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danschmitt

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Posts posted by danschmitt

  1. Posted

    Get him to look at you more. :unsure: That angle doesn't show off the boxyness so much (if you know it's boxy you can sort of see the flat top, but the funny color light/dark camoflauge on the side hides it a lot.)

  2. Posted

    Lighting is weird. If you cut it in half horizontially you could get rid of some of the overexposed body/rock (and have a nice web page or power point border pic.) Composistionally, the eye feels too centerlined for me (or not enough on the verticle.) Maybe more negative space around the front of the fish or less of the body/rock horizontal lines (or maybe tilt them some.)

  5. Posted

    I am warning that there are a lot of people with a lot of good pictures on their hard drives. Taking into account the commercial law of supply and demand, they are not worth much.

     

    You are only looking at the supply side. The demand side is very different these days as well. There are more "designers" out there doing web pages for every little mom and pop operation that has a newsletter or needs a url for a yellowpages ad than there have ever been for print outlets. Look at the number of websites around, count how many times you have seen one "redesigned".

     

    If you google "web page design service", you get 165,000,000 results. If 1% of those folks want some inexpensive underwater photos in their library in case a client or design idea hits them, that's 1,650,000 customers. 10 cents (1 image at a really crappy license rate) from 1.65 million people adds up. I can see how you don't like it, since writing for diving magazines becomes just writing (since the expensive images you need to shoot can be grabbed from any number of 100s of vacation divers that slap them up on stock photo sites by a competitor.) I still don't see any compelling reason for the vaction diver not to step up to the broader stock market (of all the "I'd pay a doller to see that" people) just because it hoses your niche.

     

    As for pkg's view of part time jobs paying better, if you have one where I get to review my dive trips and make things to hang on my wall as a side effect, I'm interested.

  6. Posted

    So, is the jist of the story that everybody can afford equipment and processes that used to cost a lot of money and now your skills aren't that outstanding in comparison?
    Correct. It used to be a skilled business but now it is not.

     

    Some people might say that if your competetiveness in a market was dependent on a high cost of entry for equipment then it's not really based on your skill compared to others, rather prohibitive up front costs.

     

    I am sure you can make a few bucks but as I said do not give up your day job!

     

    I don't understand this context; do you mean upload to the stock sites and

    make a little money, or even writing articles won't make much money.

     

    Previously you wrote:

     

    - and don't give your work away to libraries!

     

    I'm still wondering why you discourage this. So it's only $300 a year, that's better than nothing (it covers my flood insurance.)

  7. Posted

    I want to tell you a story. It is set in the UK.

     

    So, is the jist of the story that everybody can afford equipment and processes that used to cost a lot of money and now your skills aren't that outstanding in comparison?

     

    Stock libraries know this. They organise to get access to millions of images. Images sell for virtually nothing now (Unless you are Mario Testino or Terry O'Neil with access to unique subjects).

     

    So my advice is to concentrate on supplying one client with pictures - yourself. I work harder now than I ever did (and I love what I do) but I made last year one eighth of what I made in 1989. I am technical editor of a diving magazine that pays around 160 bucks for a full page and pro-rata (words and pictures) to freelancers. It is nice to see your work in print but do not give up your day job - and don't give your work away to libraries!

     

    Just my opinion, of course!

     

    I've seen the "dont't give your work away to libraries" here before, but I never seem to see a list of contacts for people who would want articles written. There are lots of web pages, and lots of people getting money to make them, and some buy nifty images; there aren't so many dive magazines. I'm sure you could keep all sorts of people out of the stock libraries if you told them they could sell 4 articles a year for $400 total vs trying to upload a bunch of stuff to a micropayment site and hope for 2000 downloads @ 20 cents for that same year.

  9. Posted

    A friend lent me his Nikonos SB105 and sync cord, worked well for a while and stopped, after fiddling with it it worked on land, but not in the water. Continuity tester shows that there is some bleed between the 3 pin sockets that go to the camera (the 2 flat connectors are clean.) I've ordered him a replacement, but was wondering if there is any hope for it. (It might be a cable flood, as I disconnected and reconnected the cable to size the housing for pelican boxes and that's when my trouble began.)

  10. Posted

    If you are going deep and foam comression is expected to be bad, you can do capped PVC pipes (tie wrap or tripod mount.) I'll leave the air displacement of a capped pipe math to other so inclined posters.

  11. Posted

    Thank you Dan,

     

    Curious, what time of year did you dive and how recent was this? Planning any return trips? Did any of the locals speak about sites in neighboring islands?

     

    Thanks again for your input and help.

     

    August 2004 was the last trip, previous trips were August 2002, July 2003.

    Haven't got plans to return right now (looking more to Palau and PNG since

    I'm starting in Okinawa instead of Hawaii, and it adds an leg to the flight.)

    The trips folks there talked about were Palau and Bikini.

  12. Posted

    Have dove Kwajalein from the Regan Missle Test site. My in the water info should be good, but the getting there and gov't hassles will be different (flew military space available air, had all the magic clearance and friends with places to stay.)

     

    When you hit the doldroms the vis is outstanding (100ft plus). Currents didn't seem to be an issue. The outside of the atoll is very pretty (good wall, lots of coral, occasional sharks and mantas), the wrecks are on the inside (more sand flats, some good coral spots.) I did some shore dives (inside the atoll) and mostly boat dives from the 20ft boston whaler rental boats (4 people, 8 tanks, 2 anchors and go.) There are some neat spots inside the atoll (Troy's coral head has an upwelling that always has big schools of bigeye and lots of sharks.) Lots of nice hard coral, lots of anemonies and clown fish, some lionfish, lots of reef fish. The prince eugen is an outstanding wreck. I had fun.

  15. Posted

    I've been happy with my A-20 for the canon 20d. I sacrificed a can cozy to extend the little dial for the front thumb wheel, and started putting the port so the manual focus knob is on the top instead of the side (where it tilts the camera instead of turning the gears) and all is golden now. Aside from one dive where I forgot the compact flash card, it's been quite excellent.

  17. Posted

    I can't really tell at this resolution, but it looks like the "without the diopters" are a little mushy at the corners (or the cup coral has been smushed somewhat.) (I also suspect getting the same shot for with and without the diopter is tricky <since you have to open the housing.>)

     

    I remeber that diopters were reccomended for making lenses focus close enough to the virtual image of the dome, but I don't know what the current wisdom is for the the super wide zooms. All the housing manufacturers are quick to say "ours works great for that lens, no diopter required", and I have to wonder if a +3 diopter on a 12-24mm lens is much different than zooming in to 18mm to just miss the mushy corners.

     

    I've got a 10-22 on the canon 20d behind the aquatica with the big dome, and at 10mm the edges get mushy underwater (it also happens on land, but to a much lesser extent, so I'm hesitant to plop down the $66 a shot for various 77mm diopters to see if it's a dome issue.)

  18. Posted

    The fax machine answered for me Thursday 4/28 (don't remember the time.)

     

    I really don't want to get in the water without insurance, but having the new

    camera and housing sitting here as I go diving is killing me. :) For now the

    20d is just the surface camera, and I'll make do with the S500 underwater.

     

    Dan

  21. Posted

    I've been reasonably happy with the S500, inon D180, AD Fisheye, and AD macro lenses. All the recent stuff from http://lionfish.us is with that setup (note that the fuzzyness from the 03/09 onna point dives was due to humid air trapped when sealed at the apartment and then condensed when it hit the cold water.) I can get some pretty dramatic chromatic abberation if I try (the lionfish from 03/29 on the front fan is noticeable.) I liked a lot of the first sets of fisheye shots from the kwaj stuff as well.

     

    It's been taking a pretty good thrashing as well (everything since Oct or so has been shore diving, often in less than ideal circumstances) and no leaks.

  22. Posted

    I'd choose the canon housing for it (probably find a vendor through dealtime.com), and an Inon D-2000 strobe with the AD mount and fiber optic cable. My setup is with the S500. The guys at Marine Camera (wepixel sponser) did the 180s for me, and I got the epoch tray/arm/clamp set to go with it (there was a small problem with one of the ball clamps and they sent me a new one right away.) I got the AD mount and the inon fisheye lens from Inon America, and just recently added a macro lens, diffuser, and the inon lens holder (now that I'm in Japan, I can drive down the street to get inon stuff fast, but have to hope I don't need to read the manual.)

     

    I think I'm better of with the epoch tray since I have space to put the lens holder on it next to the camera housing, instead of putting stress on the ball joints hanging from one of the arms.

  23. Posted

    I think at $15 for a chance (at about 128 pics out of 300 folks) to have one picture

    on one page it is going to be tough to compete with

     

    MyPublisher Hardcover Books

     

    Where you can have gaurenteed 20 pages of your stuff, hard cover, for $30.

     

    I'd either push it as a fund raiser for wetpixel (if that's what eric is looking for, and

    I bet wetpixel T-Shirts a la cafe-press might be a bigger seller) or set the buy

    in target for a section level (16 sections of 4 pages, $250 a person, with some %

    royalty from the sales; probably just set the price at cost+$16 and send everybody

    a $100 check when 100 books sell.) With enough responses you could go volumes

    of alpha by name, or by location, or by subject matter (PotW subject list would

    be interesting.)

     

    Dan

  25. Posted

    Both nice. I'd try to have the angel more head on, less running away (ideally going to the blue or lighter background where the dark face would stand out better; but I can understand that getting an angel to pose at all is a hassle.) I'd try to do something different with the direction of the wire coral; the top corner part is good, but the dropping through the middle of the frame makes my eye wander weird. It would probably involve lots of rotating around to get it across the diagonal, or one of the 1/3 lines. Color and exposure are nice on both.

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