Microstock: Look Ma, I Made the Cover of TIME Magazine!

Ok, so let's say you shoot your kids on a white background for microstock and upload images to a few different microstock sites. Suppose the image above is included in your submissions.

Then, a few months down the road, you see this TIME magazine on a rack:


Your son, with t-shirt digitally removed and a needle placed menacingly near him, is essentially on every news stand in the world!

And what you'd get paid?

$25...


Well, ok, I doubt it happened exactly like this. TIME knows how important appropriate permissions are, so I guarantee they contacted owner of the baby shot (Sergei Chumakov) and negotiated appropriate terms. TIME knows it has to dot all the "i"s and cross all the "t"s -- otherwise they'll be sued nearly instantly. In this case, the credit for the photo was:

PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION FOR TIME BY ARTHUR HOCHSTEIN WITH PHOTOS FROM PENNY GENTIEU/BABYSTOCK.COM, SERGEI CHUMAKOV AND ISTOCKPHOTO.

In fact, the iStock page doesn't have the extended license option, so I'm sure TIME approached Chumakov to provide suitable payment. What's a Time cover worth, anyway? (I'd guess at least a few thousand).

Although the Dreamstime version does have extended licenses available -- can you imagine how upset the photographer would be if TIME had (legally) increased the maximum copies and paid only $20-$30 for the primary source image for their cover?


This stuff has been on my mind lately because I'm currently trying to convince (or decide if I want to convince) my wife to let me use images of my kids for microstock. I still need to sit down with her and find out what her big concerns are so I can do the research and see if there are any protections against them. My kid making TIME wouldn't bother me that much but it would likely bother my wife a lot. (Attention TIME: a suitcase full of cash might smooth things over with her... If you like any images on this site, I'm sure we can come to an agreement for the full-size image, RAW file, or lock of hair!).

Anybody heard of any similar microstock horror stories (or microstock success stories)?


Anyway, thanks to Steve at Microstock Insider for the post that led to my discovery of this image.

Also, guess what I have to do today? Get my kids their flu shots!

Microstock: Fotolia, the Honeymoon is Over!

Of the latest batch of 11 images that I submitted to Fotolia, only 3 were accepted! Some rejections I understand or at least can deal with (Similar Photograph), most of them were the general umbrella term Technical Problems.

According to the e-mail, technical problems can be:

• Blurry or out of focus
  
• Over/Under exposure
  
• Framing problem
  
• Over or under saturated colors
  
• Problems with contrast
  
• Noise or Pixelation
  
• Quality of routing
  
• Interpolation problem

Really? You can't give me any more of a clue to which one?

In particular, the images in this post (click to see larger) are some of my favorites. I really like how the birds are engaged with the camera. The extreme depth of field is due to shooting nearly wide open from inside my parents' house outside to the bird feeder.

So now, I don't know if Fotolia (or that reviewer) just doesn't like extreme depth of field on wildlife shots or is concerned about noise (I shot at ISO 800 but did a pass of Noise Ninja in Bibble Pro), sharpness, loss of shadow detail, or some other random reason (quality of routing? what the heck is that?).

So I posted a message to the forums and anxiously await a reply. Hopefully someone in the know (i.e. a reviewer) can give me a real reason because other photographers speculating isn't quite good enough for me at this point. I'm also not against reducing the noise in each image a little more and resubmitting in the hopes that it was (a) a noise problem or (b) a cranky reviewer.

I'll get extra feedback once they get reviewed at Dreamstime, but that will probably be in a week (!).

If any of you experienced microstockers have an idea of why these images didn't meet technical standards (or why Fotolia reviewers are cranky) please leave a comment!

For now, consider yourself on notice, Fotolia. I can deal with rejections and even my current 45% acceptance rate. But if you complain about technical problems but don't tell me what they are so I can fix them or at least be aware of them... well, you're just wasting my time. And making me wait 48 hours to get the images reviewed was pretty uncool too -- the only reason I let Dreamstime get away with making me wait a week is because I love everything else about the site.

Microstock: Comments on Fotolia

This post has sat in my drafts long enough -- time to bang it out. Mostly, I'm just trying to outline my experiences with Fotolia and give a little bit of comparison with Dreamstime.

All my Fotolia related posts are here and my Dreamstime related posts are here.

The first big plus for Fotolia is speed of review. At Fotolia, review time is measured in hours, and at Dreamstime, it is measured in days (and honestly it feels like weeks). Typically Fotolia has my images reviewed within 8 business hours of when I submit them, although I submitted a batch this morning and they didn't get reviewed today (I expect them first thing tomorrow). BIG improvement!

One downside is the lack of an FTP upload... err, they have it, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to log in. And I'm a computer scientist! But, their flash uploader is very easy to use and fast, so no problem there.

Also, Fotolia initially rejected a few of my images (pretty much silently, actually). They require all images to be >= 4 MP unlike 3 MP at Dreamstime. Easily fixed by widening my crop slightly or in some cases just upsampling a little bit.

Keywording at Fotolia is a MUCH bigger hassle. For one thing, they accept multi-word keywords, which forced me to go back through all my images and re-keyword them (although I had to do it anyway because Bibble was lopping off parts of my longer lines). Along with that, it is just not a very convenient system, and once you submit an image for review, you can't change anything until it gets through review! Once you get used to the system it isn't as bad, but it still takes longer to finalize submissions.

The increased speed of review is a huge win though, since it really lets you keep a feeling of momentum. A day to wait isn't too bad... a week is horrendous.

Finally, there's lots of rumors flying around the web that Fotolia is overly picky compared to the other sites, and I've seen a little bit of that. I've had a few images rejected at Fotolia which I thought were definitely acceptable (and even sold one at Dreamstime!) but overall, it hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be.

Finally, one benefit of Fotolia is you can cash out at any time (with a $1 fee if under $50) instead of needing to wait until $100 at Dreamstime. Although, I tried checking it out at Fotolia and it gave me an error that I had less than $50... So maybe that's not as much of a benefit as I thought it was.

Overall, I like Fotolia -- not sure if I'd say I like it better than Dreamstime, although my portfolio on Fotolia is outselling my Dreamstime portfolio at a 3:2 ratio. I've sold three images at Fotolia... I'll let you do the math!

Some SB-20 Sync Problems

I set up a little studio in my garage (details forthcoming) and in doing so I learned a few more things about the SB-20 that I'd like to share. Namely, it is a little quirky when it comes to syncing, and I think I've finally figured out some of the problems.


The Multiple Trigger Problem:

First, I've known for a while that if an SB-20 gets triggered twice in a row (rapidly) it seems to dump all the capacitor charge into the tube on the second trigger. In other words, if you have it set to 1/4 power and hit the button twice very quickly, the first flash will be 1/4 power and the second will be whatever is left (3/4 power).

In practice, this is less of a problem than it sounds, because even when my 20D is at full speed (5 fps) it isn't fast enough to cause a problem. But I noticed the effect a lot when I had a crappy connection between the SB-20 and my eBay wireless trigger. To solve the problem I rewired the connection (clipping the end of the trigger and attaching a separate 1/8" plug) and it has been very reliable ever since.

In other words, don't worry about it, but understand that a poor connection or rapid cycle time can cause the SB-20 to become inconsistent.


The Chinese Optical Slave Problem:

This second problem is a bit more serious and I had to find alternate hardware to get around it.

Apparently, the cheap Chinese optical slave triggers (seen in the picture above) lock the SB-20 up after each fire. The slave will fire the SB-20 the first time, but then it won't respond. Removing the slave from the flash will reset it as will pushing the test button on the back of the SB-20. Actually, the first time you push the test button on the SB-20 there isn't a flash, but then afterward, since it has reset, it will flash each time you push it.

Once I figured this out, using all three lights (I only have two radio triggers) meant firing a single shot, manually pushing the test button on the SB-20, shooting again, etc. In other words, it very much interrupted my flow.

FYI, I verified the problem on both SB-20s yet my eBay trigger works fine with both of them. So it is definitely some sort of incompatibility between the SB-20 and this specific model of optical slave. Sadly, this unit (a boxy little guy with a hemispherical clear window and a PC connection) is the primary optical slave available at the low end of the market.

But, there's another slave out there made by Sonia, an Indian company. So I ordered one of them (including a hot-shoe mount with two extra PC connections) and I really hope it won't cause the same problems on my SB-20s. If it works, I'll probably get one or two more to have the option.

If you are interested, the current eBay listings for optical slaves are below. The sonia slaves have a clear epoxy package with some sort of color to them (from the circuit board inside). The Chinese slaves are the boxy ones. I'll review the Sonia slave once I receive it!

Auto Mode Review: Sunpak 383 vs Nikon SB-20

If you are poor like me and can't afford the newest (newer) flashes ($200+ for a 430EX) you have to make due with less expensive or older flashes. In my case, I went with the Sunpak Auto 383 Super (review) and multiple Nikon SB-20s (review). While I was able to save 50-70% of the price of a 430EX on each, I had to give up some features.

These older flashes do not support the newest flash balancing algorithms like E-TTL II (for Canon -- Nikon has an equivalent). E-TTL II is pretty neat because it meters the flash through the lens, exposing based on what the camera sees, and also takes into consideration the focal distance of the lens (full description here at Bob Atkins' site). Of course, neither my SB-20 nor my 383 supports TTL (through the lens metering) of any sort with my 20D. Instead, I must either balance the flashes using manual controls (awfully slow and fiddly) or use the auto mode.

The auto mode is an automatic metering mode based entirely on the flash. First, the user sets the flash to auto and the camera aperture to the value specified for the given auto mode (often, flashes have a few options for auto mode for different apertures). As the flash fires a photocell on the flash records how much light is reflected back from the subject, and when a predetermined amount of light is recorded, the flash is quenched (shut off). Essentially, this lets the user get automatic exposure without any communication between the flash and the camera.

Both the 383 and SB20 support auto mode. The 383 has a photocell just above the hot shoe (the green circle on the left of the image):
And the SB-20 has a photocell in the lower right of the large red window on the front of the flash:
Auto mode is very easy to implement because it is directly on the flash but has a few limitations because there is no camera-flash communication during the exposure. First, since the photocell can't see exactly what the camera sees through the lens, the results will be inaccurate for very wide or very telephoto lenses. Also, since the photocell is at a different level than the lens, it could be occluded by objects or not aimed at the same place when in close. Finally, since the photocell measures all the light coming in, you'll get a bad exposure if something bright is closer to the camera than your subject.

That said, if you just want to get some snapshots and don't want to worry about balancing the flash in manual mode, auto mode is very useful. Put another way, auto mode lets the flash automatically adjust for distance -- in manual mode, every time you move closer or farther away from the subject, you'd need to adjust the exposure. For kids, that kind of constant adjustment isn't possible!

When I got my Sunpak 383, I quickly realized the auto mode wasn't very good. I just couldn't seem to get a good exposure! After that, I kind of abandoned auto mode until the other day when I thought I'd try an SB-20 in auto mode and did a little comparison. Turns out my 383 just has a crappy auto mode (not sure if I can generalize it to all 383s though -- does anyone else have a 383 that works well?).

To start out, I tried my SB-20 in auto mode by switching the main switch to A, set the ISO 100 with the slider at left, and set the desired f-stop using the slider at right (F/8 in this case -- note the yellow indicator). This means I should be able to set my camera to F/8 and get good exposure no matter what my distance to the subject is. The back of the SB-20 looked like this:

So, I fired off the following shot of the stuff sitting on top of my television (all of these shots are pretty much straight from the camera):

SB-20 (auto f/8) @ 17mm, f/8

Chimping the result, I thought it looked a little hot, so I dialed it down one stop, and got:

SB-20 (auto f/8) @ 17mm, f/11

Then, stepping back and zooming in to test if the auto mode was working, I got:

SB-20 (auto f/8) @ 50mm, f/11

So, by the looks of it, the auto mode on the SB-20 works very well. And, in hindsight, I really didn't need to stop down below the SB-20's settings -- it was very close to good exposure and the stopped down version is a little too dark. Since I usually underexpose flash shots a little bit (you can always increase exposure from the RAW file, but if you blow whites out, you can't get that detail back), I'll probably stop down 1/3 of a stop compared to the flash setting, but it really seems like the SB-20's auto mode is right on.

Now, on to the Sunpak Auto 383 Super. Auto settings on the Sunpak are a bit more confusing. First, I set the left-hand slider switch to the red A setting and the top slider to ISO 100. In the F/stop window, f/5.6 shows up (actually, more like f/6.3) which is what I should set my camera to. Also, I set the bottom slider to full (A) -- my understanding is that the auto only works when the slider is set to full (disclosure: I faked the f/stop value because it was in shadow, but that's how it looks!).

Note that the 383 has three auto settings, but as far as I can tell, it is only a mechanical calculator. Going from red to yellow doubles the distance and opens up two stops (consistent with the inverse square law: doubling the distance should require four times as much light).

So, given these settings, I set my camera to f/6.3 and took a shot under the same conditions as above, and got:

SB-20 (auto f/6.3) @ 17mm, f/6.3

Obviously, way too bright and I completely lost all the highlights on the fan. So, after some playing, I settled on f/11 as a similar exposure to the SB-20 (yes, that's 1 2/3 stops down!):

SB-20 (auto f/6.3) @ 17mm, f/11

SB-20 (auto f/6.3) @ 50mm, f/11

So, obviously, the SB-383 works, but it needs to be stopped way down. Consistency (in this tiny test) seems to be good across images, but it disturbs me that the Sunpak runs about 2 stops too hot.

Another thing that worries me about the Sunpak's auto mode is the photocell is very, very narrow (less than a millimeter in diameter, about three millimeters deep). I wonder if it gets very good coverage of a wide angle lens. Even more problematic is the height of the photocell on the 383 -- with a hood on a lens (or even a relatively large lens) the cell will be occluded for at least part of the range. I feel like the SB-20 has a much better design.

My conclusions? I like the SB-20 auto mode a lot better, and it just reinforces that if you are on a really tight budget and need a flash, start with an SB-20! For just $30 you get a flash with zoom, bounce, manual mode, and auto modes. The only thing the Sunpak has that SB-20 doesn't is a rectangular head (useful for putting modifiers on it), a little more power (GN120 vs GN100), and a swivel head (so you can bounce of the ceiling in a portrait orientation. While each of those is significant, paying three times as much tempers the advantages. There's a reason I have three SB-20s and may buy up one or two more...

Anyway, if you'd like to get an SB-20, check eBay. Prices seem to be pretty stable at $30 (including shipping) but there are often even better deals if you look hard enough. Here's the current listings if you are curious: