I have just upgraded from a 40D to a 6D. So far I have only been setting the options and taking test shots.

With my 40D, all lens corrections were made in Lightroom with the lens profiling option for distortion and CA. Now with the 6D, there is the option of doing this in camera.

Does anyone have an opinion of whether one of these options is better than the other?

I has a couple emails today that I changed email address on on some of my accounts. I did not do this. Someone has somehow gotten into my Shutterstock, Fotolia, Dreamstime, and Bigstock accounts. They have added their email address in payout options, requested payouts, and in some cases changed the password and I cannot log in now.

I have sent support emails to all 4 sites.

What a mess.

Has anyone ever had this happen? Once I can get back into my accounts I will of course create new passwords. What else do I need to do.

In the case of Shutterstock, the email says what the email address was changed to. It is a gmail address. Anyway this can be traced?

For those of you that submit to Yay Micro, how difficult/easy is it to get photos accepted?

I figured I would pick a site I was not on yet and start submitting to them. I tried Yay Micro. I submitted 20 photos to start. All 20 were rejected for "Technical Issues".  I am not sure if I did something wrong with the sizing of the photos or did not meet some requirement, but I know they are large enough.

All photos are with about 10 other sites. If they do not want my photos I am fine with that, but I am trying to determine if I did something wrong and can correct it.

Thanks for any help you can provide
   

I am looking to buy some lighting equipment in the next few weeks. Initially this will be mostly for still life work, Isolated images, etc. But whatever I buy, I want it to be good enough for use in the future for people shots too. I do not want to start over again buying new equipment, but rather I will keep adding to what I have. I will also try some people shots with whatever I buy now, but probably not too much yet.

Currently, I have two light stands, Two white umbrellas (can be used both as reflective and shoot through), 1 pair of Pocket Wizards, 1 Canon 430EX Flash, 1 Vivitar 285HV.

I plan on spending up to a max of about $1,200 for new equipment.

So far, I am considering getting:

1) Two Alienbees B1600 flash units
2) One Heavy Duty Light Stand
3) One Softbox

I would appreciate any comments and/or advice that anyone may have.

Some specific questions I have are:

1)Should I purchase Three B1600's instead of Two? I am thinking maybe I will need too so I have a background light for blowing out backgrounds.

2) Alienbees has several size softboxes. 24X36, 32X40, 30X60. Which should I get? Is it best to get the largest one?

3) Is there anything else I should get now that I will have a hard time getting by without?

4) Will I be able to use these flash units in slave mode or am I going to need additional remote triggers? (Pocket Wizards since that is what I have now).


Thanks for any help you can provide.

I am beginning to upload to Zymmetrical. I have two questions I hope someone can answer for me.

1) Keywords - It seems that the first 20 keywords are taken from IPTC data. I uploaded a few photos and need to change these. I see the keywords that were taken from IPTC data. When I go into the moify keyword option, there are 20 blank boxes. If I want to add 1 keyword, do I have to repeat all the ones that already exist too? I tried one as a test, but the new keywords I added have not taken effect. How does this work?

2) I cannot FTP. Below is the error I get. Has anyone else experienced this?

Response:   220 Zymmetrical FTP Server ready...
Command:   USER sbonk
Response:   331 User name okay, need password.
Command:   PASS *******
Response:   530 Not logged in.
Error:   Could not connect to server

I am switching internet access from cable to fiber optics and will no longer have my current email address once the change is done in about a week. I changed my email address with most microstock sites but cannot figure out how to do it at 123RF. When you access your profile information here, email address cannot be updated. Does anyone how to change this?

I did send them an email but so far did not get a response back. It has only been 24 hours though.

I have the same problem with microstockphoto and usphotostock. I do not upload there any more and will probably never get a payout, but I figure I will change it anyway. Does anyone know how to do it at these sites?

Thanks!

I just bought a new camera. Canon 40D. I tried a few test shots and tried to import into Lightroom but I get an error about an "unsupported color mode". Photos were shot in RAW (not sRAW). Color mode was Adobe RGB. Version of Lightroom is 1.2 (the latest).

I find other people that had this trouble when doing a google search, but usually they were using sRAW and were ok when using RAW. I tried reinstalling the latest version of Lightroom. Still does not work.

Can anyone help?

Thanks.

I want to buy some white translucent acrylic to try lighting from behind for some isolation shots. I have found acrylic that allows 20-29% of light to pass through and one that allows 40-49% to pass through. Which one of these would be best?

Also, would it make a difference if the acrylic is 1/8th inch or 1/4 inch?

Thanks for any help.

I had an email today saying that a buyer requested a RAW format version of one of my photos. The mail said to either upload the RAW file or just do nothing if I was not interested or did not have it.

I will not upload the RAW format for a $0.50 or $1.00 sale. I am not sure if I would for an EL sale. I am interested to hear from others that had the RAW file requested as to how you handled it. Or even from people that have not had this requested but have ideas on what they would do.

Thanks for any suggestions.
Steve

I am trying to learn to shoot people for stock. I am currently not very good at people shots but I am practicing. Below is a link to a photo I recently submitted to several sites. It was accepted on most sites but rejected by one. I would like to learn from this and see how I could improve this shot.

If you do not mind, please take a look at the photo and tell me what you think? How could it be improved? Would it be better with a different background? How do you think it is for a STOCK photo? Will it sell?

I do not want to put the rejection reason in here now because it would probably influence people. But it was not a rejection that you would need a 100% crop for.

Also, I am not posting this complaining about a rejection. I want to learn how to shoot people for stock so I can hopefully increase by stock revenue.

Thanks for any feedback.

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-3439389-a-young-teenage-boy-playing-a-game-of-backgammon-the-boy-and-board-are-isolated-over-a-black.html

My better selling images seem to be the most colorful and saturated ones. So I tried an experiment and took an image to what I think is the extreme, going past what I would normally do. A link to the photo is pasted below and is getting a pretty good amount of downloads.

Do you think this is oversatured or should I be doing this with more of my photos?

Note: I say Saturation but do not actually use the PS Saturation tool.

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-2934008-a-blue-peacock-with-colorful-open-feathers-filling-the-entire-frame.html

I just had an istock rejection for keywords not relevant. This is the first time I have had this. Please tell me if you think the keyword stated as being inappropriate really are inappropriate in your opinion.

The photo is a poker chip isolated on a white background. Keywords they said were no good are below.

cards, casino, casinos, gambler, leisure, money, strategy, vegas, winner, winning, win