I know I know, were talking about a two year old point and shoot here right, why should I care? The answer is pretty simple with the global recession still holding strong you are thinking about more then photography lately you’ve been thinking about saving money. Too bad saving money usually takes a back seat to new camera gear, you can always find something photographic that you need more then those new shoes.
So why would you want a point and shoot, you’ve got a high end DSLR sitting in your bag at home. For me at least the answer is size, I commute to work every day and on occasion at least I see something great to take a picture of. Lugging my big camera and lens is really not an option for me every day add that bad in with my laptop bag and I’d be up over 30lbs. On the other hand lugging a point and shoot with me is a perfectly viable option and something I can live with; on the other hand I can’t live with the shots from a normal off the shelf point and shoot. I still want all the features I’ve come to rely on, RAW support, manuel exposure controls, ISO setting controls, metering options etc etc.
That brings me to the 2 year old G9 it’s got a nice big LCD screen plus a normal view finder (one of the things I think is most important). I know some of the latest point and shoot’s on the market offer lots of newer better features but most of them don’t offer the viewfinder. They force you to shoot via LCD screen rather then being able to pull the camera to your face to frame it up the old fashioned way. I just can’t see relying on the LCD for all the shots you want to take, if you in the sun you can’t see it if you doing slow exposures your hands shake too much and you get blurry images. I don’t understand why camera manufactures keep moving away from one of the best parts of cameras the viewfinder.
I’ve had this little beauty in the laptop bag I take to work every day for while now and more and more I’m starting to see great shots I’ve been missing each and every day. This is the true value of the camera isn’t it? The more pictures you take and the more it makes every day a great picture opportunity the higher it’s value.
So I know alot of you out there submit your work to the microstock photography sites like iStockPhoto and Fotolia. But do you know that one of the biggest ways to drive up your sales on these sites is to ensure that your have great keywords. Ones that will strike meaning in the terms that come to mind for buyers, without this you have very little chance of making any really good money with micro stock photography.
A few days ago I came across a pretty unique key wording tool that I think could help you find and use the right keywords when you are submitting your photos for sale on any of these sites. The tool was made by Yuri Arcurs who is big into micro stock so I think when he builds a tool like this and then releases it to the rest of the community it’s a pretty cool thing and it could be pretty helpful in bumping your revenue up too.
It’s a pretty easy and powerful tool to use, you input a few keywords about your image into the search and it queries the iStockPhoto search API. It will then return you a gird of images that have some of the same keywords but are also popular among it’s customers and you then select a few that closely match your image. Once you’ve done this the tool will automatically build out a list of ~50 of the best keywords you should use for your image when you upload to the micro stock site of your choice.
Check it out here at Arcurs.com
So I’ve had the iPhone since it came out and have loved it, it’s been a great phone and mobile computer. To date however I’ve never felt that the camera was great and usually didn’t think of it as a viable alternative to carrying a camera. I’ve always thought is was much better in the long term to just whip out a camera of some sort; over the years though it’s become apparent that as much as I do pull out my DSLR and point and shoot I could always find other times that I woulda shoulda coulda taken some cool pics.
Ok so I recently bought the the iPhone app “Better Camera” which allows you to shoot add some cool filters to your photos and then send them up to some social sites including one made specifically for this app. It’s exactly what you need an app that does what it does well, keeps things simple and allows you to get in and out quickly while still getting your creative juices flowing.
Today I took a few pictures on the subway, edited them when I was underground and then came up and uploaded them to a few social networks. I had a few problems uploading the images to the http://www.thebestcamera.com website and had to re-upload the images a second time before they actually worked. But overall it was a great user experience and one that personally will allow me to start shooting more. I always like it when I can get into the creative mode faster after a long day at work and this little app let me do that today.
It was not perfect or without flaws, I’ve got a little wishlist going here but none of these are things that are stopping me from using the app. They are also pretty obvious so I’m sure that the team over at Ubermind is hard at work on them already.
Features I’d ask for -
- Mass upload
- Flickr integration
- Better upload stability (May be AT&T problem)
- Rating ability on the Website
- View all my photos or all of someone else photos on the site
