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Messages - Waldo4

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51
General Stock Discussion / Re: Can I do microstock? Should I?
« on: April 07, 2008, 12:54 »
IMO go for it, you have nothing to lose (except some time) and everything to gain.  Shooting for stock almost surely will make you a better photographer, both with technical know how and eventually the financial means for better equipment.

If I can offer a piece of advice, take the "too arty" warnings with a grain of salt.  I heeded those at first and ignored using most of more artistic shots.  Eventually I gave some of my better ones a try and thus far they have had the highest acceptance rate of all my shots and they sell decently too.  Though they are not my cash cow shots (that 10% that makes 90% of your income), they are being purchased and my most recent one that I uploaded to SS is getting hot with several DL's in the last few days.  There isn't a huge market for them but I know that it is what I am best at and when buyers find them, they do stand out from the crowd and are unique.  Color is important though, very few shots work as a B&W for stock, I have a few, but they were almost B&W to begin with, the use of B&W was more of a way to avoid fringing and off pixels than actually done for artistic reasons.

52
General - Top Sites / Re: Only 30 days in the stock business
« on: April 06, 2008, 10:03 »
I wonder if the same sort of thing will begin to happen at IS when they adopt the subs model?

I think that it has more to do with the search engine than the buyers.  What pops up on page 1 when they search is the most likely target of their money.  SS's search engine likes new files much more than the other sites.

53
General - Top Sites / Re: Only 30 days in the stock business
« on: April 05, 2008, 12:26 »
I like IS, it is the cream of the crop of my port.  I have a soft spot in my heart for them because they are the only site where when I think that a picture is excellent, they do as well.  And sales there are quite good.  Though my port is far smaller, they outsell all non-SS sites for me, and SS is just beginning to depress me.  I had such high hopes, but until yesterday (and an EL deal) my BDE was the day that I was accepted.  My 2nd BDE was 4 days later.  Since then I haven't even hit half of those #'s for a day even though my port is nearly 5x as large.

The passion is what defines a good photographer, IMO you will never be successful unless you love what you are doing, if it is just a drudgery done as a means to an ends it will show plain as day in your work.

54
iStockPhoto.com / Re: iStock to start Subscription packages.
« on: April 05, 2008, 00:03 »
I'll wait until the actual numbers come out, but if the "virtual photo lottery" is reality, it sounds interesting.

Waldo, the reason why your theories won't become reality is the same reason why we don't have only McDonald's in the burger business, it's why we don't only have two soft drink companies, why there are still many auto makers and why in any other industry, the one big company can't drive out all the competition and dominate, as you have suggested.

Some will fall, some little ones will survive in specialty markets and a few of the big ones will continue to compete in the marketplace. Also some of the other large agencies will combine resources, whether through mergers or acquisitions.

They aren't just going to be stomped out by all the best photographers going exclusive with iStock. There is a virtually unlimited supply of good photographers that can fill the holes left by anyone going exclusive with one agency.

If this plan is what it is being touted as, which is an increase for everyone, then it's good news and other agencies will follow with the same or some counter program to sweeten the pot. Nothing better for us than to have the agencies competing by offering us more money, or more profit  for our photos!  ;D



There is an unlimited supply of photographers, however there isn't an unlimited supply of time.  If IS steals a bunch then steals a bunch of customers because of it, noobs aren't going to come in and replace the guys going exclusive overnight, to get to the level of the exclusives that left, it will take months, if not years to develop the quality and depth of portfolios that they are replacing.

The difference between this situation and McDonalds for example, is that McDonalds hasn't figured out a way to make make all of the ranchers that supply them with meat, only supply them with meat and nobody else, and all decent ranchers sell to McDonalds.   Therefore all other burger joints are selling low grade crap compared to what McDonalds is selling because they have a partial monopoly on all of the good beef available from ranchers.

55
iStockPhoto.com / Re: iStock to start Subscription packages.
« on: April 04, 2008, 22:54 »
And if it becomes all powerful in the industry, that would mean lower payments to contributors, not higher; whenever a corporation gains complete control it is always the suppliers that end up with lower margins.

Short term financing matters not compared to long term benefits.  As the exclusive level gets too high, raise prices to the subscribers, (which raises commissions a little too, but priced to overshoot the exclusive overpayment).  You are right that in the end the photographers get the shaft....however, that cannot occur until their competition is beaten.  As is they cannot beat the competition by offering a cheaper product than the competition, the only way that they can beat the competition is to offer a product so superior that the difference in price is minor compared to the difference in quality.  The only way to do that...steal all of their contributers.  The only way to do that...give 'em an offer they can't refuse.  Once the competition is beaten into submission, then the place too eek out profits is to turn the attention to the contributers and slowly but surely give them the shaft, but with minor competition they have no choice but to accept.  Until that time come that contributers get the shaft, IMO IS is going to change the market to reward us as much as possible in their fight for supremacy, if my thinking is right, it is a very good time to be a MS photographer as the war for the best contributers will line peoples pockets.  At least I can hope.  It is a sound business strategy on their part, especially with the financial backing of Getty to make it happen, that they can live with a short term zero profit or even operating in the red to crush their competitors.  They are the only company that is really poised and positioned to really make a power grab and consolidate the industry, this might be the beginnings of it.

56
iStockPhoto.com / Re: iStock to start Subscription packages.
« on: April 04, 2008, 20:53 »
... and the contributors get 20-40% of it, where at other sites they get nothing of this surplus.
If a subscription sales won't generate less per credit than I'm making now, I don't see how my per image sales will be "cannibalized", plus each subscription sale comes with a "virtual lottery ticket" that may increase the royalty unexpectedly if the customer does not max out that day.   :D
Exactly what I said on pg. 2 of this thread. It will cannibalize, but for the better. The "cannibalized" downloads will earn the same or more than they would have before.

Dan doesn't yet seem to understand how different this program is from the other subscription sites. I know it shocked . out of me.

Istock is trying to attract every halfway decent stock photographer to go exclusive with them.  They will exert complete and utter dominance over the market if that happens.  They will be free to price at will and do just about anything they want.  They would have a virtually unlimited supply of good photographers for their macro business and would not have to worry about their macro competition stealing their well trained photographers.  Their only micro competition would be the bargain basement shops that take everything.  They figured out the way to destroy their competition, steal all of their good contributers.  The more exclusives that they get, the more they can sink their claws in their competition by raising their prices and paying their contributers more, further gaining more exclusives.  With each exclusive they gain their competition gets a little worse, making them even more attractive to buyers, allowing them to further raise prices, gain more exclusives, and hurt their competition even more.  It would not surprise me on bit if in 2-3 years, IS prices are 3-5X what they are now, and each contributer makes 3-5x more per download, and the % of people exclusive is very high, yet despite their rising prices their traffic skyrockets as they have no competition to their quality.  The only thing that could be done to prevent this is the other sites getting together and raising commissions almost simultaneously with IS, so that when IS raises prices and commissions, and contributers hit that exclusivity calculator link, they aren't left with an overwhelmingly easy decision to go exclusive.  (ask yourself, if IS raised commissions 300% tomorrow, how long would it take you to go exclusive with them (and virtually double that 300% to 600%).  I suspect most here would do it in a heartbeat).

57
iStockPhoto.com / Re: iStock to start Subscription packages.
« on: April 04, 2008, 15:46 »
The amount of calculations for an entire day of activity on istock in linear passes through the database is insignificant next to just 10 seconds of a modern 3D video game where literally millions of similar calculations are made (just to refresh the pixels at 30 fps takes at least 30 million calculations per second) across multiple databases each have to be continuously updated as well.

The difference between the two can be quite dramatic.  Calculations done on a 3D video game are basically all done on the CPU (or GPU) which is lightning fast, whereas database calculations usually require multiple disk reads which are orders of magnitude slower.

While speed is always relevant, and the database update for subs will probably only take a few minutes, updating a database will still look like slow-motion when compared to calculations done on a CPU.

I apologize for the tech-speak.

Carry on...

Oh I know that, though I was responding to the fact that the calcs surely won't crash the servers, the loading and subsequent writing of the data is what takes time, once the data is loaded though the calculation part of the process is minor, a cpu can handle a ridiculously huge database's worth of calcs very rapidly if it has an efficient data pipeline to send and receive the calculated data.  Calculating is what computers do best.

58
iStockPhoto.com / Re: iStock to start Subscription packages.
« on: April 04, 2008, 14:21 »
Istock has no need to screw contributers to gouge more money from them, it does not make business sense, as the contributers are customers as well and vital to the operation of their business. 

....istock makes money in the end, and it helps the contributers as well and IMO is very attractive. 

....
The end of the day calculations would not crash their servers, in fact quite the opposite, it is more efficient. 
....
What business are you in? Of course it makes business sense. This is a corporation, the bottom line and margins are all that matter. Especially when you're being taken over by a private fund. I'll eat my shoe if at the end of the day contributors aren't making less and buyer's aren't getting less for the dollar (with iStock pocketing the difference on both ends).

Also please explain how this wouldn't be in increase in load on the servers. You're going from a simple per transaction dual entry into the database to a complicated calculation based on how many downloads by that client had been carried out in the day. Think about it. There will be a lot more queries and inserts necessary per transaction than before. Think about all the table locking issues in this parallel system that doesn't have downtime to only do the calculations. I'd be shocked if iStock's system can handle this.

As a matrix based calculation (which all database calculations are (object coding)) the calculations are no more difficult.  There would be no modification to the primary database necessary, instead of updating all contributer file earnings with each database refresh, just the normal earnings would be.  At the end of the day a separate database runs through all the daily sub sales and determines the daily sub sales credits due each file, which is then inserted into the primary database in 1 pass, then the contributer database is refreshed as normal.

The lag time would be minimal.  Modern computers can blaze through millions of matrix calculations each second.

The amount of calculations for an entire day of activity on istock in linear passes through the database is insignificant next to just 10 seconds of a modern 3D video game where literally millions of similar calculations are made (just to refresh the pixels at 30 fps takes at least 30 million calculations per second) across multiple databases each have to be continuously updated as well.

The buisiness concepts that I am talking about hold true throughout all industries.  We are their employees.  Istock holds its position because it only allows the best from form their employees and a not insignificant percent of their employees work can only be found there.  The primary way they attract customers is not because they are the cheapest, it is because they are the best and can offer products that nobody else can.  If all of a sudden they anger their employees, they run the risk of losing their exclusives, which gives them the products that nobody else has.  If all of their exclusive all of a sudden drop their exclusivity and sign up with DT, all of the attraction of IS vs. DT is gone.  In this case "how do we pay our employees the least" vs. "how do we attract more buyers" are directly conflicting goals, hurting your contributers directly hurts their ability to attract more customers unless they become a bargain basement shop and sell at the cheapest prices around.  In the end nothing helps them gain total market dominance more than attracting more exclusives, which hurts their competition just as much as it helps them (since exclusives tend to be closer to the cream of the crop than the bottom fringe).  The only way to attract more exclusives is to show them the money, not devalue their work.

 


59
Dreamstime.com / Re: Low color profile?
« on: April 04, 2008, 11:05 »
I have L-lenses. So I will be doing color adjustments on the computer, if I understood waldo correctly.
Sorry if I came across as directing that at you, I just wanted to complete the list of the 4 different ways to that saturation is affected for a given scene, the glass, in-camera settings, RAW settings, and general photo editing software. (your list was missing a very important point IMO)

If you shoot in .jpeg, in-camera settings are vital to the final product.

If you shoot in RAW, the data captured in the RAW file itself is what you get from the glass, camera settings are recorded as metadata and passed into the RAW editor (Canon's RAW program is a mirror of the camera settings). 

The RAW programs color adjustments are made before the image is assembled into a standard RGB image (or if none are done it just uses the in camera settings, if there were any), when chromanance and luminance are still separate and discrete.  If any noise reduction is used in the RAW editor, this is applied as the image is assembled, generally superior to applying noise reduction after the image is assembled (especially for chromanance noise) Hence you can boost the saturation and filter the noise resulting from the boost before it is combined with the luminosity. 

The RAW editor takes the place of the portion of the camera's processor that assembles the image, adjusting settings prior to image assembly yields superior results in almost all cases, this is why in camera adjustments are vital for .jpeg shooters, it is done prior to the initial noise reduction (noise reduction is almost always applied to a .jepg in-camera).

Complete photo editing software though has it's advantages as well.  RAW programs and camera settings lack features.  You can fine tune individual color channels (and derivatives) much moreso in editing software.  And with the full PS you can convert to LAB mode which mimics a RAW file in structure (separating Lum and Chrom), but have the full features of the software at your disposal, including adjusting the tone curve of the applied saturation (adjusting the curve for half of a Chr channel), point or area saturation (as opposed to global changes, using masked layers), and individual saturation channel control, features lacking in a RAW editor or camera.

For every image the best means of boosting color are different, it really depends on the initial capture, the desired end product, and the means that you have.  If a global single slider is the best way to go, nothing beats the RAW editor (especially since exposure can be tuned with the saturation).  If fine tuning would yield superior results, even if a little noisier (and the extra time spent is justified in the results, not always the case for little minor differences), image editing software is the way to go.  If editing time is at a premium or you shoot in .jpeg, in camera is the way to go.

60
iStockPhoto.com / Re: iStock to start Subscription packages.
« on: April 04, 2008, 10:11 »
I think Hatman hit the model on the head.  Istock especially wants 3 things IMO, screwing contributers on individual sales is not one of them (it is bad business logic).

1) Retain exclusives, it is one of the primary things that sets them apart from other sites and solidifies their overall collection as the best.

2) Gain new exclusives by pilfering from other sites, SS especially.

3) Make themselves more attractive to buyers.  Same as disambiguation, this attracts buyers.

Consider why the sub model is touted to have a different customer base, though only partially true, there is truth to it.  For example, designer A is a freelance designer and buyer.  The sub model doesn't help him too much.  Designer B is part of a 5 man team at a small company.  The sub model helps him quite a bit. 

Forecasting, and efficient use of time are very important to businesses as well as accounting means for determining price structure.  As is right now when per photo purchases are made by the design firm, it has to accounted to an individual project as part of the project price.  Initial cost estimating for the project is more difficult somewhat as well as the project cost tracking.  Anything that takes more time raises the cost of the image to the firm more than simply the purchase price.  Accounting and estimating time is not cheap.  Then also consider the photo acquisition process.  Per photo sales transactions take longer to complete for the buyer than simply downloading on a subscription plan.  Again, time is money, and the downloader's time is worth more than the person that could be doing the paying.

Consider what happens in a with a subscription model.  The lowest paid person in the building, the administrative assistant, take the time each month to renew the subscription.  Single point source on the outgoing money flow.  For accounting purposes the subscription (and thus all images used) are considered business overhead.  No photo has to be accountable to an individual project, and # of photos needed need not be estimated for project pricing.  Each project is charged the standard company overhead, which the subscription is part of.  Any member of the design team can log into the company's account and download any image they want, no time has to be spent concluding a money transaction, and the designer no longer is spending any money which has to be accounted for.  This is a big time savings internally for a company which streamlines operations for them, business management 101.

Istock has no need to screw contributers to gouge more money from them, it does not make business sense, as the contributers are customers as well and vital to the operation of their business.  Istock can win on two fronts, days when the sub isn't used, and attracting more customers that otherwise wouldn't use them because the individual sales model is not an efficient use of their company's resources.

If they price the sub model correctly, a token amount less than the per photo prices to attract buyers (remember the main benefits are not the cheaper per photo prices to the customer, the reduction in acquisition and accounting manpower required is, the unused credits are insignificant compared to time savings across the board), yet enough that Istock still makes a daily profit if all credits are used every day, it is a step in the right direction for them.

Unlike SS, pricing it so there is a fixed daily revenue (for them) benefits them quite a bit.  They can forecast (which SS cannot do with any real accuracy), not necessarily forecast profit, but they could forecast overhead revenue.  One easy way to price it would be to have the company overhead percentage as Istocks daily take.  They make no profit if every customer uses their subscription every day.  This would mean that unused days are Istock's profit intake, and the photographers are given the amount over the overhead on days the account is used.  Istock makes money in the end, and it helps the contributers as well and IMO is very attractive. 

Consider a day that a company with the largest available subscription downloads an XS from you as their only download of the day.  IS gets their cut so they are happy, the photographer sees a few bucks as payment for an XS.  Immediately their mind would be changed about IS's model and many more people would consider switching to exclusive as pricing is now fair, the photographers get their fair cut of the subscription, not a small amount as price fixed by an underpriced subscription model (hopefully IS realizes that the time savings to the customer and not the per photo $$ savings is the attraction of the subscription model, so sees no need to underprice it, that the $$ is not the primary attraction of the model).

The end of the day calculations would not crash their servers, in fact quite the opposite, it is more efficient.  Real time polling and updating databases take a lot of processing effort, the calculations contained within the constant real time update are insignificant compared to the resources expended on polling and the actual updating.  An end of the night calc at off peak times only has one large data poll across the database and one large update, the calculations would not overly tax the resources (actually it could be piped to another processor separate for the primary server processors to calculate, then the calculated data resent back to the primary servers).  In fact there actually is very little updating of anything in real time on any site, the active polling required to maintain real time updating is an incredible server strain, everything is just updated frequently enough that it gives the impression of real time updating.

It is entirely possible that their model was well thought out (which things at IS appear to be) and takes all of photographers concerns into account, and in the end the way they design their model is revolutionary in this it is beneficial to the photographer, that their intentions are actually to help the photographer and not screw them, even if every single customer migrated to their sub model.

61
Adobe and Microsoft are both figuring out that they are in trouble if they don't change their ways.  As computers grow up and each successive generation is more and more computer savvy they are running into this dilemma:

The vast majority of programmers (especially younger generations) lump software into 3 main categories: computer necessary, income generating, and entertainment.  And they strongly feel that:

Computer necessary software should be free at the consumer level (or very marginally priced)(different for the buisiness level).  This includes the OS, drivers, burning programs, productivity software, browsers, email, basically everything necessary for normal computer operation, or consumer level apps of business software.

Income generating software is a business expense for companies and this is where software companies should be making their money.  This includes the OS, productivity software, email, and specialized software (The full version of Photoshop is included here).

Entertainment software should be free except for the engine.  This is the most well developed of all (no coincidence that a decent % of the best programmers are game makers and hence they have pricing figured out).  They sell you the game engine, but encourage free modding of the game to add to it, expansion packs are tweaks to the game engine itself.  It is entirely possible to greatly expand any popular game for free with readily available mods, it is encouraged as it makes the game engine more popular.

What this means is that there are a lot of highly skilled programmers, some of the best, that are willing to work as a community to offer free software to the public for personal use to take down the companies that gouge computer users.  Microsoft and Adobe are targets #1 and #2.

Photoshop has the growing Gimp problem, and all of Microsoft's products and Adobe's Acrobat have readily available free (open source) competition that often times is better that Microsoft or Adobe's products (a social network of many of the best programmers has no problem coming up with something better over time).

Vista and XP compete with Linux
MS Office competes against Open Office
IE competes against Firefox
Outlook and Lotus' Notes competes against Thunderbird
Acrobat competes against CutePDF and many others.

At first this was just a minor thorn in the big boys sides, but younger generations are far more computer savvy (find a teenager that can't readily write HTML code), and they think like the programmers, and not only prefer to use the free software, but contribute as well.  Most feel that the big boys purposely write buggy software to force upgrades in the future (Vista's big thing is security, closing the OS-IE hole that FF closed with XP).

Firefox was the breaking point, when it was introduced it was clearly superior to IE, and for most people it still is to this day.

But Open Office can do virtually everything that MS Office can (especially for consumer level users), and it has a snappier, nicer interface (which can also be modded).

Good luck crashing a Linux system, the "blue screen of death" is virtually unheard of with Linux users, and performance does not decline over time like is does with windows (though XP was by far the most stable OS Microsoft introduced, if XP would have been like ME, Linux would probably be winning right now).

With how much MS and Adobe have been defeated by free software, especially among younger generations (who are growing up), they needed to do something to stem the tide against their big money stuff.

MS solidified their hold on the OS market by buying up a bunch of the best game makers, making sure that the best games are only for Microsoft OS's and difficult to port to Linux, if they lost the gamers they would be in trouble (cascading effect since for the most part gamers decide the fate of the computer industry).

IE is a lost cause, there is no stopping Firefox

The legislation forcing companies to maintain email records for a number of years kept Thunderbird out of business computers, giving a big boost to Lotus's Notes, though IBM (Lotus) is an active open source contributer and is integrating Open Office in Notes.

Acrobat is dead as consumer level software (it was the first one attacked), though it is still going strong in the business market.

Online office is IMO an attempt to defeat Open Office, as many consumers aren't willing to shell out the $200 necessary to get Word and Excel, especially when they can get a free program that can do everything they need.

Digicams are becoming more and more popular, and the public is beginning to realize that image editing software is a necessary thing, and the open source community has create The Gimp.  Adobe is attempting to stop that from seriously eating into PS by offering a virtually free version of the software for consumers, while moving the full version more solidly into the professional arena (and further classifying it not as consumer level software, thus easily justifying cranking up the price).  As more and more people eschew paying for software and move towards software like The Gimp, the program will grow stronger faster and faster and could eventually overtake PS, something that would be very bad for Adobe.  Preventing the growth of the Gimp IMO is the primary reason for online PS (not stealing peoples photos), just as stopping the growth of Open Office is MS's true intention for the online Office release. 

62
Well 0 for 2 there, whereas got in on the first try at SS and had to reupload one after removing a touch of fringing that I missed (no other site caught it) at IS, approved 2 hours after the rejection notice though. 

First try I submitted only shots that were approved at both FT and DT...no go.

Second try I submitted only shots that were each approved at SS, IS and DT, and had each earned more than $5 in the last month...no go.


Of course all they say is they aren't looking for this type of work right now.

My submission included:
1 Isolation
1 Conceptual
1 Object studio shot (not isolated)
1 Architecture
1 Airplane (my hands down across the board bestseller)

63
StockXpert.com / Re: Everybody opted-in
« on: April 03, 2008, 10:33 »
Nothing gives an image long term sustainability quite like DL's.  Though you may lose out (in the $ per DL dept) giving away your image at penny prices to one particular consumer that would just as likely move on to some other similar image in lieu of buying yours for full credit prices (unless your image is very, very unique, there is almost always one similar that is good enough), you gain when two years down the road someone looking for a single image and willing to pay top prices for it finds it on the front page of their search as opposed to being buried several pages deep because it was never downloaded very much.  The search engine that orders the images for the customers doesn't care if your image averages .30/DL or 2.00/DL, all it cares about is the total number of downloads (or average rate over a time span) for either a best match sort or a download sort.  It is my experience, and readily checkable on sites with a DL sort, that the more an image is DL'ed, the more an image is DL'ed.  The # of DL's per image on page 1 of any DL sort far exceeds the images on all other pages simply because they are on page 1.  If you opt out and your image is similar to one that hasn't, chances are over time, the opted in one will be DL'ed more, get higher placement (for subs or not) be DL'ed more and so on, in the end drastically beating your opted out image not only in overall sales, but in single image sales as well simply because it is more highly place in the search engine.  The only way that I can ever see opting out to be good is if your images are so unique that there is no competition (that competition will create itself though if they are too good via copycats) or if you are specifically sought out by the majority of your buyers.

64
Dreamstime.com / Re: Low color profile?
« on: April 03, 2008, 07:14 »
Any in camera settings are usually passed into the raw editor, but not actually written to the file.  Saturation could be at full blast in the camera.  Open it in a raw editor and the saturation is at full blast, however the raw file still has the native saturation that the lens captures written to it, exif data records the in camera settings and applies them to the RAW file once it is opened in an editor.  This is why when a RAW is opened and saturation for example is set to high in camera, the RAW editor shows the saturation as being high, instead of at 0 (where PS sees it when it is set to high in camera when shooting .jpeg).

In camera settings are remembered, however they do not affect the pixels in the RAW file, in camera setting are simply instructions telling the RAW editor what to do with the file, something that can just as easily be done manually with greater results, hence most RAW shooters like to start zeroed out in everything, but it need not be that way.

65
Cool, new equipment always makes me giddy.  Shootin' the dogs indoors was one of the first things that I tested my 50mm with, given some window light it is fine, but with lamps, unless I'm using a high ISO (super rare) I can't HH the 50 indoors.  The 1.8 is an adjustment though, with my dogs I have to choose, eyes, or snout, at 1.8 I get one or the other, not both ('twood be easier if I had a Pug ;-)).

I was really, really, really torn between the 17-40 and the 10-22, eventually deciding on the 17-40 because I'm going to get a FF with my next camera purchase, I'm basically saving every penny made from MS sites for it.  It is kind of a race (knowing that a XT's shutter is good for about 50,000 clicks), which happens first, either save enough for the 5D replacement, or the camera gets past 45,000 clicks and I order a 5D.  It'll be close given the rate of income growth and projections of it (realistic) and the shooting rate that I'm maintaining.  At the pace I'm at right now (and have maintained all year), I'll be right at about 50000 shots at this time next year, it was hard to justify to myself getting a lens that would last me at most a year, at the same price that I could get the L which will seemingly last forever.  I do love the wide shots, but since my widest lens has been a 50 for as long as I've had my SLR, 17mm is plenty to keep me sated for the time being, and on a FF the 17-40 is basically the same lens as the 10-22, just a bit longer.

My next lens though, that will complete my collection is the 100mm f/2.8 macro.  After that all that is left is to begin upgrading the individual lenses (50mm and 70-300).

66
Adobe Stock / Re: Fotolia or IStock?
« on: April 02, 2008, 11:57 »
his first 5 perharps, he said because he has set the quality to lower when he travelled so as to get more shots on his compact flash card.
but when he's home, he set it to the highest next to last setting .

oh, his camera is 8 Mp , SLR the newer E series from Olympus.

any good advice for my uncle, other than forget BigStock?

Does the camera support RAW? I would assume that any shot taken on any camera in .jpeg that is not taken at the maximum quality settings that the camera supports would be rejected immediately, just a quick check of the exif data tells you that there will be artifact problems, an easy rejection for a reviewer, no need to even spend the time to look at the picture.  CF is cheap nowadays, $100 (US), if you look for deals, can at least get you the capacity to take 1000 shots in RAW, or 2000+ at minimum .jpeg compression (superfine on a Canon) on an 8 MP DLSR.

67
Off Topic / Re: Stupid things we do while shooting?
« on: April 02, 2008, 11:33 »
My camera has this darn habit of staying in the last ISO used, irregardless of mode.  Normally not an issue, in fact I've developed bad habits simply because I never change the ISO from 100, however...

My brother had a destination wedding and I had one of the two fancy cameras in the group.  I always shoot with my cam in manual, but the first night somebody picked up my cam, shifted into night portrait mode and took a shot.  Which of course kicked my camera into 800 iso, and my bad habits never checked it again the rest of the trip.  Boy that sucked when I downloaded all 4000 pictures that I took and realized that all but about 2-300 were at 800 iso.

68
Dreamstime.com / Re: Low color profile?
« on: April 02, 2008, 10:53 »
with Rebel Xti or Canon 40D what is better to do to make colors more vivid ?

1. to increase saturation via camera functions
2. to make images more vivid in LR, or CS, or software that came with the camera
3. to do both: camera and software adjustments

or option 4, the ideal (at least for real looking images):
Spend lots of $$ of L lenses with fantastic saturation and contrast before the light even strikes the sensor.  I didn't really believe there was that big of a difference until I got a 17-40.  Unless I'm doing B&W, I've never had a shot with my 50 or tele that couldn't use some saturation or contrast, usually a lot is needed, however with my 17-40, I occasionally have to reduce the contrast from the RAW file, and the saturation is almost nuclear as is, rarely are any adjustments necessary (especially greens, blues, and reds, the yellow can be a bit flat at times though).

Even with that though, those top sellers all must be right at the posterization point, wow what a lot of saturation, kinda ridiculous to my eyes.

I wonder though...does the posterization point shift higher when using better glass that is more highly saturated to begin with (ex all images given the exact same scene and lighting will posterize at +20 saturation irregardless of lens) or does it remain equal (ex same scene and lighting, dull glass can take +20 while the more highly saturated glass can only take +10, at roughly the same overall saturation for the posterization point)? 

I would assume that the better glass can take more simply because of the nature of signal amplification, that overamplification (and the inherent noise that is introduced) is the culprit of the posterization moreso than simply too much saturation.  If it isn't overamplification noise, though, it possibly could be that you begin to flatline parts of the image at the limit of the gamut (basically overblown color) which leads to the posterization?  Hmm... question of the day.

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Dreamstime.com / Re: Is it just me or DreamsTime is out?
« on: March 31, 2008, 14:18 »
I thought that it was just me...whew.  I was getting a message that the smartfilter considered it "online shopping" (in addition to the timeout message), and though that there was a chance that they started blocking it at work.

70
If you want a lens that will work good for a while, the kit replacement 18-55 IS is supposed to be pretty darn good, especially the price.  It surely is no L, but is also is way better than the old kit lens, and I've heard the street price is less than $200.00, not a bad deal for any lens, it at least is as good of a performer as the 17-85, but much cheaper, the price is low enough to justify a virtual "throwaway" when/if you upgrade to FF (or EF-S becomes obsolete).  The 50mm is definitely more versatile than it seems, to me zoom is kind of overrated, generally I use one end or the other, rarely do I ever use it somewhere in between, which means that a zoom is nothing more than 2 ultra slow primes in one package that never needs to be changed.  Adding an extension tube (which aren't that $$, about $100) can turn a 50mm into a decent macro lens too, and they would work on all lenses, giving every lens you own macro capability.

If you want a lens that will be with you forever, the 17-40L is a great lens.  I just got it not too long ago and love it, paired with a 50mm and a 70-300, my set basically covers all focal lengths pretty good (sans the superwide, but on a FF the 17-40 is a superwide).  At $600 it is the cheapest of all the good FF zoom lenses, if I am not still using it a decade from now I will be shocked.

71
Newbie Discussion / Re: Help, no sales :(
« on: March 29, 2008, 21:19 »
Though you make more than me and my pitiful little port, we do have very similar styles when it comes to "what picture do you  love.", at least I think so.  Lately my real personal faves of my own work have all been square crop, B&W, architectural abstracts, but I have basically two classes of shots, shots that I take because it is a darn cool picture, and shots that I have an advertising or general concept in mind with.  I'm still really working out the execution of those, but I have seen my work improve drastically in that area, but when it comes to shorts that I like that are just cool pictures, I still take as many of those as ever.  However I am not submitting all of those to stock sites, just the really premier ones.  Some day I would like to be known as that guy that makes the awesome architectural abstracts, nowadays I know that is where my eye works the best (though I can see the principles applied to other shot types easily, it just is intuitive to me with abstract architecture, it just comes so easy), I just need to shoot a lot and build my port in that area, but I am only introducing the best of the best to stock for those, but I also know that until that name is made and people seek out my work, I don't have too much of a market and have to take and upload shots of things that are more appealing to the market.  I hope to make my own market, but until that time comes I'm playing to what the market wants in general as well.

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I haven't hit a single destructive upload, but my acceptance ratio there for the most part sucks, worse than DT.  Every shot that is rejected is rejected for the exact same thing.  Blurriness.  Same files get accepted at IS, SS, DT, FT, but not at BigStock.  Thus far I have basically figured out that their reviewers have zero tolerance for any DOF effects, shot down 'em all, and they can't tell the difference between an unsharpened photo and a blurry one.  Seriously, my 17-40L does not take blurry pictures at infinite focus, an aperture of f/8, and a shutter speed of 1/250.  I could drink a couple of pots of coffee and still get tack sharp shots with those settings.  Oh well though, kinda rolls off, not like I'm missing out on the millions with those rejected photos (but it would be nice if they'd accept some of my better images, the rejected ones tend to also be my most popular elsewhere), they still accept a decent amount.  I am not changing my workflow to do something special for BigStock like creating a separate sharpened file, though, so I'll just have to live with the less than 100% acceptance.

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Shutterstock.com / Re: First payout at SS
« on: March 28, 2008, 13:57 »
Man congrats, very nice portfolio.  I'm exactly halfway to my first (well .10 over the edge) after 4 weeks and 1 day.  Easter sure killed my earnings though, it was looking great for the first two weeks then just died, though things have been improving over the last few days.

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Shutterstock.com / Re: 95,000 photographers....
« on: March 28, 2008, 08:43 »
I don't think that IS's restrictive uploading would work well for SS because of the differences in the way the sites work.  Unless they changed a lot about the search practices (both the engine and the culture of the customers) away from not favoring new images (something that their business model and customer base works well with), the levels of new images uploaded only serve to help their customers who get more variety to use their subscriptions on.  Of course tightening up standards on poor images (poor images though are different than low customer niche images, those are very good for attracting new buyers who aren't looking for typical smiling headset shots) so buyers aren't inundated, the best thing that they could do for their buyer customers (which would only help their photographer customers) IMHO is to come up with new and innovative means of serching through their images to run side by side with their traditional means to hopefully make it easier for customers to find what they are looking for easily.  IS has tried to do this, and though it is a pain to upload to them, I personally can find what I am looking for without much fluff/spam when I do searches on their database much easier than any other site.  In that sense the disambiguation is a very good thing.

IS's model OTOH works well with the upload limits.  I know what it does to me.  I don't go and upload everything there.  I first upload elsewhere and let a few different reviewers put eyes on it before uploading to IS, which has pretty much stopped me from uploading almost half my images to them, since I just don't feel that they are strong enough.  Their customers seek individual images much more than the general buyers at SS, by being more restrictive with quality than anybody else in the cliche categories, but allowing more in the low selling niche categories through (what I have found at least, they take my images that most other sites have rejected as not stock, and heck I get sales on them), they end up with a very broad high quality portfolio of images, less selection in many of the most popular categories than other sites, but what is there is the best, and more selection in the less popular categories than other sites, which makes their portfolio ideal for their buisiness model of catering to those that seek individual images.

I really think that FT is shooting themselves in the foot in the long run, they use the same basic buisiness model as IS but shoot down anything that is not stock in their opinion, yet let lesser images through in the cliche categories, they lack the depth of database the IS has and what they do have in the invidual categories is lower quality than what IS has, and it is a trend that will widen, as more and more niche images get shot down, cutomers that aren't looking for islolated apples will find IS to be a better place to find their images.

It seems though almost that SS and FT are trying to specialize somewhat, SS being the ultimate place to find vectors, backgrounds and textures, and FT being the ultimate to find isolated on white things.

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General Stock Discussion / Re: Nature that sells
« on: March 28, 2008, 03:19 »
http://microstockpix.com/forum/haze/haze.html


I always wondered why you work on curves here and not with the USM. Narrowing curves can amplify noise.
For changing color tones, I prefer adding a soft layer. By definition, that one is noiseless.

Well LAB is just a mode of course, not a technique. But LAB allows techniques that aren't possible in RGB like sharpening in the lightness channel only.

Just my 5 cents (I prefer Eurocents)



Thank you, hence it is accessed under the MODE menu and not adjustments or filter, and anything done in it requires the use of something else in the adjustment or filter menu.  Whether LAB color popping (which the haze technique is a subcategory of), impossible colors, adjusting the WB like the RAW editor does, mapping color variation, or luminosity sharpening, it allows things that aren't possible in the other modes, but it still is a mode.

To cut through haze like that (in lab) I just use the contrast. It is my understanding of contrast that it is exactly the same thing as the straight line curve that you are using, the width (slope) being adjusted by the contrast slider and midpoint adjusted by the brightness.  No?

I usually do it though by targeting the haze via masked layers (doing a global fix for the foreground, and a targeted layer for increasing distance), and contrasting the blue channel and slightly darkening (to exactly balance the bright shift to keep from changing the WB), and using a high radius USM on the channel.  Sometime I use the color balance.  Usually the atmosphere (haze) creates a lot of excess dark and mid blue, not enough light blue (very counterintutitive, but fix an airline window shot, you need more top end blue to make it look best), and the same thing with green but about 1/3rd to 1/2 of the amount as blue.

This darn American money just keeps getting worse by the day.

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