The Canon 75-300 (or the similar 90-300 which I had in the past) is a consumer grade zoom  and shows it. Stopped down it's sharp enough, but painful to use for stock as it has bad red/cyan chromatic aberration on high contrast edges. And sadly it's the type that is difficult to fix - not the sort that wide angle lenses have where the red and cyan wavelengths are focussed differently on the plane of the sensor so you can fix it by sliding the red and cyan channels back into the right position (that's how the RAW converters do it). But the sort where the red is focussed in front of the plane of focus and the cyan behind - many telephoto lenses have it slightly, but the cheap Canon zooms have it very badly). The more recent IS consumer zooms - the 70-300 EF IS and the 55-250IS are much much better lenses. (I can't remember the proper name for the two types of CA - I researched it when my 90-300 was producing CA that showed up in 6x4 prints and I couldn't remove it!)

The Sigma is supposed to be better than the Canon -it's not true macro, just a bit closer focussing than standard tele lenses. OK for flowers but not a bug chaser unless the bugs are a couple of inches long! I'd say the copy of the Sigma you have there is unacceptably soft - either misfocussing or a duff lens. (but hard to tell with the rather dark samples you have posted)

Quote from: stockastic on March 10, 2010, 15:17

Oh yeah, lawyers now control who can use which colors. Hadn't you heard?  John Deere owns green and yellow.  They invented those colors.

 I hope that on some future date we start to get court rulings on intellectual property, copyright etc. that make rational sense. It's totally nuts at this point.

I'm not sure what's nuts about being able to protect the use of your branding or intellectual property.  Should it be allowed for another tractor company to ride the reputation of JD by making green and yellow tractors?

Trademarking (it's trademarking not copyright) particular colours is an interesting and money making issue for lawyers. Cadbury's are pretty active trying to prevent other companies selling chocolate from using the "Cadbury purple" on their products (at least in Aus).  They lost their most recent case. They were trying to use the trade paractices act rather than IP legislation, arguing that people would be confused into mistaking other brands of chocolate for Cadbury's. Just shows the lengths that big companies will go to to protect their branding - even if they don't have a legal leg to stand on. You wouldn't want to be caught i teh cross fire of a dispute like that even if the law was on your side in the end.

Quote from: Susan S. on February 13, 2010, 00:12

Quote from: Suljo on February 12, 2010, 21:00

Canon converter is OK but its not for processing photos from same batch.
I must to say that I dont try Adobes DNG converter, in my first search I found that is DNG converter cost 90USD or something like that. Also I can see that it is available for PhotoshopElements which you can gave it with ultra bad scanner, but I am so suspicious how this DNG converter works with PhotoShopElements eg. multiple batches in first place.
If Elements cant handle that in this case they are simmilar as DNG converter from Canon itself!?

You can batch convert from DPP easily enough (apparently - I never have). Adobe's DNG converter is a free download  - you just batch convert all the RAW files into DNG format (it's just drag and drop on the Mac) and then continue on with your normal workflow in Photoshop CS2 using the DNG files rather than the RAW ones. Elements has a cut down version of Adobe's RAW converter, so you need to check whether or not it can do what you need it to. 

I know that Adobe with its DNG format wants to blackmail all producers of cameras to complain they own DGN format but...
Can you post me the link of that free DNG free installer for CS2...
If it is "free"as you say...

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4619

It's free. Why would I say  anything but the truth?  Adobe's non upgrade of the RAW plug in for old versions of Photoshop bugs me as much as the next person. I'm no Adobe apologist. I just use their products because they are the industry standard.

And as FD-Amateur says Canon's DPP works really well - although it won't recover blown highlights as well as Adobe Camera RAW it gives very good colour and cleaner shadow areas than Adobe's RAW converters  for all the Canon cameras I've tried it with.

Two possible free solutions - neither are brilliant but they help  a bit. Canon's DPP program is much better than it used to be, it's free and works on non-intel macs. Second get Adobe's DNG converter, (also works on non-intel macs) convert the RAW files to DNG and then use CS2 to process the RAW files. I used methods both with a new camera for a couple of months until I could afford CS4 and it works reasonably well as a stop gap.

Unfortunately  upgrading camera/computer/image processors have to be done in a co-ordinated fashon and yes it gets expensive.  (especially outside the US where the distribution agents for all of the above gouge prices far above what Americans have to pay)

Current istock rules are that for anything where it looks like a map was used to source an illustration image, all those fields quoted in the rejection have to be filled in in some way - certainly true for vector illustrations and also for renders. It's easy enough to do for NASA images assuming it's an acceptable source (my understanding is that most but not all of the NASA images are usable as a stock image source). These rules  have been in place for a while, but not for all time - eighteen months to two years ago, is my recollection of when the istock vector forums started seeing a lot of enquiries about rejections for map sources like this. I suspect there is further confusion as these NASA earth images are not always obviously maps - some might be considered photo of an object, some show countries more clearly, so I suspect some images get through with just the basic NASA acknowledgement, some get asked for the full map reference hoopla.

Quote

We're sorry, but we found the overall composition of this file lacking visual impact and therefore not suitable as stock. With the rapid growth of the iStock collection, we give valuable consideration to each file but unfortunately cannot accept all submissions. Please don't take it personally. This isn't necessarily a reflection of your skill, rather a decision by iStock to determine commercial applications for your illustration as royalty-free stock.

The same reason for both.

Istock seem to like to see strong drawing in their application files (although that sort of artistic image doesn't seem to sell terribly well once you start submitting!) All the examples on this thread are likely to be rejected by istock for applications. (and most  are likely to get rejected for the collection once application is passed). They just aren't sophisticated enough. You need to think about consistency of line, style (so not mixing up gradients  and flat shading in an unsubtle way) lighting (so that if you are shading the implied light source comes from a consistent direction, perspective (can be distorted for effect but must be handled consistently within any one drawing) and colour.

Once you are in it's easier to get the more commercial stock vectors accepted - although they seem to have got tougher on the not for stock rejections in the last year -and I haven't submitted much as I don't do commercial I just draw for pleasure and it doesn't sell. (although the few I do sell make lots of $$per sale as an exclusive)

Quote from: stardust on February 02, 2010, 20:40

Oh, Lisa, so you are going exclusive now. Missed that! So you made it to the other side of the decision fence.
Well good luck to you, I hope it works well.

It's not official yet, but it is definitely in the planning stages.  6 months is a long time and I might reconsider, but at the moment IS exclusivity looks like my best move. 

If you aren't interested in Thinkstock participation I'd think again. Istock are actively pushing buyers away from their main site towards thinkstock. I couldn't believe it when I happened upon the latest istock contact sheet.


http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=731

That approach is the ultimate stab in the backfor exclusives who aren't interested in low paying sub sites.

I tend to agree with you . Although cultural imperialism is a tricky issue. Given what happened to the museum pieces that were in Baghdad and some of the the remaining sculptures on the Parthenon, one might argue that the cultural imperialism has preserved things that otherwise might not have survived.  But that doesn't make it right in the first place.

Generally the only way to stay sane with intellectual property and stock is to  avoid obvious infringements, whether legally based or not, because the increase in blood pressure ranting about it isn't worth it. And neither is the risk of having a large legal bill in the even that you are close enough to being wrong to justify legal action being taken.  

Quote from: donding on February 02, 2010, 20:21

Even if you fixed the problems they say, they will more than likey be refused because of the required property release on these buildings and art work. The stock sites are really getting pretty strict with these type of photos.

A few questions regarding releases:  The Assyrian sculpture is about 4,000 years old so it is in the public domain. Is there any reason why I would still need a release for that?

Regarding the Carcassonne fortress:  I just checked and there are another 200+ photos from Carcassonne, and I'm sure that few, if any, of the photographers obtained releases.  Do I need a release for buildings that are clearly in the public domain?  

Thanks for your help

The Assyrian sculpture is I think in the British Museum - who do not allow commercial photography (I recently saw reference in the istock forums to a whole bunch  of British museum images being deactivated after the museum contacted istock.) While copyright/intellectual property over these ancient statues is dodgy, the museums etc can control what you do while you are on their premises - and if they don't allow commercial photography then you really need to abide by that, and most stock sites (if they recognise the images) will abide by the museum's wishes. Legally you might be able to argue that as they didn't have a large neon sign by the front door saying that commercial photography is not allowed, they can't imply it into the entry conditions as you can only find out by asking - but  it's going to be expensive to prove one way or another in court, as it's not cut and dried.  So istock generally won't allow statuary, obvious museum  shots etc unless the photographer provides a property release or some information that demonstrates it's in the public domain. (statuary in a public place over 100 years old is usually OK. Stuff obviously in a museum without a property release probably won't be, no matter how old it is).

Legally in most jurisdictions (US, UK, Australia, I don't know about continental Europe, parts of which do have rights to privacy which may apply), photographs of buildings taken from the public road are fair game.  However the owners of many well known buildings (eg the Sydney Opera house, London Eye) have over-active lawyers - and it's just not worth taking them on in an international court case that could cost thousands to prove the point that they are idiots, when at best you might earn a few hundred dollars for the image. Istock has an intellectual property wiki which details some of the objects/places that are problematic. Legally most of them haven't a leg to stand on (I'm told. I'm not a lawyer but I have a tame intellectual property specialist on hand).

As far as the photos are concerned they are looking (as I understand it - it's a while since I applied) for a variety of photos. I used an isolated on white still life, a landscape and a human figure (as far as I can recall). Make sure you show that you understand basic stock requirements -the application stuff doesn't require releases, but you don't want to do anything that clearly won't be acceptable; make sure it's low ISO and noise free, lighting that's istock acceptable - no on camera flash (even ring flashes for macro tend to have too harsh shadows unless you are careful), avoid images with either blocked out harsh shadows or clipped bright highlights.

Good luck!


 

Can't tell at that size - istock will inspect at 100 per cent view. My guess is that the lighting isn't quite there - shadows a little too dark, midtones not quite bright enough, specular highlights a bit too hot and unless that's a cream table cloth, the white balance is a bit off (but i'm not on my callibrated graphics monitor so I might be a bit off in those comments!).

The crop is a bit neither one thing nor the other in my view- it's a bit too close to the edge of the roast on the left hand side - either crop it off completely or make a clear deliberate crop further over. Plain white crockery seems to sell better for food (and you can have intellectual property issues using patterned high end crockery)

Food photography is challenging  - but seems to sell OK on istock if you can get the lighting right (the light and airy high key look seems to sell better as far as I can see rather than dark and traditional)

Quote from: Susan S. on June 17, 2009, 22:46

Both....

but I use the 85 1.8 much more than the 70-20f4, as the latter isn't fast enough for indoor sport/dance/theatre, which is where I use it most. The  85 has paid for itself twice over with a single image on istock that I couldn't have taken with any other lens (except the 85 1.2L - but it wouldn't have paid for that!).

If you do outdoor sport, outdoor candid portrait, closeup detail shots, the 70-200f4 is a useful versatile lens - and in a large indoor space with studio lighting is excellent. But I don't do that stuff so often.

Is that this one:

http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-3704781-youth-orchestra.php

that's the one

So you think there's no possibility that those who believe that even the modified exclusive plan sucks have already opted out, and have spoken in that way, rather than ranting further on the forum about it?

That's my position. I've said I don't like the original changes, said it's a lousy business choice in the original threads - and for what it's worth I think as far as Getty is concerned this one is even worse, because of what it does to independent contributors - it makes it very difficult for the independents who are prolific shooters to get their ports up in large volumes on the Gety owned subs site- and it's that sort of continuing volume of new stufff that  subs sites need to get people to keep on coming back and renewing their subscriptions. totally wierd. For exclusives it means less competition on photos.com/JUI so subs sales of their underperforming stuff may go better there- but it makes competition between istock itself and the subs much more likely as there will be more overlap betwen the two sites and much more co-identification so istock itself it more likely to lose sales. All in all very very strange marketing. Let alone the issues about treatment of suppliers.

But there's no point rehashing things on the istock forums again. I've said my piece multiple times and been ignored.   Nothing I can do except opt out.

I'm in a state of shock reading through the iStock forum thread...

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=87899&page=11

Question by Susan_Stewart:

I'm going to shout again

WHAT ABOUT VECTORS. Are you going to sell 15 credit vectors for three cents.?


Answer by Sylvanworks:
That would be up to the individual contributor.



Oh my goodness.  I am at a loss for words.  I'm starting to wonder why any of us bother with microstock at all anymore. 

Yeah that answer kind of gobsmacked me. I'm not often lost for words, but!