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Author Topic: Is 20D good enough for stock submission?  (Read 14796 times)

howard smith

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Is 20D good enough for stock submission?
« Reply #20 on: November 10, 2004, 04:29:19 pm »

There is a point, didger.  You said you submitted the article and snapshots to Backbacker, and that they rejected it even though you claim it was well written and the photos were fine.  You are apparently annoyed by that rejection and their reason - not enough of the yuppied using new equipment.  Well, if you knew the market and what Backbacker wanted, why bother to send it in?  You would have known it would have been rejected.

I would assume one of the goals of Backpacker is to be commercially successful - read make a profit or at least sustain itself.  They seem to be meeting that goal with the present format and editorial policies.

I look at some ads these days and think they are inane.  No way do they even tempt me to try their product.  Then I think they may not be so stupid, but I am simply not the targetted audience.  May I suggest you are not Backpacker's audience?

I have had many photos published.  Not because they were magnicifant.  I went to the person responsible for what photos they were looking for.  Then, if I wanted to try to take them, I did and submitted them.  I nailed the market.

To get back to the original question, I used a 5 mp Sony, so I guess a 20D would have been fine.
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howard smith

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Is 20D good enough for stock submission?
« Reply #21 on: November 10, 2004, 05:49:20 pm »

philthygeezer, "niche" is the word that I was looking for.  Find a niche.  There is no competition there.  You should do well.

I have a niche.  I shoot for scholastic publications.  I ask what they need, and go get it.  My fee is photo credit.  No one competes with me, not even the schools' own photographers.
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didger

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Is 20D good enough for stock submission?
« Reply #22 on: November 11, 2004, 10:10:10 am »

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When I saw a bunch of extra posts I was looking forward to reading more about my new 20D.   I was disappointed instead.
Don't look for the 7th+ page of any thread for much of anything new.  You did not ask for information about your 20D in general, you asked for information about stock submission and this issue was very adequately covered with much specific information early on, including a couple of links I posted that I hope you found useful.
If we are going to start criticizing off topic use of bandwidth, then there's a huge amount of house cleaning we can do and the forums will be pruned to about 10% of what they are now and some of us will disappear altogether.  But why not let the owner of the forum deal with this, if he's concerned?

What I find much more disturbing than the harmless banter we sometimes indulge in after a thread has pretty much run its course of useful material is when it turns from harmless banter and light jesting to outright rudeness and judgmental and condescending advice or orders.  

Maybe defending myself when I find that I'm a target is also "not furthering good nature".  I try to altogether avoid even reading messages by certain folks, but sometimes they jump in in the middle of a thread I'm interested in and I'm sometimes stupid enough to reply.  I definitely admit that this is my error and I'll try to do better in the future.
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didger

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Is 20D good enough for stock submission?
« Reply #23 on: October 29, 2004, 10:04:49 am »

This is an interesting issue that I'm also quite interested in.  The message from Michael some time ago about at least one major stock agency that accepts nothing less than 1ds was at a time when there were already enough 8 Mpixel cameras, so I suspect that at least for some venues a 20D would not be accepted.

What I fear is that the requirements may go up when 1dsMKII becomes relatively common, and then again when digital MF becomes more affordable and user friendly.  There's so many landscape photographers (literally competing with each other for tripod space sometimes) that the stock houses can be as demanding as they want and still get too many submissions.  I'll still target stock houses, but my main focus will be to do my own direct marketing of fine art landscape photography.  That's competitive too, but you can always find a niche (craft fairs, if nothing else).
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Also, could someone provide a list of stock agency links that I could reserch?
SellPhotos.com
Photographer's Market
This is a website and a book with the info you want.
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didger

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Is 20D good enough for stock submission?
« Reply #24 on: October 29, 2004, 02:56:01 pm »

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Just curious how a stock house would know whether the camera were a 1ds or not.
My point was that no one could tell what exact camera any picture is from unless he has a camera raw image with embedded i.d. code.  HOWEVER, an experienced person should generally be able to distinguish between a collection of 11 MP native camera pixels and 11 MP images that were uprezzed from 6 or 8 MP or taken with 35mm film.  Thus someone would be taking a big chance in misrepresenting uprezzed or film as native 1ds.
In other words, a stock house could not tell if a picture is 1ds or not, but they could probably tell if a whole collection of pictures was from a camera of less resolution than 1ds, even though they could not tell you which low resolution camera was used and they could also not tell you if properly hi res pictures were 1ds, Kodak large sensor, or MF or whatever.
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Jonathan Wienke

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Is 20D good enough for stock submission?
« Reply #25 on: October 30, 2004, 11:55:32 am »

That would be a way to trick the EXIF data, but the real key is to look at the image itself. You can't get 6000x4000 pixels of sharp, detailed image data from a 1MP P&S. EXIF may lie, but the pixels won't.
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didger

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Is 20D good enough for stock submission?
« Reply #26 on: November 01, 2004, 12:48:53 pm »

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Didger, could you please point us in the direction of your published work?
I'm not sure if this was meant to be a put down; it could be a straight question.  Either, way it doesn't matter to me.  I'm getting more and more confident about my understanding of hardware and shooting related issues, but I'm still a total Photoshop dummy.  I like shooting too much more than sitting in front of a computer all the time.
As for published work, I sold some images to Corel for stock, but I've never even seen the CD this went on and I haven't got a clue how many times and how some of these images may have been used.  I'm in a similar situation with a didgeridoo sample CD and CD ROM that I have with very successful worldwide distribution.  I know that those samples are in lots and lots of commercial projects, but I only know about a few specific ones.  Stock photo use or music sample CD use doesn't require giving any credit.  I've also sold a few pictures for CD cover use, but I don't even know if those CD's were actually ever released.  Check back in a few years to see how much I've published.  I'm not even working on marketing at all right now.
In any case, whether it's music, painting, photography, or whatever, very often inspired "amateurs" produce more "alive" and interesting and creative work than folks that have gotten into a rut making money with a few trite formulas that happen to appeal to the lowest common denomitator taste.  I'm sure not interested in getting into a "more professional than though" pissing contest.
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Madness

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Is 20D good enough for stock submission?
« Reply #27 on: November 08, 2004, 04:11:11 am »

that article is at least two years old
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didger

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Is 20D good enough for stock submission?
« Reply #28 on: November 09, 2004, 09:41:31 am »

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The mag is wrong to exclude digital capture, in my view
Well, it's their mag and they can do what the want.  It's surely "wrong" in the sense of what's in their real best interest because they're turning down unseen some great pictures and if they keep it up they may go the way of the dinosaurs, but that's their business.  What's more wrong is for them to make unsupported and unsupportable claims that their decision is based on quality considerations and then to "support" that view with total drivel that reflects total cluelenssness.  It's unrealistic not to expect a little rudeness, though that's even more "wrong" than the foolishness that generated it.  Oh well.
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howard smith

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Is 20D good enough for stock submission?
« Reply #29 on: November 08, 2004, 04:16:52 pm »

Jason, excuse me, but it is not up to AH to justify what they do.  Digital camera users are a not protected class of people in the US of A, so it is good enough for AH to just refuse.  They can give any reason they want or none at all.  Maybe if readership or photo submittals start to drop off, the editors will reconsider.  Until then, ...
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JasonK

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Is 20D good enough for stock submission?
« Reply #30 on: November 08, 2004, 06:15:37 pm »

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums....8155027

There's a link to a post where a DPReview patron posted the e-mail she'd sent to AH.  I think it's pretty well written.

Here is an excerpt for their article where they tried to explain why they didn't accept digital images:

"One last thought on the film vs. digital debate: If you’re planning to switch to a digital camera soon, don’t give up on film just yet. Remember always to back up your digital photographs on film. Even if you have already made the move to digital, consider that today’s best cameras record digital files at a little more than 11 megapixels. But what if, in the near future, the standard moves up to 20 megapixels or higher? If you have backup on film, you can scan your images at a higher resolution. But will your old 11-megapixel files be convertible? We don’t know for sure."

Sounds like they're completely and purely uneducated to me.
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didger

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Is 20D good enough for stock submission?
« Reply #31 on: November 10, 2004, 04:52:00 am »

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After all the reason people get out and backpack is to commune with nature.
Yeah, the ones that actually do packpack.  I think half the people reading some of those magazines don't get beyond the equipment lusting phase and hardly ever get out at all.  Same thing with tennis, skiing, cycling, whatever.  I also tried to find some mag to do an article for after my 4 month solo cycling tour in Australia.  Zip; just magazines with lots and lots of pictures and articles featuring people with those hi-tech bikes and pretty cycling costumes.  I think plenty of people also spend more time on forums and thinking about equipment than they ever spend behind a camera.  Equipment is important and well designed equipment is a joy to use, but it's a means, not an end.

No problem, I've managed all my life to find ways to market the products of my creativity and I've never yet had to get a real job or go without a meal.
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BJL

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Is 20D good enough for stock submission?
« Reply #32 on: November 10, 2004, 04:59:53 pm »

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The gist I am getting out of the whole thing is that the 20D would be quite enough for selling stock about 80% of the time.
I tried to get the thread back on that topic a while ago, with limited success!

So, what do we know so far about stock agency requirements?
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didger

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Is 20D good enough for stock submission?
« Reply #33 on: November 10, 2004, 06:58:58 pm »

Ha, ha.  I have a niche too.  I specialize in doing really exotic really expensive really challenging really fun and really creative things that as a rule lose money.  No one competes with me, not even the other inmates.
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didger

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Is 20D good enough for stock submission?
« Reply #34 on: November 11, 2004, 04:16:52 pm »

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didger, maybe their standards have changed, and you should resubmit?
Could be; their response to my initial try was so weird and lame that I can't believe that a mag that's been so successful for so long could have such an editorial policy all the time.
However, the particular article in question is now way too old.  You can't submit an article about a trip done so many years ago.  At the time they were very explicit about the need for new and impressive gear in pictures and they were in fact quite encouraging about submitting again if I could get into the spirit of this gear thing.  As for my more recent ventures in the Sierra Nevada, I haven't processed any of the images (except for that "committee effort" on that ultrawide panorama shot I posted for suggestions) yet and I need to finish my camper top before I get really full on into Photoshop and I want to do a lot more shooting soon too.  At some point I'll be doing all sorts of marketing efforts (mag submissions maybe, stock submissions for sure, publishing my own book for sure, website for sure, maybe even...shudder..craft fairs).  For now, I'm not starving yet and I can't control my shooting and backpacking wilderness exploration enthusiasm enough to put marketing considerations far enough on the front burner.  This sort of priorities are what's kept me from ever making serious money, but it sure has kept me having serious fun all my life.  Full speed ahead; sanity isn't everything.
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Tim Gray

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Is 20D good enough for stock submission?
« Reply #35 on: October 29, 2004, 10:05:42 am »

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philthygeezer

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« Reply #36 on: October 29, 2004, 11:28:25 am »

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That's "couldn't" tell an origianl from a dupe.
That's "original".

Now stop being a child or you will have to see the principal.
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howard smith

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Is 20D good enough for stock submission?
« Reply #37 on: October 29, 2004, 01:46:35 pm »

didger, I don't understand.  At the risk of being trollish and/or inflammitory, first you say they couldn't tell.  Then you say if the editor is earning his keep, he could.  Seems you can either see the difference or not.  Could you tell me how?

Since I have no intention of ever submitting work to a stock house, it is not a question of making it work or honesty.  Just curious how a stock house would know whether the camera were a 1ds or not.
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howard smith

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Is 20D good enough for stock submission?
« Reply #38 on: October 29, 2004, 04:28:33 pm »

didger, I still don't get it.  How does an experienced person tell the difference between an 11 MP 1ds and a proprerly rezzedup 8 MP?  If I crop the 11 MP 1ds to 8 MP and then rezzup to 11 MP, will the same experienced person be able to tell the difference?  Can that person see a difference (and if so, what is that difference) if shown a cropped 8 MP file from a 1ds and and uncropped 8 MP file from another camera?

As I said before, I have no intention of misrepresenting anything to anyone.  I am just curious about what is so different that an experienced person can see.
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didger

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Is 20D good enough for stock submission?
« Reply #39 on: October 29, 2004, 06:48:50 pm »

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the EXIF headers of a file identify it as coming from a particular camera, or scanner, or image manipulation program, though I imagine it is possible to falsify the headers.
What would happen if you take an image from Camera A and delete all content and then paste in an image from Camera B?  Which camera does the EXIF file then specify?  I'm sure there would be all sorts of ways to defeat this identity thing, not just with Photoshop tricks, but with more serious hacking too.
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