I found this in Wired Magazine. They compared a web site where you can download images for $900 against a site where you can download images for $1, did 10 generic searches, and show the results.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/m...ery_stockwaves

Thanks for a great piece of info. What an interesting comparison. I've never used either service but I intend to check out istockphoto...

And for those of you that are too cheap to pay $1 for a stock photo (like me), there's always www.sxc.hu and www.zemostock.com .

I have a wildly different point of view on this question. Other people will come along and say "It doesn't matter which service has a better picture of a DVD, the question is which one has the image you need for your page." I've never bought stock photography, and don't see that changing, but I still have some interesting thoughts.

From a consumer point of view, Getty and Corbis just aren't comparable. You get the sense they are because every article that covers the article needs a #2, "... like Getty or Corbis ... " but without knowing just how much distance is between them, people tend to just equate the two. Anyway, the test they did is designed to hid Corbis's strength and iStock's weakness, and came out about 50/50. In a "bigger" test Corbis wins hands down, but Getty hasn't integrated any of their systems into iStock's ... at some point Corbis will be #3. The trouble with iStockPhoto is their search is horrible. They have good images and bad ones, several million in all, more bad or mediocre than good, and while they have diamonds buried in the haystack almost for free, the more expensive houses like Corbis and Alamy keep their customers because time is money; low prices but high finder's "fees."

I would never sell though iStock. Most of their distributors are hobbiests who aren't doing anything with the images, and see the income as free money. People have told me I should shoot for iStock, including someone in that department. But I've been told my hummingbird moth pic would get me about $15 there. Until I get National Geographic's attention, the image isn't actually making me any money, but when I get to that point, still having exclusive publishing rights will be worth a lot more than $15.

Stepping back away from my story, iStockPhoto is a route into Getty, so there are talented photographers who use it as a stepping stone. Alamy is priced about halfway between iStock and Corbis, more selective, so most of the images you'll find there are very good, and they're better to photogs, so they take a lot of the better ones from iStock, and hold on to them a lot longer.

As far as the title of the thread, maybe price only matters in the aggregate.

Well, it comes down to money for most of us. We just don't have the budgets to spend thousands and thousands on stock photos from the big stock houses like Corbis and Getty. The stock photos I do use I pull from more than 1 microstock house, but I've had an account at iStock the longest. For what I usually need (web images) the microstocks are more than adequate and I've gotten some darn nice images. I'm very picky so I don't just take any image.

I will say that things have changed at iStock since Getty got involved.. their "small" images used to be a LOT bigger than the little 300x400px images that are now $1. The images they now sell for $2 USED to be the $1 images. However, there are still plenty others that offer higher res and larger images, still good quality, for $1 each.

If I have a client with a mega-budget and they want a specific image, then I tell them where they can go to look for it and they have to buy it 'cause I won't go out on a limb for a $300 photo - not even if I'm billing for it.

Getty and Corbis, not Corbis and Getty! Two weeks ago Corbis axed their "assignments" wing and laid off 160 people, a sizeable chunk of their company. In almost 20 years, they want to be profitable for the first time, to make Bill Gates happy.

But yeah, iStock raised their prices after they got bought. I can't really say much about this, but a lot of people are speculating that one of Getty's strengthg is iStock's weakness, and the "little brother" will see a lot of improvement to it's search and keywording. That may or may not happen, but the chattering masses won't shut up about the idea.

Originally Posted by LadynRed

Well, it comes down to money for most of us.

That's the truth in a double-edged sword kind of way. This past month, I've seen more bald eagles than I have fingers to count on. I know a tree in a park on Lake Washington's shore where I can see him pretty reliably - once I watched a flock of crows chase him out of his nest. Two weeks ago, I saw four osprey (?) circling overhead, occasionally diving at a rodent in the field ... it was pretty amazing. I had the wrong lens at the time, but they were close enough they could hear the mirror and shutter with every photo I shot. They didn't let me stop their feast. I've seen puffins, too, in Puget Sound. I had a 135 mm lens on the camera at the time, and a 300 mm f/4 at home on the shelf, which still wouldn't have been long enough. To really do justice, I'd need one of these:

• 300/2.8 + 2x TC = $3,900 and 6 lbs for the lens + $275 and .6 lbs
• 400/4 + 1.4x TC = $5,300 and 4.3 lbs for the lens + $275 and .5 lbs
• 500/4 optionally + a TC = $5,500 and 8.53 lbs for the lens
• 600/4 would be ideal if not for the weight = $7,200 and 12 lbs, plus of course 600 mm is 2 feet
• 1,200 mm f/4 = They actually made about 80 of these, which sold for about $200,000 a piece. Sports Illustrated has two. There are places you can rent one. It's 35 lbs.

The 500/4 is magical; it records what's there for it to see, but it accentuates things that are barely there, diffuses light in a beautiful way. The 300 is the cheapest solution, especially since my 300/4 is worth $1,100 used toward any solution. It's arguably the sharpest lens ever made, unarguably the fastest AF. The 400/4 is a good compromise, and I wonder about an 8 and 1/2 lens, the 500/4, along with two others and a tripod on hikes through the mountains and along the shore. I don't know if any of them makes sense, but it's ironic that optics and not access to wildlife is what's preventing these from being rich and detailed.

Any idea what type of bird these are? The four of them seemed to be working together. They don't really look like osprey, more like vultures from the face, but without a neck. This is on the edge of the desert, both with a 5D and 135 mm f/2 L, obviously with a LOT of cropping.



A hundred years ago, the only way you could have your portrait was for somebody to paint it. You can still have that, but the old industry withered under the free market. They just couldn't compete.

There's a schism going on in the professional photography communities, because what these could have been - a richly detailed closeup of a bird of prey in flight, a sequence of them - is only possible with the type of equipment I described. There are

1. people like me, saving money, contemplating an investment into a longer glass, to get into a new market and have another channel to market myself through. The bits of wildlife I've done, I'm always amazed to see these patterns in nature that are invisible just because you can't get in close enough to see them. I've biked 30 miles in a day through Snoqualmie Tunnel and around the Pass to bring lasting artwork home. We're motivated by pride in our work, and in some cases working for ourselves.
2. trust fund babies who buy this stuff for a vacation; some of them get good at it, but these people dump their images on the net for free through Flickr. They tend to enjoy the experience, watching an eagle or a vulture fly by 150 feet from you, and not the lingering art they produce.

Those people - TheBulbMogul owns a museaum in Ohio, sold an old light bulb for $120,000 and spent all of the money on the best digital photography gear possible, a collector; these are the young people with cameras. Pro photogs with business models from the 1980s, where fee-per-use was an intoxicating display of power for the PPA; who charge $2,400 for a wedding that includes two 8x10 inch prints, and offer packages with an 8x10 and some 5x7s for $200, who own the negatives or the only copy of the digital originals; these are the painters watching their craft be tossed to the side of the road.

I'm not trying to suggest how much you have in the bank has any bearing on how much skill you have ... with a camera or anything else. But it's become fashionable to have a good digital camera. Now that everyone has a computer and digital everything, complexity is a good thing instead of bad. With photography in particular, it's a lot easier and faster to learn the technical side of the equation. More people are getting involved, some bad, some good, but more good art is a good thing for the world.

I'm also not trying to apologize for Getty's prices, or for Luddites who expect sympathy for their CDB. Micro-stock is a threat to the old way, and so are people like me who charge for my time and sign over the original files. I just thought a view into how photographers and studio owners see things would be interesting to people on the other side of the transaction.

And here's a shameless plug for a friend, but Zemo Stock is an agency that gives RF images for free. I've donated some images to Dave's cause. You could actually pay me for rights to publish the images, and I'll prepare them in any way you'd like if the price is right ... but you can download the images from Dave's site and do whatever you'd like with them, including selling them on coffee mugs and mouse pads, without having to pay a royalty. The selection needs to widen, but it's a good place to start looking.

But it's everybody's job to do well for them self; photographers can't expect people to choose on seniority and not quality / price.

That bird looks like some kind of buzzard or vulture with it's ugly red head.

Originally Posted by ForrestCroce

But it's everybody's job to do well for them self; photographers can't expect people to choose on seniority and not quality / price.

That really isn't news. Who pays $300 a photo?

Don't spend thousands of dollars on a lens! That's crazy talk. Your pictures are fine already and those prices are obscene.

Seriously, when you can get something for free or for $2, why would anyone spend 150x as much? I don't get it.

Hey Forrest - I think these are California Condors - they have enormous wingspan and were once on the endangered species list (at least when I ws a kid - say 150 years ago). Maybe if you Google it you'll find some comparison photos...

You think Condors would be this far north? I know they used to release them into the wild in Big Sur, which is something like 1,200 miles south of here. But then Eastern Washington is a desert, so they'd be right at home. And the wingspan and ugly reddish head match.

I thought they were eagles at the time, from the size, the white underside of the wings, and the behavior.

Sorry Forrest...these can't be CA Condors. I Googled it and there are still less than 300 in existence - almost all in CA, AZ and UT. It would be very surprising for one to make it up to WA...

Someone on another forum suggested turkey vultures, which I've never heard of before. Someone else chimed in in agreement. It's obviously a conspiracy.