Quote from: HughStoneIan on January 25, 2008, 15:40
Haven't read anything about it yet, so I'm not sure if this one can take any of the old K-mount lenses the way their other digital slr's have been able to.  If so, then this is even more of a bargain if you don't mind manual focusing, which I use most of the time anyway.  Because on the used market you can get for Pentax some of the absolutely best lenses (mostly primes) ever produced, for a small fraction of the cost of their newer counterparts.  And in many cases the older ones are sharper and have better color rendition than their modern equivalents.  And then there are some of the even older Takumar screwmount lenses, which are an absolute pain to use and can really test your patience, but give you unbelievably beautiful image rendition with better sharpness than just about any lens of any maker today.  And they're usually available at super low cost.  It's a toss-up between inconvenience of use vs superlative image quality and low price.  If you have the need for speed and auto-everything, then these won't work for you. 
   However, if they've changed the lens-mount, then disregard all the above.

The mount is the same so lenses made 40 years ago work just fine in manual mode.

Not all the old lenses are doing great on the digital bodies thou. They were made for film when chromatic aberration and other artifacts were not a big issue. Plus the prices for the really good ones went up significantly in the last 2-3 years. I know since I tried them.

I also have many of the newer lenses like 70mm F2.4 pancake and they are as good if not better than the older ones.
My cash cow is the D-FA 50mm F2.8 macro since I sell lots of seasonal, isolated images of things like ornaments, hearts, roses, tulips etc.

My best selling images were made with primes with wonderful color rendition, smooth/creamy out of focus area for subject matters like soccer, weddings etc.

Quote from: GeoPappas on January 25, 2008, 15:19
Where are you finding sample images?

There are not a lot of samples out there yet, from what I know. Most of them are taken in jpeg with the kit lens and most at high ISO:

Here is one review: http://www.ephotozine.com/article/Pentax-K20D-DSLR

Here is a sample of the new HDR mode (right-side):

Pentax just announced the new body that sports a new 14.6MP CMOS sensor, live view, shake reduction, dust reduction, sealed body etc:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0801/08012311pentaxk20d.asp

The MP count should fetch more cash on certain stock sites, I guess.

Quote from: yingyang0 on January 18, 2008, 02:28
The OP was right about the stock being a winner though. I've been shorting it for the last year and half. It has made me a lot of money. 

I worked hard for the past 6 months at shorting stocks and I love it. I will wait for what they have to say on Jan 31st. Considering the coming (or should I say current) recession, it might hit the advertising industry hard which it ain't a lot of good news for the agency. Or for us as contributors. Time will tell. The good news is that it may hit the bottom in the next year or so.

Quote from: mwp1969 on January 17, 2008, 20:36
Uber,

I agree that I am quite capable of slecting my photos myself. This is what I have done. I've selected some of the best, that haven't been rejected. I am merely posting here to help descriminate between photos that are already approved on my other sites that have the stricter criteria. The examples above have been previously approved on DT which seems to be the toughest for my photos out of DT, BigStock, FT, 123rf, Featurepics, and Albumo


This is the MSG "Critique" forum so its certainly a great place to ask for critique of photos that may or may not already be posted across multiple sites

Thanks for your suggestions

Any other comments on the images chosen on the most recent posting of my list?

Mark

See what you mean. Sorry: seeing your top 10 I thought you expect others to fill in the gaps. I, for one, would not trust strangers for that (myself included).

mwp1969,
Not sure that asking others to do your work is the right thing here. You may need to decide what works and what not by yourself.

Here is a tip from me: pick the ones that look best at thumbnail/small size.
Crop at a different ratio if needed (3:4 etc). Of course all the other ingredients have to be there as well.

It may also help if with your submission you send a link to your portfolio on other sites where you have some success. Make sure sure you don't make a big deal out of it thou.

Knowing what SS wants, you may need more subject matter of the kind they want: cr*ppy studio shots (I have plenty of them).

Quote from: hatman12 on January 17, 2008, 19:16
"As time passes your investment dividends will keep multiplying.  By the time you reach your 40's or 50's, you will be financially set for life.

Like I said I don't know what your future plans are, but I've started to invest early.  It's amazing to see an initial $10,000 USD investment grow to over 60 million dollars over 70 years at places like Edward Jones and such."


This is very unlikely.  VERY unlikely.  The US stock market is approaching a peak in a long bull market that started way back in 1906.  All the impressive numbers put out by marketing people are based on a bull market that will NOT be sustained.  The cracks are already showing by the sub prime problems, which are only the tip of the iceberg.

In a long bull market spanning generations, people forget the true realties and live life with their heads buried in sand.

Haven't you noticed the Japanese market?  Peaked in 1990 at 39,000 and now, nearly twenty years later, it is still down at 14,000.  It is not likely to regain that 39,000 peak for at least another twenty years, perhaps longer.

Financial markets can have very long periods of zero or negative returns, and people have forgotten that.  There is a rude awakening coming, and has already started.

Historically, periods of fifty or sixty years of zero returns in stock markets are not uncommon.

While what you say is true, it does not mean that just parking ones money is the only way to invest.

Nice money can be made in good and bad times. Is a sector/stock overinflated? Short that. Is a stock having wild swings? Buy low sell fast (and high). Is the overall market going down/in recession? Look for efficiency-oriented companies: they sky-rocket when everyone is out to save money.

I know people (won't give names ) that had a blast since things started going down this summer.

I am not giving any investing advise here. Just playing the devil's advocate

Quote from: mjp on January 17, 2008, 13:22
Hi all,

Thanks for clarification about alamys upscale process it helped a lot. Have anybody anything about question number 3. I posted. I have plans that every macro images is different from micros (no same session images on micros etc).

Madelaide: What other sites than alamy your are submitting?

br, MJP

My take is this: I do not have a problem selling the same image at different price levels assuming the same type of license, as long as the price is fair. They reach different markets with different needs. If the buyer finds my image quick on a given stock agency and has no problem paying $150 for it, why not?

So yeah, I load RF images to Photoshelter and Alamy. Sometimes at microstocks as well. It is a different story for RM (as defined by Alamy): they need to be exclusive.
Alamy also has L (Licensed) that is the equivalent to RM at Photoshelter (I know, confusing). No exclusivity here, the buyer pays for the intended usage as opposed to RF.

Bottom line: I own the images therefore I get to decide what the licensing model works best for me. The buyers know this very well (or they should). If they buy RF they know they are getting it cheaper than RM but that it also means that the same image could be sold elsewhere.

Quote from: jorgeinthewater on January 17, 2008, 12:54
"You got that right. This will work if you are using a 2:3 ratio. For 3:4, square etc you will need to find the right dimensions either by guessing or using the formula above. The formula above is helpful when you are trying to determine the right size to upscale low resolution images where you do not want to excessively upscale"

Thanks Uberlens, I will keep it in mind for any images that I crop.

Thinking about it: the ratio won't matter but the total area. It will be sqrt of the same area no matter the shape. Anyway, probably Alamy should explain this better so people have a better understanding of what and why. Megabytes, megapixels, bytes per pixel could be confusing to many.

Quote from: jorgeinthewater on January 17, 2008, 04:47

Quote from: UberLens on January 16, 2008, 22:29
Alamy asks for 48MB that is megabytes (48*1024*1024) which equals to 50,331,648 bytes. Considering that each pixel is 3 bytes in a 8-bit jpeg file that will mean 16,777,216 pixels.

They say that you might need to upscale using a bicubic algorithm.

So how do you determine the factor to upscale the image? Easy: divide 16,777,216 by the number of pixels of your image area. One more thing: make sure you do a sqrt of that number to determine what to use for each dimension.

Here is an example:
I have a 2000x3000 photo. What factor should I use for each dimension to meet the minimum Alamy size?

First, dividing 16,777,216 by 6,000,000 and we get 2.8 (rounded of course). Secondly, square root of 2.8 will give you a 1.68. This is the number to use to upscale each dimension. To verify: 3*(2000*1.68)*(3000*1.68) = 50,803,200 bytes.
In other words, in Photoshop I would use 3360x5040.

Some might find this hard to believe but I have a bunch of 6 megapixels shots on Alamy.

Hope it helps.

I have notice that when I open a raw image {nikon d50 6 mp} using ps cs2 there is a pull down menu on the bottom left hand area that gives you
different sizes I choose 5120 x 3404 which automatically gives me a file
size of 49 mb. I am not good at math but this seems easier, am I wrong or
those someone have an easier way to get from 6mp to 48+ mb?

You got that right. This will work if you are using a 2:3 ratio. For 3:4, square etc you will need to find the right dimensions either by guessing or using the formula above. The formula above is helpful when you are trying to determine the right size to upscale low resolution images where you do not want to excessively upscale.

Quote from: Whiz on January 16, 2008, 22:45
HermanM, a great many stocks are down. Getty isn't a great investment in my opinion, but I'm betting that they'll go back up eventually. Free cash flow, low fin leverage(debt), low P/E Ratio, ROA and ROE are okay; etc. Just blame it on panicked investors.

I concur: investment wise the numbers look appetizing. I mean, with a P/E of 11.03 it surely looks good (http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:GYI). This might be a better way to make money in the stock photography business

Alamy asks for 48MB that is megabytes (48*1024*1024) which equals to 50,331,648 bytes. Considering that each pixel is 3 bytes in a 8-bit jpeg file that will mean 16,777,216 pixels.

They say that you might need to upscale using a bicubic algorithm.

So how do you determine the factor to upscale the image? Easy: divide 16,777,216 by the number of pixels of your image area. One more thing: make sure you do a sqrt of that number to determine what to use for each dimension.

Here is an example:
I have a 2000x3000 photo. What factor should I use for each dimension to meet the minimum Alamy size?

First, dividing 16,777,216 by 6,000,000 and we get 2.8 (rounded of course). Secondly, square root of 2.8 will give you a 1.68. This is the number to use to upscale each dimension. To verify: 3*(2000*1.68)*(3000*1.68) = 50,803,200 bytes.
In other words, in Photoshop I would use 3360x5040.

Some might find this hard to believe but I have a bunch of 6 megapixels shots on Alamy.

Hope it helps.

Lee,
I read your blog and while for the most part I find your arguments valid there is something I am not sure I get it.

Yes, some photographers adapted to microstock and are doing well but the question is how many like them does this model support? Do you see 1000 like Yuri or Ron making it?

I for one don't see that possible. The reason is the market itself. How many times would those images need to sell for to support that high number of photographers at the price levels microstocks go about? Are there enough buyers for it? I doubt it.

My take is that highly successful photogs are hitting that ceiling and there is no way they can grow unless either there are more buyers or the price levels change. These are growing pains that any business goes through: there are only that many warm bodies to sell to.

I am new to SS, started on December 8th, and here are my stats:

Number of days: 21 (3 weeks)
Best day - 48 downloads (3 more above 40)
Total downloads: 375
Total images: 46

What I noticed at SS is that it is a good place for seasonal photos, as long as you upload tons of them. I started with 7 images (soccer, Christmas) and every couple of days uploaded 3-4. Now the downloads shifted to Valentine/birthday stuff.

Here is an approximate depiction of downloads per subject:

Wedding:             2 photos, 27 dls
Christmas:           7 photos, 122 dls
Soccer:                15 photos, 132 dls
Medical:               5 photos, 7 dls
Valentine/b-day:  14 photos, 97 dls
Misc: 2 photos,  you do the math here:-)

I have the same concerns as the others going long with this but until I get something better at other places I will keep feeding the beast.

I uploaded 4 last night (Dec 27th) around 10pm and when I checked in this morning at 6am they were all approved. Now the real fun begins...

Interesting perspective about this market: mine are not juicy by no means. Just a politician shaking hands at a parade etc. You never know thou: it might get hot if he does something stupid (a high possibility these days).
I will stick with the little ones for now (no exclusivity). The bigger ones don't seem to care.

I have some shots from a public event of a political candidate that might be
of interest for editorial. Do you have any ideas how to contact some agencies?

I sent an email to Getty, fat chance it will read by a human.

I know that PhotoShelter and ShutterStock take editorial/news but I was wondering if any of the macro agencies do without being a pro?

Thanks.

Funny thing happened to me: on Saturday I applied to Shutterstock, got approved with 7 images out of 10, 3 days later I have 130 downloads.
True: half of downloads, of 2 photos, are Christmas ornaments.  I guess some of you who see a slowdown know why now:-)

I start uploading some Valentine hearts and they seem to pick up pretty good on Shutterstock as well.

I have a small portolio of about 30 images and growing on the other micros that do not sell much while iStockPhoto gives me a hard time with approval . Just puzzled.