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Messages - Striker77s
101
« on: June 18, 2006, 08:07 »
Wow that is harsh. Hopefully you are able to get it resolved. Please keep us updated.
Mark
102
« on: June 15, 2006, 07:36 »
Congrats on the new baby. My wife is due in 3 weeks.
Mark
103
« on: June 09, 2006, 11:34 »
As of 2 minutes ago I'm the newest member of Shutterstock.  I took the time to actually pick some good images and all 10 were accepted. I was a little arrogant on my first attempt and didn't puch much effort into it and only 6 out 10 were accepted. Glad to here you were accepted Irchiro Mark
104
« on: June 08, 2006, 09:40 »
This past week has been of my best weeks at Fotolia. It still isn't awesome but better than the past.
Mark
105
« on: June 07, 2006, 10:17 »
It is fuzzy of course on how many similiar images are too many. 4 or 5 shots at different composers is no big deal. So yes I think it is a little nit picky. At Alamy they had no similiar policies so they would literally get 50 images that were very similar. It was silly and I'm sure it was starting to turn off buyers so they had to implement a new rule to try and limit it.
Mark
106
« on: June 07, 2006, 09:35 »
Well, why don't you pick only a few of your best ones. The point isn't to beat the system but to try and give them what they want. They probably don't want to have to pick the best ones because it takes to much time and the photographer will probably disagree on which ones are the best. So they are probably trying to send a message to try and get you to pick the best ones only. I think it is a reasonable request. When a buyer is looking for an image and he gets 50 images of something he doesn't need of the same thing in slightly different composers it begins to turn him off. It makes searching for the right image much harder. Microstocks aren't trying to be mean they are trying to keep the buyers and dont' want them to get annoyed with their site. Alamy struggles with this to.
Mark
107
« on: June 06, 2006, 08:45 »
Things will go up and down at all stock sites. I have 178 images with StockXpert and I get about 2 downloads a week. With 90 images you should expect around 1 download a week.
Mark
108
« on: June 05, 2006, 18:33 »
I have never received a request for an ID for a model. That is definitely odd.
Mark
109
« on: June 05, 2006, 13:20 »
I looked at several different releases on all the major stock websites. I took the clauses that I liked and felt appropriate for me and created my own generic one. I have two releases, one for adults and the other for minors. I have the model sign the generic one and I haven't had any problem with any of the websites rejecting my release. The only logo on my release is my own.
Mark
110
« on: May 31, 2006, 23:59 »
Here we go again. My numbers tend to fluctuate quite a bit. Of course I only have about 200 images out there.
BigStockPhoto 10%
Dreamstime 21%
Featurepics 6%
Fotolia 11%
iStockPhoto 39%
StockXpert 13%
I dropped 123rf as it wasn't producing enough to make it worth it. And I can now re-submitting to shutterstock.
Mark
111
« on: May 31, 2006, 16:32 »
I've had no problems with focusing with Sigma's EX series. The only complaint I have is that the 24-70 EX lens doesn't use HSM focusing. Other than that they are great. It is a huge step in quality from Sigma's amateur series and their EX series, especially when it comes to focusing.
Mark
112
« on: May 31, 2006, 13:17 »
I've owned the Sigma 70-300 F4-5.6 APO DG Macro lens. It is as pixelbrat suggested. It was sharp when in focused but I missed the focus quite often with my Canon 10D. Having said that I love Sigma's EX glass. I've used Canon glass but I found that Sigma's pro series (EX series) is excellent and is usually half the price with only very slight inferiority to Canon's pro L glass. If you can live with some focusing issues at times the Sigma amateur series isn't that bad. But if you can afford it try Sigma's EX series. I have the following
20-70 f2.8 EX
12-24 EX HSM
70-200 f2.8 EX HSM
Unfortunately with a $200 price range you will have to compromise some where. Not to worry. I made the Sigma 70-300 work until I saved enough pennies to get the 70-200 EX. Good luck.
Mark
113
« on: May 24, 2006, 19:22 »
Alamy does it just to control the jpg algorithm. They sell jpgs to their customers. What they didn't do in the past was trust that its photographers would not use a bad jpg algorithm or use high compression. They are now realizing that uploading is the wave of the future and are forced to accept jpgs and hope its photographers take care when converting their images to jpgs.
I agree that SS offering TIFFs from jpgs is silly non-sense.
Mark
114
« on: May 24, 2006, 13:58 »
A forum without opinions. Come on. That's like suggesting the world is going to stop spinning. Show us your pictures if you dare. 
115
« on: May 23, 2006, 13:47 »
I'm sure you got the same newsletter I got, but another interesting note is that they plan on not accepting CD/DVDs anymore. So everyone will have to submit online. Since it will be their only submission method I'm sure they will take the time to make it as easy as possible. That will also mean they will probably change their quality control method. It used to be they would spot check your DVD, but with uploading enable I can't imagine the same system working. People will tend to upload in much smaller batches more fequently. I'm extremely curious as to how they are going to implement it.
Mark
116
« on: May 17, 2006, 17:29 »
I have no intention of abandoning FeaturePics, but I was wondering if others were seeing the same thing I was. I really like their business model and am definitely rooting for them.
Mark
117
« on: May 17, 2006, 11:57 »
I was extremely excited about Featurepics in the beginning. I was getting consistent sales at a lower volume but with the high payout it was one of my best incomes. For the past 6 weeks it has just been almost dead for me. I'm hardly getting any income from it. I assume it is because they are attracting a lot more photographers and their sales aren't rising with the increase in new images.
How is everyone else doing?
Mark
118
« on: May 17, 2006, 10:00 »
I had over 200 pictures but recently pulled them all. They have a $100 payout minimum and I was creeping along. It would have taken 4 years to get a payout with 200 pics. I didn't think it was worth it so I closed my account. I'm glad you are finding them usefull for you.
Mark
119
« on: May 13, 2006, 21:06 »
Yes, I will have a 1,000 sqft unfinished basement. Lots of room to play with. Right now I take over a bedroom or some unused place in the house for a day and then take it down at night. I don't shoot very much with it because of all of the setup and take down time. After I finish my home I will be able to leave it up permanently. But that is at least 9 months away.
Mark
120
« on: May 13, 2006, 14:23 »
I'm a nuclear engineer at a US national lab. I'm in the nuclear nonproliferation business. I have no intention of quiting my job, as I love what I do. Plus, I think it makes a good difference in the world. I love photography and I want to keep it that way. If I were to go full time, I think I would get burned out with it. I'm shooting just enough to sustain my hobby. Although that is about to go away, I just got approved to build my own home. I will be spending every moment working with subcontractors and doing sweat equity. So unfortunately I will have to shelve photography for a while, but in the end I will have my own studio. Yeah.
Mark
121
« on: May 10, 2006, 18:10 »
Good story.
Mark
123
« on: May 10, 2006, 10:18 »
The network drives are nice and independent of your OS. The only problem is their price. They usually run about $1,000 for a low end one. You can get two drives for $100 each and a hardware mirror controller for $40. So you can have a hardware mirrored system and external drive for $240. One thing you could do with a network drive is if you have a wireless lan you could stick it in a neigboring building and have it work seemlessly. Of course fire is still a problem. If two buildings are next to each other there is the possibility of the fire spreading from one to the other. A media fire proof safe sounds better to me.
Mark
124
« on: May 10, 2006, 09:47 »
Oh you opened up a whole new can of worms leaf. Mirrored drives are as you thought, two hard drives that are an exact copy. If you delete it on one you delete it on the other, if you get a virus on one you get a virus on the other. The only thing it protects against is hard drive failure. If one drives fails you can boot up to the other with out a hitch and be on your way. The advantage is it is real time. Meaning if you backup your data everynight and your drives fails in the middle of the day, you lost a half day of work. With a mirrored drive you don't loose a thing. But GeoPappas mentioned that he has a second external drive. This will protect him against accidental deletions and viruses. He has a great setup. There are two kinds of mirroring hardware mirroring and software mirroring. When you mirror drives by software it does degrade performance and it doesn't always work. From my experience I wouldn't even bother. Then there is hardware mirroring. That is where on the hard drive controller it mirrors the data automatically and you will see no performance issues. It is much more reliable to. The OS has no idea that it even exists. Now if you want to get into raid that is a whole other issue. I missed the conversation on blu-ray but as you mentioned they developed a new coating for it. It is quite impressive and that is one of the many reason besides capacity that I want it to when to war. But the only reason I use media is for fire protection. I don't have a media protected safe so I have to use media and take it off site. Otherwise I would stick with drives only, and I think USB2 is going to be around for a long time. And when it changes I'm sure it will be really easy to transfer it to the new hard drive system. Mark
125
« on: May 09, 2006, 12:18 »
Oh yes, I've been hoping that Blu-Ray wins the format war. When you have 80 GB of pictures being able to burn two Blu-Ray disks is so much more appealing than 20 standard DVDs. I can't even imagine burning CDs. DVDs are supposed to last around 100 years as shown by aging simulations, but they are only simulations. DVD media varies drastically just like CDs. Most people buy the cheapest disks around and one of the major problems is reliability and longevity. The cheap disks will last a around 3 years which is fine for 90% of all uses. Here is a site you can read http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/specsformats/CDDVDlongevity.phpAs the link mentions, they usually only rate the dye. Which does probably last around 100 years. The problem is the disk itself begins to degrade or delaminate and becomes ruined long before the dye does. That is completely dependent upon the manufacturing technique used and how you handle them. From a practical stand point, do you really think you'll be using DVD in 50 years or even 10 years, I seriously doubt it. Look back tens years and see how backup has changed. You can assume similiar improvements will continue to be made. One being on the horizon, blue-ray vs HD-DVD. In my point of view as long as I think it will last 5 years, I'm happy with it. Because more than likely I will have changed my method by then and have it backed up on a different media. Mark
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