Quote from: Lizard on March 12, 2008, 23:26

Quote from: MikLav on March 12, 2008, 17:46
Don't forget that formally we are not selling anything. Agencies sell our pictures because we gave them the pictures and the right to sell them. What we are getting is a commission which is completely different (from a legal point of view) from "selling" something.

In most countries its not about the selling , its about earning

Aye, but the earnings should be taxed where they are generated. And this is the main problem as we don't sell the images to the microstock agencies, in which case we should pay taxes in the country where we created the images.
The agencies are the ones who sell them and then pay commissions to us so the earning is generated in the countries where the various agencies have their trade (Canada for IS, US for SS, Romania for DT, etc).
At least this is what I would logically think but I'd be curious to know how royalties are paid to musicians and writers because our case is very similar to their.

Quote from: vikavalter on March 09, 2008, 20:48

Quote from: ale1969 on March 08, 2008, 15:28
(Another solution would be the communist revolution but shooting with a Kiev88 isn't very practical nowadays  )

pfff... 88 is for pussies, 60 is the real deal!

Sssshhhh... I'm trying to grab a Pentacon Six from eBay just now 

Quote from: Seren on March 08, 2008, 21:15I'm open to suggestions though if anyone knows models that produce superior scans to the Epson 700 in the under £400 range.

There aren't any I'm aware of (for medium format anyway). The Microtek Artixscan M1 is priced between Epson v700 and v750 in the States but as I said the european version is about twice the cost while the other step further from v700 would be the Nikon Coolscan 9000 that it's in the 1500 pounds range (about 2000-2300 euros and about 2000$ but then VAT, custom, trasport etc etc).

A possibility could be some used older Microtek Artixscan (like the 120tf) now that a new model came out but I still have to find one (I guess most people keep them at warm with cuddles and love). I also hear good things about some Heidelberg film scanners but I have very few infos about them and anyway I didn't find any of them on the used market.

From my short experience in MS my isolations sells a lot more than shots with setups and props for the very reasons you put in your post. An isolated apple with good diffused light can be used in a gazillion of ways by designers, a shot of a bowl of apples with great dramatic light, while artistically a lot more interesting, can be used in a handful of graphical situations. That's why I'm trying to add those shots to the macrostock market, if they sell once there they can be profitable, if they sells 3 or 4 times on MS they are a waste of time and work.

We should realize the naked truth, in a globalized market there's two kind of products. The mainstream easy replaceable ones and the uniques ones.

Until your product/work is so unique and wonderful (or well marketed ) you are on the weak side of the market and so you have to accept what the strongest side push upon you and there's no union that can save you from this (I talk from experience as I am an union representative in my daily job).

If tomorrow a chinese stock agency opens up with half the price than SS or IS and about same quality, SS and IS themselves will be in our same problems and I think they're well aware of this. Keeping their prices low is a method to keep the competitors away as investments in a new stock agency will become profictable in a longer time period (just look at Snapvillage), for the most economical aware of you is the theory of Break Even Point.

It would pretty different if customers would scream to have an image from Lisa Gagne and/or Yuri Arcus and not shot by anyone else. But until this will happen they too will have to get their 30 cents from SS or 30% from IS and be happy with it.

(Another solution would be the communist revolution but shooting with a Kiev88 isn't very practical nowadays  )

I have the same problem and I solved it ordering today an Epson v700 for about 500 euros.

It can scan till large format and if quality isn't enough I could order the wet mount (to keep my slide on the same focal plane) and at www.betterscanning.com are on sales several other accessories to make scanning easier and more accurate.

The real resolution of the v700 is at about 1500-2000 DPI, not the nominal 4800, at least so it appears scanning resolution targets (here http://www.fotoavventure.it/freecontent/FC_ProvaV700/index.htm there's a really professional review with comparison with higher price dedicated scanners, even if it's in italian the images are really interesting).

The v700 has fixed focus lenses so you have to find the best distance from the scanning plane and you have to be very careful to keep your slides or negs flat.

Recently Microtek released the new Artixscan F1 with glassless film scanning (film must be inserted under the superior flat glass plane) and autofocus lenses but since we are european and we have to suffer it costs from 1000 to 1300 euros while about the same model (the Artixscan M1, it lacks digital ICE noise removal because of copyright issues in the States) costs about 599 $ from B&H, alas 400 euros at the current exchange rate. But you have to add shipping (more than 200$ from USA to Italy as the scanner is darn heavy), duty taxes and VAT, plus different electrical plugs and warranty problems, so all in all it's not all that bargain for us but maybe in the UK you could find easier ways to trade with your ex colonial cousins

Well, I looked over the portfolio of this guy and I'm really far from being amazed by its sheer image and composition quality.

I think he has a better talent in ironic writing than taking photos as the post above really made me laugh for almost an hour. 

Quote from: Seren on February 27, 2008, 19:16
If you're referring to me, I'm not called Susan."

Sorry, I wasn't meaning to insult you at all, just a pity case of writing when I was tired. My excuses.

Quote from: Seren on February 27, 2008, 19:16
And I'm afraid you're wrong.  As I explained above, it's perfectly acceptable to sell both licenses at once.  The rights managed license primarily protects the seller, not the buyer.  That's one of the reasons it is cheaper.

We are NOT talking about exclusive licenses here.  Clearly you cannot sell RF images as exclusive licenses.

While your explaination makes sense teorically, the hard facts are that on many agencies you can't sell an image as RM if it has been sold as RF before because some (not all but many) of the RM licenses include exclusive usage relative to time, space and medium. I saw on some stock sites lines like "image not available for the US till 31/12/09" or "image not available for book covers till 31/12/10", etc...

And on Alamy this concept goes to the extent that once you tagged your image as RF you can't switch it to RM anymore (while the inverse is always possible).

To be safer I also choosed the "licensed" option on Alamy for images that I submitted to Photoshelter (always as RM) because this way I can manage if I can assure exclusivity on an image or not. It's my responsability, not of the agency and I can be sued if I fail to accomplish it professionaly.

Quote from: Chode on February 27, 2008, 16:10
tnx for explanations. I tagged my images for royalty free licence only. Because those are not exclusive to alamy. I guess it is OK?

Yep it is. Just remember that once an image has been sold as royalty free isn't usable as rights managed any more (in Alamy you can't change back from RF to RM for example because it's impossible to manage something you gave away freely before, sorry Susan but that's the way it works).

To be more precise you can't manage the rights of an image already sold as royalty free because you can't grant exclusivity anymore.

If a customer who boughts the rights of your image through Alamy (or Photoshelter or whatever else macro agency) discover that the same image has been sold royalty free elsewhere you can be legally sued.

So you can still upload your images as RF on Alamy because that agency doesn't tie you with exclusiveness, but not as Rights Managed or Licensed.

Still I don't think is a good commercial choice selling the same image with so huge difference in prices. I kept separate collections of images, one for micro and the other for macro. The market segments (and needs) are also pretty different.

While a great photographer for sure, Lou Manna isn't one of my preferred to be honest (but I ordered his book from Amazon being one of the few completely dedicated to food photography), Ray for my personal tastes is miles ahead for example. But these are personal tastes and opinion, we're still talking about great pros.

About the light is very subjective, I'm actually using continuos (darn cheap) tungsten light and I'm looking to buy in the next months an Elinchrom dual flash setup and a fresnel spot.
In the above shot if I remember correctly the lights are a main light at the back bounced against a large white foam panel (which is very close to a window or a softbox as effect), another light into a DIY softbox at the left and a couple of other white foam panels at the right and above.
I think the above panel is crucial to have a very diffuse light while still keeping the objects from being too flat.

In food shots is far from unusual to have the main light coming from behind because it helps to define the shape of the food itself.
I don't also see anything wrong with having out of focus objects with blown out highlights but, as Hatman sharply put, here the strawberry catches too much the attention of the viewer to act as an effective background.
Then the other problem is the nature itself of the microstock market. My "arranged" food shots are viewed and sell far less than isolations in microstock agencies.
If you instead browse throught the catalogs of food specialized macrostock agencies you'd find a handful images with "everything in focus", the current trend is to have a very very selective focus to highlight the texture and the "appetizing factor" of the food.
They're different markets that evidently satisfy different porpouses. I'm keeping my "arranged" shots for macro now, they're wasted in micro.

As an example of what I'm saying here is one of my food images with shallow DOF and light from behind (and just two views on IS):


This is my bestseller on IS:


This other instead is a shot (wonderful in my opinion) of a very good food photographer named Michael Ray (http://www.foodportfolio.com/) with main light form behind (then a couple of reflectors and a fresnel spot probably), shallow DOF and blown highligts.

Quote from: CofkoCof on February 23, 2008, 10:26
Well the obvious thing is that you didn't read the topic, just looked at the pic (on the forums, not portfolio), then started saying how everything was wrong about it. It's very easy to do that, everyone can do that, even me. The hard thing is to offer some ideas and help the person improve.

The only one that actually browsed trough my portfolio was Madelaide and I'm very thankful for that.

Use larger light sources when you doing isolations. Being a flash or tungsten light bounced against a huge foil of foam, or a light tent or whatever else which gives you VERY diffuse light. There are hundreds systems, some of them very simple and cheap.

Don't be afraid of the critics and be overly critic yourself about your own shots, watch other people successfull images and try to replicate the light, read forums and blogs like Strobist to get ideas of how light works and more than all experiment.

This is my current learning path and following it I made huge leaps in quality in very little time.

Quote from: HughStoneIan on February 22, 2008, 15:50
Thanks for doing an excellent job, Leaf!!

I wholeheartly agree. Good job and many thanks, they'll never be enough.

"Ancient" slides work perfectly well if scanned properly (and you can test it looking into a National Geographic magazine where there's still plenty of great images scanned from films and slides). It is just too expensive for microstock unless you have a really great image.

First shot imho has 2 problems that really comes down to 1: you had to use a zoom to put in evidence the wireless ear piece and to blur out the ininspiring background using an adeguate aperture.

The second shot has a lot better composition but direct flash kills the model's eyes and if MP large preview is faithful to original it is way out blurred out by noise reduction, so much that it seems out of focus.

Take it like the proof you improved your "stock" eye and work on their suggestions because the reviewers were right on spot on those rejections.

Talking about single images:

#1 Modern Urban Buildings: the buildings on the right are in shadow so it's not a very usable stock image. You need an even light or a dramatic one, but the latter need to be really dramatic and noiseless, not just some clouds passing on the sun.

#4 Storm on the Horizon v2: this is a nice shot but you should use a DSLR with lowest ISO possible and then work with levels/curves to get the most out of it. The tree on the right is engulfed in shadow, you need to have some detail in it instead (using a DSLR, tripod and some shot at different exposures to get details from the shadows, even without resorting to HDR,  is my advice).

#7 White Eggs: some eggs are overexposed and their texture is burned out.

#8 Tanker Cargo Ship: basically the same problem as shot #4

I agree with some of the posters. That is a great shot but I think it doesn't belong to the micro market, if I were you I'd keep that shot for some macro like Alamy or Photoshelter (I think the latter would love it).
I learnt it seeing how in microagencies "simple and stupid" isolated food (which can be used in a gazillion different ways) sell a lot more than nice but specific table setups (usable just for some specific projects).

Well as the ancient romans said "nomen omen", alas pixish sounds so terribly close to phishing. I guess that if a designer will give away his/her work for the cover of a book not for 15$, but for a copy of that book (which would cost far less than 15$ to the publisher and it wouldn't be accepted as payment at any food store) he basically agreed to be phished.. ahemmm.. pixished out.

Quote from: rinderart on February 12, 2008, 06:34
I don't want more I want better.

This seems to be the overall feeling of all users except for the consumer P&S range.

We're on the limit of some lense capabilities so the Kodak path is really interesting, the 24mb Sony sensor doesn't sincerely wet my pants.

Quote from: leaf on February 11, 2008, 17:45
perhaps we should have a poll as to where most people would want to have a meetup

What about Canarie? I hate the cold winter weather

Quote from: fotoxalia on February 11, 2008, 08:42
They give the opportunity to everyone to download for free webpage resolution images!!!!!
They call it "comp download". As their watermark is almost useless the whole thing looks ridiculous.
Just have deleted my portfolio!

Also Alamy permits this and about every other macro site. Just go to the Getty page (example http://corporate.gettyimages.com/marketing/Galleries/5048_TaxiRM/usa/Gallery.html ) and you could alt-stamp all the images you want at web resolution without watermark, but I never heard of panicked Getty photogs who scream on forums about deleting their portfolio there. It's a different market.

I agree with Helix, leaving hi-res images on Flickr is like leaving your wallet unprotected on a seat in the Central Station. The Central Station shouldn't take the blame for your ingenuity.

My images on Flickr aren't larger than 800 pixels on the wider side and all the commercial ones are also "hugely" watermarked.

Basically what Alien Skin Exposure2 does is really simple. It's nothing else than a contrast curve together with some color filters added to mimick the behaviour of the various films.

So it doesn't add any noise or banding in itself BUT it could if the shots isn't properly exposed or lacks some dynamic range just the same as it could happen when you use curves, blending layers, levels etc.

For example I processed a shot of an orange with the velvia setting and it came out with the red channel bleeding everywhere, I switched to Astia and it was fine.

Alien Skin Exposure 2 is really fantastic. And you can use the contrast-colours of the various film types with the "no-grain" options to avoid noise rejections