$15,000 for a...
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UKBob

Original Poster:

16,277 posts

295 months

Monday 6th November 2006
quotequote all
1 megapixel camera! According to Lou Manna who bought one, thats what they cost when they first came out. And $60k all in, for the camera/hardware/software setup needed to process his images professionally.

Another mildy interesting titbit... Using a 5mp camera years ago, he took a photo for the new york marriott hotel which had 50% of the image cropped away at the sides (down to 2.5mp then) which was blown up and used as a giant 60x80 foot billboard in Times Square.

What cameras did you lot buy first, how many pixels etc, and at what cost? smash

GetCarter

31,296 posts

309 months

Monday 6th November 2006
quotequote all
Talking of mugs.

I bought the first CD burner available - blank CD R's were not available in Europe, and so I had to buy from Japan or USA. They worked out at £32 per CD. yikes

What are they now - 15p?

UKBob

Original Poster:

16,277 posts

295 months

Monday 6th November 2006
quotequote all
GetCarter said:
Talking of mugs.
What are they now - 15p?
15p!

You're being shafted hehe

TonyHetherington

32,091 posts

280 months

Monday 6th November 2006
quotequote all
Our first digital camera (point and shoot) was 2mp I think, and cost £400! That was only about 5yrs ago. Now my phone has a higher resolution!

If you want to talk about being shafter....4mb of ram for my first PC...£125 thumbup - you couldn't give a 4mb chip away now!

megy

2,429 posts

244 months

Monday 6th November 2006
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I can remember i borrowed a Sony digital camera a few years ago, i think it was 1 MP and stored the photos on a floppy disc, i think the camera was on sale for about £650, at the time i remember thinking how the shots were soooo good, now looking back they are pixeled and such bad quality.

TonyHetherington

32,091 posts

280 months

Monday 6th November 2006
quotequote all
I think the same thing with Gran Turismo. Have you played GT1 recently? The quality is SO poor in relation to modern stuff yet, at the time, it was amazing!

where on EARTH will we be in 10yrs time, eh?!

UKBob

Original Poster:

16,277 posts

295 months

Monday 6th November 2006
quotequote all
TonyHetherington said:
I think the same thing with Gran Turismo. Have you played GT1 recently? The quality is SO poor in relation to modern stuff yet, at the time, it was amazing!

where on EARTH will we be in 10yrs time, eh?!
Right here, still debating megapixels Id imagine hehe

The one instance where megapixels do matter is stock. Buyers can search for images by keyword, category, and image size. There are microstock websites who already only accept images which are 8mp or larger in size.

TonyHetherington

32,091 posts

280 months

Monday 6th November 2006
quotequote all
8mp?! eek My 20D only does 8.1mp I think it is?!

UKBob

Original Poster:

16,277 posts

295 months

Monday 6th November 2006
quotequote all
TonyHetherington said:
8mp?! eek My 20D only does 8.1mp I think it is?!
I know. Can you believe it. Microstock too!

If I want the images Im taking now to sell (for print) in 10 years time Id need a 16mp camera in theory rolleyes

spitfire-ian

4,244 posts

258 months

Monday 6th November 2006
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I've decided it's probably time to upgrade my camera now my phone has the same megapixels!

badbeachbuggy

5,506 posts

265 months

Monday 6th November 2006
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I first started taking digital pictures with my camcorder (Sony PC100) about 4/5 years ago. 1 Megapixel and no real control but it got me interested enough to carry on.

Platinum

2,101 posts

253 months

Monday 6th November 2006
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Around £100 for a basic Minolta P&S 1.3MP camera

sparkythecat

8,104 posts

285 months

Monday 6th November 2006
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My first digicamera was a Nikon Coolpix 990 with 3.34 megapixels.

In 2000 it cost a staggering £830 yikes

davidy

4,492 posts

314 months

Monday 6th November 2006
quotequote all
My first digital camera was Fuji MX-2900 bought in 1999 for a mere £650 2.3 Mega Pixels, to give it its due, its still going strong now and gets regular use (original battery too!).

Not as bad as an addition 16K or RAM for my BBC Micro at £64 (£4 per K!) or a 40Mb single sided 5.25in floppy drive at £160, both bought around 1984!

davidy

LongQ

13,864 posts

263 months

Monday 6th November 2006
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My first was an Agfa 1.2Mpix with smart media card and a FlashTrack swivel zoom lens. On sale at £450 because a 1.6Mpix version had replaced it ...) I think the Smart media card was 4Mb so I shelled out another 30 odd quid as I recall for a 16Mb card as well. It did come with 4 rechargable AA's though and a fast (5hr) charger. It also had a floppy disk style holder for the media card for easy downloading - that was apparently worth about £70 ! I seem to recall that might have been 1998.

Still got it all. It's sitting, unused for a couple of years, on a shelf behind me. Use the charger still, though I recently got a better one.

monkeyhanger

9,267 posts

272 months

Monday 6th November 2006
quotequote all
UKBob said:
There are microstock websites who already only accept images which are 8mp or larger in size.


So they want to pay you peanuts yet seem to be insisting that you shell out £4K for a 1DsMk2 (or similar) for the privelege?

Bizarre.

andybuk99

312 posts

259 months

Tuesday 7th November 2006
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thats the thing people dont realise that its not the quantity of the pixels its the quality. a 6mp digital back would give a far superior file than that of a 10mp camera, the colour fidelity and lack of noise would allow you to interpolate up to massive sizes and would retain the quality (obviously depending on the viewing distance).

UKBob

Original Poster:

16,277 posts

295 months

Tuesday 7th November 2006
quotequote all
monkeyhanger said:
UKBob said:
There are microstock websites who already only accept images which are 8mp or larger in size.


So they want to pay you peanuts yet seem to be insisting that you shell out £4K for a 1DsMk2 (or similar) for the privelege?

Bizarre.
Not quite that black and white - £700-900 will get you a decent semi-pro slr or P&S 8-10mp camera these days. And im guessing, but a large number of microstock sales will surely be for web use.

cvp

2,799 posts

305 months

Tuesday 7th November 2006
quotequote all
monkeyhanger said:
UKBob said:
There are microstock websites who already only accept images which are 8mp or larger in size.


So they want to pay you peanuts yet seem to be insisting that you shell out £4K for a 1DsMk2 (or similar) for the privelege?

Bizarre.


They seem to be appying similar standards to the traditional agencies but not giving you the photographer same value. For instance Almay standards are submission of an 8 bit jpeg file, minimum file size 50MB. That's a reasonable amount of interpolation required off virtually all serious kit apart from the massively priced 1DsMk2.

Just food for thought, if you are using a 1DsMk2 and some serious lenses then you will probably have invested in the ballpark of £10k in kit alone. Assuming a payment to you of 50p per image, then you're having to sell a total of 20,000 image impressions just to recover the cost of your kit! Hell of a way to choose to make money.

Not having a go at Bob or other microstock guys but do you not value your hard work at more than 50p a shot?

Chris

andybuk99

312 posts

259 months

Tuesday 7th November 2006
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chris dont start that again , there was a loooong thread a while ago and they still didnt see it banghead