Non-scientific poll: Photography

November 22, 2003 | View Comments (9) | Category: Our Thoughts

Summary: What are some good stock photography sites and what are some good digital cameras?

A reader and I have been talking lately about photography sites that offer stock images. He was wondering if there were any sites out there that actually placed filters on searches such as Google's safe search. Since I really am not in the "know" when it comes to all things with pretty pictures the only sites that I could suggest were istockphoto.com and istockpro.com. So this weekend survey simply asks where do you go when you need some images for your sites. Also are there any sites that you know of that offer filters on their searches? To make it more interesting I would also like to know if you have a digital camera and you like it, what is it? I will be in the market for one very soon.

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Comments

#1

My first stop when looking for stock photos is always stock.xchng http://www.sxc.hu/

I do have a camera that I've been very satisfied with, it's an Olympus C-750, I do have a couple of little complaints speed wise but that's compared to a "real" camera, not to this specific model, it's actually pretty quick compared to other digitals.

Patrick (http://i.never.nu)

#2

I agree with Patrick about SXC, it is a great resource and all the images are free (some are copyrighted though - so you have to ask to use them).

Josh (http://fuego.radiantrock.com)

#3

I used eyewire quite a bit when they were still around. Our Marketing department has a huge collection of royalty free CDs they've bought from assorted places and they were kind enough to burn many of them for us so we'd stop bothering them every time we needed a new photo for the website.

I try to avoid using photos on websites unless they need them, especially stock photos. When the site needs them, generally, the client will be able to provide them. The home site I did, they provided... when I did the apartment site, though, I took them myself, since I live there and was feeling creative.

I have two cams, an uber-cheap jamcam 3 that I bought 4 of for 60 bucks from compgeeks.com a few months ago (3 for gifts, one for me)... it takes a decent pic in good conditions, usually needs to be lightened and touched up a bit and ideally sized to 50% to remove some of the artifacts (and the fact that if I drop it in the river I'm only out $15 doesn't hurt my perception of its relative value); I also have an old sanyo digicam... 1.2 megapixel I think. It does ok, things are a bit overcast so you have to bump the brightness and saturation a bit... but if I need to take pics that have to look really good I borrow my mom's Olympus Camedia something or other... it takes excellent pics which usually need nothing more than an 'auto-color' or 'auto-levels' in photoshop to be perfect.

At work we recommend the Kodak... easyshare I think it's called? I don't remember. It's very nice, it does 4 or 5 megapixels, has a good optical zoom, but is easy to use, and has a nice dock you can set it on to both charge and automagically download images... much easier for non-technical people than having toplug in a USB cable and use software to pull the files off (pc, sorry, no macs in most areas, so no iphoto)

JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)

#4

For digital camera reviews, check out:
http://dpreview.com/
More info than you can shake a stick at. You might also want to check out:
http://photo.net/
especially the forums

I'm hoping to buy a Canon Ixy 400 this month (small, good-quality point-and-shoot) and a Nikon D100 (or similar) in the next year or two (Nikon-mount lenses, and this is the first digital SLR body I can actually afford).

oli (http://oli.boblet.net/)

#5

I just found this site today:

http://stock.b-man.dk/

It's a free stock photography for personal and non-commercial use.

Camera wise I have been looking at the new Canon Digital Rebel. Niiice.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#6

http://www.steves-digicams.com/ is the best place I've found for digital camera reviews. It's usually pretty thorough and includes a variety of sample photos which are generally the same from one camera to the next so you can easily compare image quality

JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)

#7

A good point brought up by JC in regards to using photos on your site. The photography itself should only be used if it goes along with the product or service you are selling. I believe most people have been conditioned and are just to used to seeing the man in a suit on the his cellphone image.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#8

yep. But on my corporate website we opted to have a different photo on each page, ideally having at least something to do with the product at hand, which can be difficult.

I particularly like our 500 error page, which features a man with his coat slung on the chair, his shirtsleeves rolled up, and putter in hand, practicing on the carpet in front of his desk... Too bad coldfusion never throws 500 errors so no one's seen it since we got rid of perl.

JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)

#9

http://tofz.org/ is a photo website maintained by a french guy. There are nice pictures from streets, undergrounds, etc.

I own a Konica C220-Zoom, works fine, a little bit slow, not espensive and works under linux with a patch.

mauriz (http://www.svay.com)

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