Canon PowerShot A95 (late 2004)
Canon EOS 400D (late 2007)

Haven't taken nearly as many photos with the 400D as I have with the A95 yet.

Great news. I hope some of those deals involve reduced shipping. The ridiculous shipping rates for overseas purchases ($60 for 1 CF card as an example) was the only thing stopping me from buying off them.

ShutterStock's great with their reviews. I've been impressed with the speed there over the years since in general reviews take no longer than 3-4 days, and often it's less than 2. Sometimes it's even less than a day. A week is considered unusual... (but I usually chalk it up to something unexpected on their end) but then on other sites you can expect a week or two. Or in the case of BigStock 3-4 weeks and and bizarre rejections.

A shame that it's still a concept design. I was going to buy one on the spot if the price wasn't ridiculous. Definitely an awesome mug to add to my collection of random cool utilities.

Quote from: UncleGene on September 19, 2008, 05:49
They also get my vote for the most ridiculous one:


Can you guess? It is obvious!
It was rejected for cropping.
I know, my bad, next time for an ocean shot I'd rent a space shuttle.....

Oh please, the space shuttle will set you up for a snapshot rejection. There'll be too many distractions (islands and continents) from the main focus of the ocean. Try again though.

Looks much better than before!

I do wish that threads by default opened up with the first post instead of the last post though. Most of the time I'm reading threads for the first time, not keeping up with old ones so ... Like this one I clicked it and started on the third page.

About $13.50 in Australia.

Edit:

Make that $14.31 as of October 1st

Quote from: leaf on August 14, 2008, 10:31

I think more expensive actually means lighter.  If you are comparing tripods of like size, the more expensive ones are gong to get lighter.... carbon fiber tripods for example are the lightest material and also the most expensive.

but i agree with your point - if you are going to get a tripod, get one that you will actually take with you.

Not necessarily about the weight, since I've seen some $500+ Manfrotto's that are heavier than the 728B, but that's understandable since those $500+ range can carry equipment around 7kg+ while the 728B is only 3-3.5kg. Point I was trying to make is that you could get the $500+ one, but if you're only ever going to use equipment in the 2kg range, then the more expensive ones won't be as beneficial for you (carrying around extra unneeded weight/size).

The way I figure it for myself, if I have equipment that breaks the 3-3.5kg capacity, I should be able to afford one of the more expensive tripods. $210 was more than I initially wanted to pay (you can get Velbon's and so on locally for around $60) but like with most of my bigger purchases I want to have equipment that I'll use often and works well so I started looking at the best Manfrotto for my needs.

I'm still waiting the arrival of the Manfrotto 728B ($210AUD) I ordered, but I did a fair bit of research on tripods before deciding.

Apart from what others mentioned, the one other thing I read which I kept in mind when choosing is a phrase "The best tripod is the one you take with you". So while the most expensive ones are most sturdy, they're usually the heaviest as well. When choosing, go for something that balances weight with sturdiness for you. Also keeping in mind the weight of equipment the tripod itself can support.

Quote from: litifeta on August 12, 2008, 05:30

8 meg card

I hope that's actually a 8GB card!

(I saw a lot of $10 "8MB" cards on eBay recently)

Just ordered myself a Manfrotto 728B tripod. Hopefully it'll be in soon so I can start trying out things in time for a trip. =)

Quote from: DanP68 on August 12, 2008, 01:15

Quote from: sharpshot on August 11, 2008, 22:25
They said all along that they wont market the site until the summer is over.  We will have a better idea by the end of the year.

Exactly.

So far they have been straight forward with their intentions.  If October rolls around and they still aren't advertising, then you pull the plug before they turn into Albumo2.  But losing patience now is folly.  What was anyone expecting?  They came right out from Day 1 and said they would begin advertising in Autumn.

It just seems like another case of people getting impatient. SS's raise comes to mind when they said it would be announced mid-May, and some people started causing a fuss on May 1st.

I shoot the same stuff and it does very poorly on BigStock with a gallery around 300 for the past 3-4 years. But then, they rejected the other 400 for reasons like not liking the dusty brown-grey plumage of a bush stone-curlew (that it was "washed out" and then told me to try increasing the saturation) or telling me a peacock feather had "keyword issues" since it "wasn't a feather". I gave up around then and focused on other agencies.

Calibration's more important than the actual monitor, so the colours you're seeing on screen are as true as possible. I'm still looking around for an affordable but good calibration device though.

The monitor I'm using at the moment is a Samsung 24" LCD, SyncMaster 245B. Very nice monitor to work with in general. Cost me around $750AUD though monitor prices (like a lot of other things) are much higher in Australia.

Quote from: grp_photo on August 01, 2008, 08:01

Quote from: Joyce on July 31, 2008, 22:22
Specific landscapes for me.

If that mountain in your locale has a name, make sure to include it and the city/nearby locations. It appears that a lot of my sales come from tourism brochures and the like.

You can sell this stuff much better and higher as RM.

I've been considering Alamy for best of my more recent images (which I've refrained from submitting to microstock) ever since joining MSG. Time will tell whether they can make the cut though.

Specific landscapes for me.

If that mountain in your locale has a name, make sure to include it and the city/nearby locations. It appears that a lot of my sales come from tourism brochures and the like.

I submitted an isolated photo of a peacock feather to BigStock once. Took forever to get a smooth isolation, so I was worried about it getting rejected on some fault with that. Rejection reason?

"Inappropriate keywords: This is not a feather"

I guess peacocks don't exist in that reviewer's country?

The goal to be satisfied is to have my stock earnings at least cover one major bill, so about $800-1000/month would cover rent (or about $2000/month for mortgage if/when that occurs).

Ideally, I'd like something like leaf's goals, but I like to start at something a bit more realistic to begin with and work from there.

That doesn't look right at all.

I chose the 10-22mm EF-S lens as my wide angle and it's astounding in quality -- including the edges. Not an L lens, so I'd question yours there.

Quote from: howardg on June 29, 2008, 15:02
They responded that I would have to wait 90 days but that they could delete photos that had been there for 90 days individually.

They said that to me once. What I discovered is that they didn't delete a single photo (when there were plenty beyond 90 days) when I went back to check on it in a year. I'd keep a close eye on it.

I tend to agree that anyone who takes photos can call themselves a photographer, with one exception: The people who only take photos of themselves to photoshop up into someone very attractive but unrecogniseable. It just doesn't feel right adding to the narcissism.

That looks like a good set. I'd probably add "isolated", "isolation" as well if that "white background" is what I think it is.

It does look like that a lot of the time.

At least it seems like the recent complaints about Fotolia are ones where people have contacted the company first about their concerns.

Some companies just ignore emails about issues so it seems like MSG's also a meeting place for people to find out whether others are having the same issues. I'm not a contributor at Fotolia (their submission process turned me off pretty early) but I've had similar issues (complete lack of communication) with another agency in which I'm in the process of leaving.

Same here, Cooper. It just turned photography into a chore more than anything (editing/keywording is still a chore though). In my portfolio you will find mostly wildlife and landscape photography. It doesn't make as much as the typical business person set, but I enjoy it more. You'll still find some random kinda-boring photos that I took specifically for stock, but those I took while out and about with the aim of taking photos I did like.

I upload the occasional illustration at just over 2.5MP. Joined in Jan 05.

Quote from: Pywrit on May 31, 2008, 10:46
Next step is to farm out all the photography work to China, just like like the manufacturing industry is doing. That'll drop the prices - but they may have to allow for substantially lower quality.

... and for copyright infringement. Photos are easier to do than cars, and China's already done cars.