Just to keep this updated, so that others will know what's going on. Or perhaps I should say not going on. I pushed them for a reply and got the following message:

Out tech team is working on this area now and we will update you once they update our department.

I got that message on March 25th, over a month ago. Still no money, and still no way to claim the money on the Bigstock website.

I noticed recently that I have accrued a significant amount of referral earnings at Bigstock. It looks like they had never previously included them in with earnings from image downloads, so I presume I just never noticed and therefore never claimed them. Recent changes in their website layout have made things a little clearer and so I was able to see that they owe me for referrals.

I contacted them to confirm this and after a few days they got back and said:

" The Bigstock affiliate/referral program is currently under maintenance and some of the features, including requests for payment of earnings, are not available.

We have marked your account and will process your earnings as soon as that area is re-launched.

Thank you for your patience. If you have any additional questions please reply directly back to this email and we will be happy to assist you."

So I replied and asked if they could tell me when that might be. That was 3 weeks ago. I've heard nothing since.

Has anybody else had experience with Bigstock and referral earnings?

I'll get my pics somewhere else then.

Do they seriously think that people with credit are going to buy a package?

I just tried to buy an image from IS by converting some of my balance into credits. I don't seem to be able to do that any more. My only option seems to be to buy credits or forget it. Is that the case or have they just buried the convert credits link so deep that nobody can find it?

It took me three applications to get accepted at SS. Some of the ones that got thropugh on my first attempt were rejected on the second, so it's clearly not an exact science.

I think that RacePhoto's comments above are very good advice, particularly the one about downsizing.

When I originally applied to SS, none of the images were automatically put into my portfolio. I had to resubmit them after I was approved and some of them were then rejected.

Having said that, if you are an exclusive at IS you shouldn't really have too much trouble getting in at SS. Just make sure you give them a variety of images and pick your best shots. Don't forget to sign up with Fotolia, Dreamstime and Bigstock too. A few others from the middle tier might be worth a look depending on the size of your portfolio and how much time you have of course.

To the best of my knowledge the frame rate is irrelevant. If you live in a country that broadcasts in PAL then the cameras on sale wil be PAL (25fps), and if you live in a contry that uses NTSC then the cameras will be NTSC (29.9fps). Although it might make a bit of a difference to overall sales of footage, most of it probably gets used on the web where the frame rate doesn't matter.

Hard drive cameras get a fair bit of criticism over their compression, but I have a Canon HG10 and have had footage accepted by Istock, Shutterstock, Fotolia and Pond5. I think in reality they are absolutely fine in good light situations. They do struggle with fast moving objects though.

Oh and go for HD1080. No point in going for anything less.

If it's really only the one then I would go with iStock. assuming that you're good because they'll give you a really hard time if you aren't. And if you do Ok you can always go exclusive a little later down the line.

If the prospect of iStock sounds a little duanting then I'd opt for shutterstock. By far the fastest turnaround and not so picky once they've accepted you.

I recently requested a payout from Bigstock and received a Paypal notification within the hour!

Maybe it was just fortunate timing but that's the fastest payout I've ever had from a microstock agency and I thought it worthy of a mention.

I think I'll give it a while. I have a PC running XP that is just fine, but my newest machine is Vista and is slower despite being higher spec. So if the hype for Windows 7 turns out to be well founded, I might just go for it. Might wairt for the first SP though. You can't be too careful.

I find Shutterstock overall to be the best financially, but you have to keep uploading new material to maintain a good cashflow. Istock is the most consistent with older portfolios.

Isolated people shots seem to be fairly consistent for me.

Sony a100.

I'd love a Sony a900 or even a 700.  Don't think it'll be yet a while.

I don't think that the Istock referrals process works unless you point to your portfolio page.

I have links going to their front page (which according to their instructions SHOULD work), but I have had no referrals from it, even though I have found photographers on there that have also signed to other sites from my referrals.

I could have just been unlucky of course...

Looks fine to me.

I would have kept the whole head in though. Let the buyer crop it if they want to.

I've had one payout there.

Currently dead as a dodo. All mine are priced at $4.99 with re-sizing options.

Thanks everybody. Tried a few scans today. I can see there's quite a bit of work ahead.

All sorts really. Kodachrome, Agfa, Fuji, you name it, they're all pretty much there. There's all sorts of stuff (probably a couple of thousand slides actually, but a lot of those are family shots) which seem to have stood the test of time as they were all boxed and stored.

I bit the bullet and went for the Epson 4490, which arrived a couple of hours ago. It seemed to be the best idea price wise, as I don't know what the potential is of these shots. I'm assuming if one scans at max resolution and then downsizes to 4MP it should stand the test most places.

I'm still interested to hear from anyone with experience where the best places for editorial are. As there are, as I mentioned yesterday, a quite a few shots from the 60s, 70s & 80s with people in them. Not to mention cars from the time etc.

As I said yesterday

Wow, thanks for the fast responses.

I guess that Maplins can have their junk back and it's an Epson 4490 for me then. Doesn't seem worth paying double for a V700 when I don't have much use for a scanner these days other than the new acquisition of slides. Also, a lot of the slides are indeed Kodachrome.

I already have a perfectly good (although fairly old now) HP Scanjet 4200, but it doesn't have a slide attachment.

Another question. Any recommendations for the best places for selling editorial images, since many of these slides have people in them. I've also got for instance a great shot of London's Piccadilly Circus at night from some time in the 70's. Including the famous Coke sign. I would have thought that the editorial value of that would be quite good.

Quite a few London tourist sites too, with 70s cars in them.

From reading around here it seems that Shutterstock is best for editorial. That so?

Anybody had any positive experiences with slide scanners.

I just bought an Ion Slides 2PC USB scanner which is able to scan slides and negatives at up to 17MP but it uses Arcsoft Photoimpression 6 for capturing the images and appears to have no way of adjusting the exposure (and it always over exposes).

I've just been given over 1000 slides from my father-in-law, including lots of shots from the 60s, 70s and 80s which appear to be in good condition. I was getting quite excited over the microstock sales implications, but the scanner has proved to be a big disappointment.

Any input greatly appreciated.

Yep I tried using that referral process and I haven't had a single referral at iStock from it. So I don't think the "refnum" idea works because I KNOW I have referrals on other sites that are signed with iStock too. Could be that they were already cookied with somebody else or just went there first of their own accord but the odds of having absolutely no iStock referrals seems unlikely to me.

Yes up for me too, helped with a few ELs.

Why is this poll in an iStock thread?

Whatever the price it will be a whole lot better in January.

I've found that it works on some and not on others. I just delete the uploads that it fails to pick up on.

I'm not keywording manually. Sales aren't exactly through the roof. When they try harder I might do likewise.

And fix the keywords problem for Irfanview users and make it easier to see what your earnings are