What is Photoshelter ?

Photoshelter is a website that offers photographer services to publish their works and porfolio online.  Comparable with SmugSmug or flickr. Photoshelter offers photographer to have their own website on a photoshelter domain.

Recently I received a voucher to try Photoshelter free for 1 month.

Starting up

Setting your website

At the first glance while logging in, Photoshelter is really user friendly.  You can start picking your subdomain name, theme and customizing your photography portfolio website.  Photoshelter offers quite some good looking customizable theme at your choice. I created this simple good looking website in less than 1 hour

 Start selling your photos

As I’ve already have a portfolio website, my real purpose to use Photoshelter is actually to sell my works. I immediately created price and license profile and assigned it to all my macro-stock photos. I’m able to define the prices of photos according to it’s sizes and license options.

SEO ?

One of the main marketing point by Photoshelter is the SEO functionality offered by Photoshelter. I believe the portfolio website on Photoshelter has been SEO optimized. However, do take note that you do not receive any advantage on photoshelter.com domain as you will be creating a subdomain on photoshelter,  eg   yourname.photoshelter.com which Google treats as a brand new domain name.

Its been almost 30 days since I’ve been using Photoshelter and I’ve only received a single public view on my 70 uploaded photos. I did not receive a single  sale on Photoshelter as my real purpose is only to sell photos on that website. It’s time to delete the account as 29.99 USD is quite pricey for a portfolio website 😛

Summary

Cons

• 29.99 USD standard account montly is pricey
• Photoshelter still takes maximum 10% comission for your sales  although you are paying them monthly fees

Pros

• User friendly
• Not much technical skills needed for non-IT literate photographer
• You can create your portfolio website within hours
• Integrated e commerce
• Forget all the webhosting technicality
• Emphasis on SEO

Flickr is definitely one of the best way to share photo online. I been using Flickr since around 2007 and the experience has been great. Flickr is used by many people including mom and dad , amateurs to professional photographers to display their work online. Currently Flickr supports photo and HD video.

Continue reading “Flickr Getty”

If you have been using images or photos downloaded directly from Internet,  it would not be legal to do so most of the time. There are plenty of sites which offers photo for different purpose use at an affordable price.

Here are some few sites where micro stock images can be purchased and a little information about them.

1. Shutterstock

One of the best site to download photos would definitely be Shutterstock. You can find photos, vectors and footage for downloads. Shutterstock sale method is subscription based, . Which means that you buy credits that you have to finish the download within a period of time. Currently, Shutterstock is offering 25-A-Day subscription and On-Demand subscription with over 14 million images and tens of thousands of images uploaded weekly.

Click here to buy photos  from Shutterstock

2. 123rf

123rf offers millions of Royalty free images for as low as Rm2.51 per credit. You can download photo based on sizes and credits.

Click here to buy from 123rf

4. Deposit Photos

This agency is relatively new in the market however they proved really serious to contend with established agency. Offering credit based and subscription based purchase.  This agency is also the first to offer sales over sms and phone.

Click here to buy from Deposit photos

5. Pond5

Once a video stock only site, Pond5 announced their entry into stock photo market around March 2011. This is one of videographers favorite site for selling stock footage. Always fair and accommodating. We hope Pond5 will make a mark in stock photo industry as well.

You have probably heard of Stock photography before , but for those who do not have an idea what is it. Stock photography a pool of photos for multi usage that can be used or licensed compare to traditional method of hiring a photographer for an assignment.  Buying a photo that already available from these stock photo agency would be much more cost effective than hiring a photographer for an assignment. For example , if you want to use photo of an apple it would be more efficient and cheap to buy a photo of an apple from stock photo agency rather than hiring a professional photographer to shoot an apple.

Royalty Free

Basically Royalty free means photos that are purchased one single time but can be used for limitless numbers of projects.  However there is usually a limit to the number of impressions or project types that can be used with these photos.  Usually and EL (Extended License)  will give extra converge of those limits from Royalty Free photos.

Rights Managed

Rights limit or rights managed would be photos that once sold can be used with limited time ,  project usage , size , exclusivity and many more.  These terms are usually negotiated by the agency who are selling the photo on behalf of the photography.

Macrostock

Traditional stock photo agency who has been selling photos for hundreds and thousands of US dollars.

Microstock

The rise of digital photography and internet gave birth to microstock agencies such as Shutterstock , Dreamstime and Depositphotos. These are  stock photo agencies who are selling photos cheaply. Sometimes at 1USd per image depending on usage or sizes.

Samsung Galaxy Camera is one of the Samsung’s first Android running camera. This would be the newest category of product that is an Android OS and camera. This will be a good news for heavy social networking sites users who want higher quality photos with instant upload.

Specifications

Tablet or Smart Device functions?

Pentax has just released it’s Q series, which would be equivalent of mirrorless small camera with interchangeable lens such as Sony Nex and Olympus Pen. However, Pentax Q is dubbed the smallest and lightest interchangeable lens market in the world.

This magnesium alloy built comes with a 47mm f1.9 lens and 12.4 MP sensors and a built in so called sensor shift reduction functionality. This Q series only support Pentax Q lenses. There are around 5 lenses at the moment.

The button on the middle right of the camera looks a little interesting. Anyway it’s built there to allow easy access of photography effects filter that are functionally built into this camera.

Camera comes with Q black or Q white body.

 

Among other interesting features of this camera would be
<ul>
<li><strong>Built in HDR Capture</strong></li>
<li><strong>1080p HD Video</strong></li>
<li><strong>5 FPS</strong></li>
<li><strong>Bokeh Control Filter</strong></li>
</ul>
&nbsp;

<strong>Retail Price : $799.95 ( around Rm 2400)</strong>

Olympus recently announced EP3 the latest in Pen series camera.  Olympus claimed that this camera has the fastest auto focus in the world , I hope it lives to that claim as previous predecessors of Olympus are quite weak in auto focus.  It consists of 35 focus points which are spreaded across the entire sensor which Olympus said will be able to track moving subjects accurately.

The sensor are still 12.3MP however it is powered by TRUEPIC VI which claimed to has better color reproduction.

Among the other features of this camera would be

• Full 1080i HD Video
• New 3D shooting
• Three Inch touch screen ( yes, it’s becoming a trend these days)
• Built in flash
• ISO up to 12800

Retail price : $899.99

Official Olympus website

http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/product.asp?product=1573

Nikon vs Canon vs Other Brands SLRs

The brand war has been going on for years and years. The loyal blind fans of different factions has been taunting each others pointlessly for years. Of course, I’ve often been asked which brand of cameras is the best. Here is my answers, although I’m  a Nikon user I would say that it would make not much of a difference no matter which brand you are using. Equipments and technologies do not bring benefits unless of course you have the right skill to use it.

Now choosing a right brand SLR for a beginner is very important,  be in mind that SLR is not just a single camera. When you start investing it would be the entire system of lenses, triggers,  flashes that are not compatible with other brands. If you decided to jump ship later, you will need to spend a fortune changing the entire system.

Go for Canon or Nikon

Despite this, I would often recommend beginners to either for Canon or Nikon DSLRs. Here are my reasons for it.

• It’s much easier to find lenses and used products and third party products for these two brands as they are being used by majority of the photographers
• Canon and Nikon DSLRs are in demand in used market, it is very much easier to sell these brands in the market the next time you are planning for an upgrade
• As being the major brands, there will upgrade on existing products. No worries of certain range of product being obsolete
• I often find people who started with other brands ended up forking extra money to go into Nikon or Canon and unable to sell their cameras and items.
• Majority wins ,everyone uses either a Nikon or Canon

I sold my Sigma 150mm and got a 60mm instead.  This lens works pretty good as a macro lens. The lens fits well on FX and DX camera. This lens received AF-S and Nano coating upgrade from it’s previous af-d predecessor. This lens focus internally so there are no moving barrel.

At the first test, The af-s focusing is fast ! This lens can go 1:1 macro however you need to be really close to the subject, so it may not be advisable to get this lens if you are interested in shooting insects wildlife there are sensitive to movement. Basically , you will want this lens if you are doing close up still photography such as product or food photography. This lens is suitable for product shooting which is the real purpose I bought this lens for. This lens is sharp.

Retal Price : RM 2,288.00

Pros

• Af-S upgrade is Fast
• This lens is sharp at f2.8

Cons

• Not suitable for wildlife shooting

50mm is one hell of a prime lens. This is one of my favorite all time lens.  Affordable,  sharp,  light. Perfect lens to bring around to shoot for fun. If I’m stranded on an island with a body and just a choice of a lens for potrait , I will definitely go for 50mm range lens. The newly 50mm 1.4 just had an upgrade on the old Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AF-D to the updated af-s version.  I don’t have much time to play with it yet, so it has been laying there for months in the drybox. But here are some things that I found about this lens

At a first glance, the outlook of this lens would be like those newly built nikon lenses. Received so call upgraded Nano-coating and AF-s.

Auto focus

Focusing definitely has improved. AF-S is must quieter and focusing is much easier with less hunting.

There has been feedbacks that this lens focus slower than the older 50mm af-d. I have tried 2 different 50mm f1.4 AF-S and found one autofocus faster than the other.Yes, I’ve had this experience before even with a few new Nikon lenses. One thing about these AF-S lens is that you cannot drop these lenses. A slight drop may damage the motor of these lenses as compared to AF-D versions.

Sharpness

I won’t want to shoot at 1.4 with this lens. Sharpness increase considerably at 1.8 or more. Bokeh is always sweet at f1.4