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70 Forum reputation = neutralAbout Simon
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Rank
Forum newbie
Contact Methods
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Website URL
www.cornwall-ideas.co.uk
Profile Information
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Gender
Male
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Location
Cornwall
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Interests
landscapes, seascapes, the Pug, gardening, music, wine
Alamy
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Alamy URL
https://www.alamy.com/contrib-browse.asp?cid={3767A61F-5053-4E34-AFD4-D2D1EEF5D592}&name=Simon+Maycock
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Images
10315
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Joined Alamy
06 Apr 2014
Recent Profile Visitors
945 profile views
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Having got a small rig cage to mount microphones, etc, , i have noticed, and read elsewhere since, that a couple of annoying features about the XT-4 are :- The screen doesn't angle up, you have to flip it out, then up - and if you have a cage attached then you can't do that properly. The silly rubber flaps on the HDMI port size of things are not that well designed, and get in the way There are apparently some settings that are disabled once you start shooting a video - not got to that bit yet. Other than that, I'm liking the camera a lot. I never had a an XT-
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Thanks for pointing that out .. I'm surprised because normally if the captions don't appear they fail straight away. i'll go look now.
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Hi - For the time being I got a Godox transmitter Fuji, and a Nikon receiver so I can use off camera flash albeit manually, which is fine. I may well get a Godox Fuji
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Like a lot of other people I got tired of lugging heavy DSLR and huge lenses around. I got the XT-3 and a couple of kit lenses ( actually one less than kit, the XC) and was blown away by the quality of pictures from them. I then found a 1/2 price F2.8 zoom lens - new on Ebay, so got that. The X-T30 has it's minor annoyances with being so small, hence the X-T4. I'm hanging onto the Nikon stuff for the time being to use for my storm pictures, not point in getting a brand new camera soaked with salt-water, although i came close to it yesterday 😉
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Bit the bullet and bought an X-T4 this week ( open box, good price). Got accepted into the Fuji professional scheme as well. On it's first outing sold a live news pic, so can't complain. Lovely bright viewfinder. I got an X-T30 a bit ago which will become backup / holiday camera now. I'm still tempted with the Sony's though, will be interesting what the replacement for the A7 III will be like and cost, from what I read it sounds ideal - I don't fancy a mega resolution camera, but at 30 ish megapixels I can see that working. Just need to sort out how the video works now, thats going to be
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can I use iPhone 12
Simon replied to tonywoodphoto's topic in Alamy Quality Control and technical talk
I think Alamy should allow live news from mobile phones through the usual route, rather than suffering a 50% drop in revenue. To recount a story from a couple of year ago. I was standing on a freezing cliffside photographing the sculptures in the sand for Armistice day in Cornwall, when a very well known Getty photographer comes and stands next to me. One of my pics sold to the Telegraph, he had a couple of front pages. I emailed him with congrats, and he got back to me saying the picture that most papers took was off his Iphone - and he had the full range of canon pro gear with him ! -
QC Failure - 1st in many years
Simon replied to Simon's topic in Alamy Quality Control and technical talk
You guys put me to shame - I've obviously been very lucky in the past... I did lift some shadows, I often have to - usually shooting straight into the sunrise which I do most mornings,but that didn't apply to this pic. Having said that my pics sell pretty regularly, so something must be ok. Onwards an upwards. -
QC Failure - 1st in many years
Simon replied to Simon's topic in Alamy Quality Control and technical talk
Noise is what they said - although it was shot at ISO 640 on a Fuji XT-30 with their excellent F2.8 lens. That camera doesn't really do noise until well above that, and I can't see any noise. Personally I think the lighting was a bit dodgy, and not all elements were focused as well as they could have been ( and that was the complacent bit, as I could have done better ). I would put the picture up, but they're quite niche and I don't want to give that away. I will re-do when I get chance and when the pug is in the mood 😉 -
Happy new year all .. I see quite a few threads on increased QC failures, so thought I'd post my latest experience. Most of my submissions are via the Live news upload route, as I mainly do weather, topical pictures etc which bypasses the normal QC mechanism. However I do upload stock from time to time, and need to do more of that for sure. Upto now I've had 5 star rating for several years and to be honest I reckon I became complacent over quality, with virtually instant approval. So, last week I had my first batch sitting in QC for several days, and received my first QC rejec
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I used to make my own PCs many many many years ago. From a peace of mind perspective I don';t bother now, I just tell people to get Dell with a 3 year on-site warranty. Not saying they don't crash as well, but I like the idea of 3 years worth of guaranteed hardware cover at least.
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Hi Bryan, I spend a significant amount of time supporting 200+ pcs running windows 10, and periodically and randomly this happens. Usually it’s something like a windows update that’s made one bit of hardware crash windows .. buggy device driver. If you want to dig deep it is possible to examine logs which can show what the faulting service and driver is. Don’t get too hung up on event error logs ( other than disk errors) as there are always some errors. I would say 1 - do a backup and check it’s ok. Then update the computer bios .. available from manufacturer if you have a HP, Dell or sim
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PA Media/Alamy - Positive
Simon replied to geogphotos's topic in Stock photography discussion and contributor experience
It will be interesting to see, not that I will 😉 , how much you get paid. One of the issues primarily on the live news side is that I was under the impression that the papers pay PA a flat fee per year, for as many pictures as they can take - which makes it's difficult for us independents when standing next to you is a photographer from PA and one from Getty, as has happened many times in the past for me. PA even send their Bristol photographer down to Cornwall on a regular basis for news / weather pics. -
Clearance times
Simon replied to imageplotter's topic in Stock photography discussion and contributor experience
In the past when I've had delays on payment news pictures I've spoken to the news team and they've been pretty good at helping to sort. At the opposite end of the spectrum I've sold some news videos via other agencies and received money the same day !! -
Small camera recommendation
Simon replied to Panthera tigris's topic in Alamy Quality Control and technical talk
I got a Fuji XT-30 recently and it takes great pictures even with the cheap lens. However coming from Nikon I do find the menu system fiddly and miss having what I was used to on the dials. They have done various offers in the UK of late, so if the price is high again maybe wait for the next drop. It's also way lighter than the Nikon D500 I've got and looks less conspicuous . It locked up on me today, which dissapointed me, as I was thinking about pairing it with an XT-3 as well. Had sales from it in the first weeks of owning it.