Hmmm. I love my Kodak z612. For non-commercial work, it is all a person mostly needs.

But Dreamstime rejected all of my submissions of my test entry late last summer. Well, two or three of them were due to things I can learn from, and I appreciate that, but ALL of them, including the 80% that had no other reason, were due to 'sensor size' or 'lens quality'. Theoretically, according to the label, that is a Schneider-Kreuznach (sp?) lens. Good glass.

So, I *assume* that it is a sensor size issue. If so, to get into stock photography, do I not need a 23mm sensor? That is, a DSLR? (the 35mm sensors are too expensive for me) I'm about ready to blow all of my Christmas money on a DSLR hoping to begin to actually be able to submit successfully and maybe even make a little money. I do realize that making enough to say, recoup the investment, will take quite a while, that this is something that builds slowly.

Am I being foolish?

Do 'they' care about the brand of the camera? Due to my budget, the kind of shooting I do, due to my research, and due to my existing half-dozen lenses from the old days, the Pentax k200d looks like the right starter for bootstrapping up to replacing it with something better when I get that far.

Does one have to have the name Canon or Nikon in order to not be rejected?

  

Well, even well-lit scenes show 'noise' in soft focus portions of the image, such as the sky, or leafy backgrounds. It is subtle, but it is definitely there. It doesn't compare to the hot pixels I had in my old Oly 725, and looks no worse than a friend's Rebel produces, but I am suspecting either the sensor isn't good enough, or else the jpg software, even in the 'fine' setting, is compressing too much. And only jpg is available (grr).

I'll try, but I wonder if it is possible to bootstrap up from this camera.

Seren, I know this. I even said so in my post. As I said in it, when I can, I will get a decent DSLR. At present, I cannot.

I believe I read in this thread that when you take a 6mp image and blow it up to 5025x3800 (give or take) that imperfections will appear. It was a very low light picture that I tried this on, I might get different results with a daylight shot. I am not new to photography, just digital photography. I know about settings. The sensor might also be to blame. I doubt a prosumer long zoom is going to have nearly as good a sensor as even a bottom-end DSLR. But you can't get a K20D or a 40D or a D80 (or better) with 100 dollars Christmas money. Take a deep breath. You answered what I already told you in my post. I did ask questions in it, so if you have any answers to -them-, they would be welcome.