Hi all,

I'm brand spankin new to this site.  I should have found you before I started attempting SS submissions :-(

Can any of you offer advice about my first attempt submissions?  Maybe a summary of tricks?  for example... I heard that submitting the shots smaller increases chances of them missing noise.....

I just got rejected my 3rd time... getting frustrated but I will keep trying. 

My system:

I shoot with a D70s and mostly with my 18-200 Nikon lens.  I open my images in bridge, wean out the obvious bad stuff... then I open the potentials in camera raw... I adjust exposure, white balance and saturation here.  i also delete any other obvious ones at this stage.  Once I've adjusted my batch, I then process them all to jpeg.  At this stage I apply a light noise filter (noise ninja) and sharpen it a bit using the unsharpen filter.  I delete any last ones that might have too much noise to fix.

Anyone see any problems with this?  Could I do something extra or less in order to avoid getting rejected by SS?

Thanks for your time and help.

Regards,

Nelson Cardoso

Nelson, I agree with berryspun; nowadays I find myself using a tripod for almost every photo, even on a sunny day at the beach.  Results are always just that little bit sharper, even at 1:250th F11 on a sunny beach.

Your D70s is a noisy camera, and even noisier if you shoot RAW.  Don't even bother.  Turn down all the camera processing algorithms to 'zero', ie sharpening, saturation etc and go out and shoot a few jpegs and RAWs and compare the results.

With my D200 I shoot only jpegs.  I've been through the RAW stage.  So long as I can get exposure spot on, my jpeg results are as good if not better than RAW.  I never use noise reduction, ever.

Also, watch out for that zoom lens.  Try using a standard 50mm and compare it with that zoom.  I use a 60mm micro for 70% of my shots, whether macro, medium or even portraits.  My next lens will be the 35mm F2 or even one of the old 35mm F1.4 if I can find a good one.

If you keep everything simple the results improve.  Good lens, tripod, zero settings, correct exposure.

I'm not sure if I get it right, but do you upload 10 photos from one session?

May be you should try to upload photos from various subjects, like 2 landscapes, 2 isolated objects, and so on...

I believe that SS tries to "evaluate" your potential so upload accordingly!

Keep on trying, you won't regret it!

Claude