globe. we share shooting tips, images, ask for help with props or locations or recommend models. Plus all the chitchat and kid pictures. Why can�t we have all that activity on istock??

Since last September, I do think the negative mood and all the drastic changes on istock has made members look for other outlets to share the creative spirit.

The biggest disadvantage is that you meet fewer people and watching several forums, facebook and the blogoshpere isn�t so efficient. I would very much prefer to have a bustling, hustling forum full of enthusiastic people.

45 woo-yay comments is pitiful and depressing. I mean, what about all the new incoming fresh talent?? Where are they?

Excellent! A price slider is much better than a simple "Vetta off" filter.

"More contributors ,more choice of content =Less sales.Simple."

The answer to that is: more growth. More customers.

My sales on the partner program keep growing...why not on istock??

(Sean, I hear you... - but I believe it is the advertising of the partner sites that is creating the growth, not my content)

istock is selling digital content around the globe, the world is their oyster and Getty has offices all over. But they have to advertise istock to bring in new customers.

I used to see a lot more istock ads while crawling the net. Now I just see fotolia, the green apples of Veer and especially in Germany Corbis. They have a very active campaign with a cute robot. I have seen thinkstock, but I don�t even know what the current istock campaign looks like. As an istock exclusive shouldn�t this be something I can still remember in my dreams?

And of course I also wonder how many customers we are losing because they cannot filter by price like on Veer. When the price range was similar it wasn�t necessary, but with the huge differences between agency and the normal collection it is. I know they said they are working on it and I believe them.

I just hope the filter is ready soon and that there will be a massive istock advertising campaign in Autumn.

Would be nice to see Alexa stats were istock is leading again.

I should have added to do it with high income. i was thinking of a site where you invest in your own worldwide advertising, place ads, work with sales people, add new software tools for customers  etc...

Obviously anyone can sell from their own site, but to attract thousands of buyers you will need the volume.

"we intend to split the profit 50/50 with our dear contributors..."

splitting the profits by 50% can easily mean that the photographer only gets 20% - because the cost of doing business in this very competitive market is so high.

From what I read here, there are many independents who are trying to sell stock from their own site but discovering that dealing with customers, running after payments etc...is very time consuming and driving traffic to your site quite expensive. I mean, why doesn�t yuri arcurs create his own site? He has so much content it should be very easy for him to do so (and he has the staff to handle the details).

That is the only thing that will shift the balance towards the artists -  if it becomes obvious that selling by yourself is so successful that you don�t have to work with an agency. Then agencies will have to offer better rates to attract the talent.

By the way, I am still in favor of the concept of the RC targets, it is just the height of levels and the dominance of V/A that bug me. The old system made it nearly impossible to reach diamond for a newbie and why should a file that brings in 100 dollars have the same value as a sale for 1 dollar?

If it was possible to carry over excess credits into the next year, there was a filter for V/A and the targets were announced on time in January with  levels that were clearly reasonably reachable for a pro stock artist I don�t think the spirit in the community would be so negative.

And of course if Kelly was able to inspire the community when he communicates online instead of demoralizing them...well at least they are aware of that and "better communication" has become a focus of attention.

With V/A I feel that I used to work as a supplier for a coffe shop and was one of many, many producers of special types of coffee. Then the owners realized some of us offer high quality wine and added a special section in the store for that. We all applauded, because this will draw in new customers, who will hopefully also buy coffee for their daily needs and we agree that high production and rare wine, deserves a higher price than our coffee. But suddenly we enter the store and we see that most of the shelves have been stacked with expensive wine and the coffee has been pushed to the back of the store.

And although there may be customers who love wine so much that they keep coming back to it, most of us feel we are losing our target market, the daily coffee buyers who spent a quick dollar and then went back to work.

Hopefully istock soon offers a filter option for price or collections. Or that the shop owner decides to just stack the top row with wine and fills up the rest with coffee again because he realizes that having reliable volume sales is better than highly shifting daily results from the small community of wine lovers.

I also don�t see how istock can expand into upcoming new markets like eastern Europe, India, China, Russia if buyers do a search and find most images they see start at 30 dollars. They have Gettyimages for that.

just my take on the situation

I think it would make a lot more sense to do this now when all the artist can choose their best files. At least if they want this to be primarily  to help manage the huge collection.