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Messages - f9photos

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52
Cameras / Lenses / Re: $50 Insurance saved me $2,400
« on: August 03, 2019, 05:22 »
Well, if you a getting your lens hit by stones from speeding cars, then it is wise to protect your lens with a filter.

Otherwise a lens hood will suffice. For 10+ years of travel photography I've had a scratch only once - not sure how, but I believe it happened when a small stone got between lens and lens cap.

53
Cameras / Lenses / Re: $50 Insurance saved me $2,400
« on: July 30, 2019, 14:08 »
Were you using a lens hood?

54
I downloaded the demo version yesterday and was disappointed. No real improvement in speed nor quality using it on Davinci Resolve 15 Studio. The Flickr and Noise reduction work quite well and I would say are faster than Neat Video 5. But I have to say that I also did not dig enough to see if I could improve results but speed wise it is quite slow.
I have an i7 8700 32gb Ram and Nvidia GTX 1070. with SSD disks
Interesting...
I have not tried with DVR, I use it with After Effects and Premiere Pro.
I have a computer with similar specs to yours and I have no speed issues at all
I believe Davinci Resolve noise reduction is good enough on its own (it well worth the extra $300 that you pay for full paid version of DVR), so NeatVideo doesn't really shine  in comparison (though it is a kind of hack - you can use a free version of Resolve and buy NeatVideo for noise reduction, and save $200).

On the other hand all Adobe products have a lot of flaws and miss a lot of features so you have to buy plugins, panels and actions to make them functional.

For me Davinci Resolve NR does a great job. I shoot night videos like this  https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-1032129905-famous-greek-tourist-landmark---iconic-athens and they are accepted and sold.

55
Alamy.com / Re: Alamy reducing commission from 50% to 40%
« on: December 18, 2018, 18:11 »
we won! (almost  >:()

Quote
We recently sent an email regarding a change in the commission structure at Alamy where the commission contributors receive for direct sales will change from 50% to 40% in February 2019.



After careful review, and taking into consideration photographer feedback, we have come to the decision that images exclusive to Alamy will remain at 50%.

56
General Stock Discussion / Re: Onepixel is now open for business!
« on: November 07, 2018, 13:08 »
one more "pearl" from them:
Quote
Markets have changed and free sites are getting more and more downloads and are a threat to our business.

We think there is a long tail of customers who are using  free who can be happy to pay for top  images if it is reasonably priced and such people are many . This is who we target . Also we want to keep amount of contributors low in order to increase revenues for each of them . You will always keep your revenue with others, Onepixel will be a new revenue stream .
and for my business the threat is the agencies who are going to sell my work for less then others to customers who want free images, but agree to pay a negligible amount to license top images.

57
General Stock Discussion / Re: Onepixel is now open for business!
« on: November 07, 2018, 09:11 »
they are in a desperate need for contents, and has contacted me again.

Quote
I understand your time is precious, and we respect that. We made the upload really easy and fast, in few hours the work will be done.
Weare not offering an upfront payment, but are inviting you to join a very selected collection, where the profits will be shared among few Contributors only.
We are about to launch, it would be great to be able to display also your images. We gathered the very best of the Stock production.
and again, but this time this was Chad "THE CHAD" Bridwell who contacted me.

I asked if he was the one behind the Dollar Photo Club, this was the answer:
Quote
Yes  part of the team is very experienced people in that market. We all have learnt from our mistakes so it can only be better. Best artists are already on Onepixel, you will not regret it if you join.
I still don't understand the difference between Onepixel with 1$ for image and DPC with the same price.


58
Software / Re: editing software to start with stock footage
« on: October 30, 2018, 15:56 »
DaVinic Resolve is an amazing tool!
In free version you don't have Noise reduction and motion blur (and no 10-bit video which is less important).
But you need a good video card for it to work - at least 4Gb of video memory, better 6Gb and 8-11Gb to really enjoy editing.
When compared to After Effects DaVinci is much faster and offers better workflow.

59
they are in a desperate need for contents, and has contacted me again.

Quote
I understand your time is precious, and we respect that. We made the upload really easy and fast, in few hours the work will be done.
Weare not offering an upfront payment, but are inviting you to join a very selected collection, where the profits will be shared among few Contributors only.
We are about to launch, it would be great to be able to display also your images. We gathered the very best of the Stock production.

60
Adobe Stock / Re: Inaccurate Data showing at FT
« on: October 04, 2018, 13:11 »
me too. :o
mine is absolutely the same  :o

61
Shutterstock.com / Re: Are reviewers for real or bots?
« on: September 13, 2018, 11:22 »
If I am not mistaken I have read something like the following (the name of the stock agency was not mentioned but I assume it was Shutterstock) by anonymous microstock reviewer:
before an image comes to a human reviewer (and what is interesting, reviewers work in pairs), it is assessed by some kind of AI that gives it one of the statuses: Rejected, Likely to be rejected, Likely to be accepted (I am not sure about the first one, but quite sure about the 2nd and 3rd). So it is possible that the reviwer doesn't even check the image if it has "Rejected" or "Likely to be rejected" status.

Sounds realistic, IMHO

I was thinking to start similar topic.

Few days ago i uploaded some Italian vineyard aerial shots, and two sunset shots i was almost sure they will reject (due to noise-grain issue) actually got accepted, but three other during the day got rejected due to "Noise / Artifacts / Pixelation -- Clip contains excessive noise, compression artifacts, pixelation a" reason. I find this very interesting... Ill post here those clips but from Fotolia, they all got accepted on all 6 agencies i upload to.

Accepted shots:
1
2

Rejected ones:
1 - marked this one as editorial
2

Is there a way to resubmit somehow, or i have to upload again on SS?
as far as I know, Tuscany shots from Val d'Orcia are not accepted as commercial RF on Shutterstock. Though not all intectors might be aware of it.

62
General Stock Discussion / Re: Selling Stock on Your Behalf
« on: September 11, 2018, 13:11 »
Would you consider acceptable for an agency to sell your stock content on all major platforms given that you only need to provide the content (no need for metadata, keywords and other details to be filled)?
this is called production agency: f-stop, imageSource, cultura creative, etc

63
Microstock News / Re: Onepixel stock new agency????Help
« on: August 31, 2018, 13:16 »
I was also contacted by OnePixel.
In such cases I ask for compensation for my time and effort. Like Veer, Depositphotos and some other new agencies did at the time.
If the reply is no (and it was such from Onepixel) than sorry, no time wasting on my side.

64
The letter from Storyblocks:

Quote
As you may be aware, we've experienced unusual levels of fraudulent activity on the Videoblocks Marketplace over the past three weeks which has caused a number of sales to be refunded. We absolutely hear and understand your concerns.

We know that seeing refunds isn't comforting by any means. Our team works hard to protect your content by mitigating any instances of fraud on the Marketplace. The refunds that you have been seeing are related to a string of fraudulent attacks that our team is actively working to block.

Here's what we're doing:
Continuing to improve our fraud detection and prevention over the years by automating risk alert systems and blocking accounts up front so this doesn't occur.
In response to the most recent incidents, we have made several enhancements to our fraud filter. In addition to automation, we will also be manually reviewing more transactions and delaying access to final files until those accounts are verified.
On new subscription signups, we are delaying the access to the Marketplace content itself for riskier members.
In the instance that you discover your content being used in an illegal manner online, we're here to help. Please don't hesitate to reach out to our team directly and we can assist you in issuing a takedown notice where possible.

Fraud is not something we take lightly. It violates the rights of our creators and everything you work for. We're with you and promise to continue pouring efforts into improving security and preventing these occurrences going forward. If you have specific questions, please contact the team at +1-888-802-7316 or send an email to [email protected]

65
The message (I got it 5 min ago) says nothing about the customer deleting the file:
"The customer no longer has access to the file and this sale has been removed from your sales history. "

For me it looks suspicious.

66
...I do travel photography ...

Your portfolio is gorgeous!
thank you!

What about the SilkyPix Raw File Converter EX supplied by Fuji (there's a new version).  Does anyone use that?
garbage. Too slow and clumsy. Though I haven't tried a new version yet.
Let's see what Fuji rolls out in November (they promise some kind of a new processor that uses camera attached to desktop  :o)

67
I switched from Canon 5d Mark II to Fuji X-T2 and had to switch to C1, because Lightroom demosaic of X-Trans files is subpar.

However I use C1 only for RAW conversion as catalog capability of C1 is terrible compared to lightroom (I do travel photography and have to manage large numbers of images)

68
friendly zombie (and Crestock must have died a long time time) - sounds almost like an oxymoron

69
Envato / Re: account deleted ? Not yet
« on: August 09, 2017, 13:09 »
Well, it makes me proud to know that some of my images shot 10 years ago with canon 400d one month after I started photography as a hobby still comply with your new quality guidelines! I was soooo good even at that time!  8)

But still it is surprising that thousands of my images shot with professional equipment after I became a professional photographer do not aligh with your new quality guidelines. And these images are the ones that earned me literally hundreds of thousands of dollars, not the first ones :)

Anyway, I am still not convinced.

70
Envato / Re: account deleted ? Not yet
« on: August 09, 2017, 08:15 »
All my images on photodune were deleted except for around 400 (which are moslty from first batch (and they are not really good, they are 10 years old) and a few last batches). And these 400 are definitely not the best sellers. So it looks like they have just deleted 89% or portfolio without choosing which images to delete and which ones to retain.

Also I saw in my earnings that (surprise, surprise) Austrailian tax cut is 30%.

So I have to upload my portfolio again to elements, spend time, attach releases. And with my 10+ years experience in microstock (and macrostock) industry I have serious doubts that these efforts will be repaid.

71
10 agencies x $100/month each = extra $1000 a month

72
Do EyeEm require exclusivity?

I suppose they have to if they sell through Getty

73
Being the featured photographer there doesn't push the sales (from my experience).
So blogging in a blog that nobody reads and cares about...  :o

DT is slowly dying, that is a fact.

74
Dreamstime.com / Re: Request for image
« on: June 26, 2015, 07:38 »
One more thing to consider:
the image can be bought by SR-EL1 license (you don't know it beforehand) which means 1 year exclusivity, and in this case you get much less than 50% of set price (my last such sale earned me $31.25, same as usual extended license). Nevertheless you have to delete the image from all agencies. Is it worth the trouble?

75
A lot of good photographers (including myself  :)) from countries where Paypal is not working (Russia (well, Russia only to some degree), Belarus, Ukraine) cannot use Symbiostock.

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