Well, as expected, there's ongoing consolidation in the microstock industry and Getty continues to flex its muscles as it looks like it's trying to introduce some customer segmentation into the market. It now looks like it's aiming for three tiers of microstock:
1.) Free - Stock.xchng - with explicit upselling to iStockphoto*
2.) Cheap - iStockphoto*
3.) Premium - Vetta* (for selective exclusive imagery)
There are then partnership models in-place with the likes of Photos.com - yes, it is very confusing!
That leaves one of its other recent Jupiter acquisitions, StockXpert* a little exposed - it's in direct competition to iStockphoto*. If it's retired/merged, it will be a real shame, as its upload interface (especially compared to iStockphoto*) is simple. Commissions at iStockphoto* for photographers are lower though, so there's an inevitability about it all. This may explain why a batch of my latest photos haven't been reviewed at StockXpert*.
Friday, 31 July 2009
Microstock News: SnapVillage closes its doors
As known for a while, Snapvillage is closing its doors - see their blog update for details. From 1st August, visitors will be redirected to http://www.veer.com/products/marketplace/ instead.
New Canon 50D Firmware
Canon have released a new version of its firmware for the 50D DLSR, version 1.07. It fixes a magenta cast under certain shooting conditions and some changes to some of the menus on certain non-English languages.
Thursday, 30 July 2009
New Canon Hybrid IS System
Canon and Nikon have long been the advocates on in-lens image stabilisation - and now Canon have upped the stakes by releasing details of their new hybrid IS. Detail are available here.
Rumours are now around which lens will first feature it - some think a new 70-200 f/2.8 IS II ...
Rumours are now around which lens will first feature it - some think a new 70-200 f/2.8 IS II ...
All well at Crestock?
As with most microstock submitters, although we're all encouraged to submit images exclusively to a particular agency (for marginally higher commissions), I've been submitting images to a variety of them, on a non-exclusive basis.
However, uploading images and keywording can be pretty tedious, so I've decided to limit my uploading to only the sites which were providing useful returns - Shutterstock*, StockXpert*, iStockPhoto*, Dreamstime* and Fotolia*. That meant leaving three other sites - Snapvillage (which is being retired soon anyway), 123RF and finally Crestock.
For both 123RF and Snapvillage, closing my account was not only efficient, it was intuitive and managed politely - credit to both. But at Crestock, my e-mail request to close my account has been ignored so far. Further still, a quick look at their forum and it looks like I'm not alone with my experience...
However, uploading images and keywording can be pretty tedious, so I've decided to limit my uploading to only the sites which were providing useful returns - Shutterstock*, StockXpert*, iStockPhoto*, Dreamstime* and Fotolia*. That meant leaving three other sites - Snapvillage (which is being retired soon anyway), 123RF and finally Crestock.
For both 123RF and Snapvillage, closing my account was not only efficient, it was intuitive and managed politely - credit to both. But at Crestock, my e-mail request to close my account has been ignored so far. Further still, a quick look at their forum and it looks like I'm not alone with my experience...
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