Anyone know of automated ways to check an image for defects? I know IS has at least once told me how to check an image in Photoshop for a specific defect... I wonder if they have tools or suite of tests that trigger red flags and if something similar is available to us.

Thanks for the exposure tips. I never do commercial stuff -- my real photography is for artwork, so the rules are different. Microstock is an attempt to learn something new.

I did neglect my light meter when I started to work digital, I will dust it off and put it back into action.

What I had been doing is exposing until the highlights burned out, and then reducing the exposure to bring them back in. I think more even lighting is going to be key.

Right now I use 3 light positions:
* strong side light, 3 strobes (450w/s total) behind an 8'x8' diffuser (about 30-40 degrees stage left from the model)
* Fill light, soft box fill (300w/s) (about 5 degrees left/right from strait on the model)
* background light on a boom, sometimes with a gel (150w/s) about 2 feet above the frame, about 2 feet from the background.

The above is comprised of a 600ws 4-strobe Novatron system, and a 300 ws mono-light.

My studio dimensions are 20x25 feet, really too small; making good even lighting a challenge. Ceiling is a generous 17 feet.

Thanks for all the feedback! Not sure I deserve "very good" but thanks anyway.

I don't think the D2Xs is particularly noisy, as Nikon's premier DSLR it better not be

I have often wondered about why anyone would pay for an up-sampled image, since they can just do that themselves -- upsampling adds no image data, and thus no value that I can see -- but that's a different topic.

With some luck I should be on SS when I try again in 30 days (or 60, 90 without as much luck!)