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So I decided to invest in a Fujifilm X100F which fits my street photography style and so far I'm loving it. I have never uploaded photos to Alamy before but I wanted to start uploading some stuff but when I try to pass the first QC, it auto rejects my photos saying the camera is not accepted? I was under the impression it was sufficient enough even though it's not a pure DSLR from what I've read on the forum before. Maybe I missed something.

 

They are 6000x4000 size, compressed size between 5 and 7 mb. I do not have Photoshop or Lightroom yet so I just have some crappy freeware to edit pictures. I worked from the RAW file, played with a few things and then saved it as high quality JPG...is that what is causing the auto reject?

 

Would love to have some help and comments (other than the obvious get LR and/or Photoshop, that will come).

 

Thanks!

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Hi Olivier

 

I believe that the camera you have is a fixed lens point and shoot compact camera and this might possibly be the issue. 

 

Have a look at this blog post

 

It states that "Almost all compact cameras, fixed lens cameras – SLR-like bridge cameras and all mobile phones cannot produce images that meet our guidelines"

 

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Hello,

 

The fuji X100f is a suitable camera for stock photos; other than the fixed lens it shares a lot of DNA with the other APS - C Fuji cameras.

I surmise that there has been an admin error with the suitable camera look up list at Alamy, sevaral retail sites list the X100f as a point and shoot, this may be the source of the confusion.

 

Oliver, I suggest you contact member services who will be able to assist you.

 

 

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This camera should be accepted. Period! 

That said, since you aren’t developing your pictures in higher-end software, there might be some issues. Possibly with color balance, noise, or other things. If your images have uncorrected problems, then QC might blame it on the camera, not the shooter. 

If you want to do well in stock, part of producing professional images requires higher-end software. For instance, i shoot with a Fuji X-T2, but if the light isn’t good, or I’m shooting indoors requiring higher ISO, I use the excellent noise reduction slider in Lightroom.

Just recently, I shot my Christmas decor inside my house and every image was too noisy to be accepted by QC until I worked on them in Lightroom and Photoshop.

I’m suggesting that if your images have problems that QC noticed in many of your images, they then looked at the camera info, said, “Ah hah, fixed lens” and blamed camera when the fault was the developing.

All images have to be looked at blown up to 100% to visualize problems. This opens another can of worms, because properly developing your images isn’t done just by having the right software. It’s a learning process that improves over time. For instance, I use the noise slider “just enough” for them to pass QC without ruining the detail in the image, making them appear plasticky. Learning what “just enough” is comes with trial and error.

I know that as time went by and my developing skills improved, and the software itself improved, I looked back on my early works on Alamy and shuddered. And I will say I had my share of failures back then that resulted in a wait of 3 weeks before I could upload again. That was a very discouraging bummer.

Betty

Edited to add....you need to be shooting RAW, not jpeg. If you acquire good software, RAW will allow you more leeway for the best corrections, especially white balance. Only after your developing skills are very good, would you want to consider shooting jpeg. After years, I still always shoot RAW.

Edited by Betty LaRue
Typo
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I blame QC.  An Alamy contributor recently had an image rejected for noise.  The 'noise' was actually water spray.  Even after emailing Alamy, the contributor got the same response - it's noise.  No, it's ridiculous!  Alamy, sort it out!!!

Edited by Colblimp
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I've uploaded loads from the original X100, no problem at all, the whole series are great inconspicuous 'walk around' cameras and yours must surely be the best one yet, much more resolution than mine. Alamy must have made a mistake unless it is instead the processing as suggested, it's not the camera. Are you leaving the EXIF data in the jpegs, that way it should be automatically recognized.

 

If you don't want to commit yourself to the subscription version of Lightroom you can still buy the 'Perpetual' Licence version though Adobe don't make it easy to do so. There a few features that it doesn't have over CC but I can't say I'm missing them. You may not even need Photoshop and anyway Affinity Photo is a good & much cheaper option, again a 'perpetual' licence, a one time purchase. The important thing to note is that it definitely does handle the RAW files from the X100F. If you are thinking of buying a brand new very recent camera in the near future then CC will be the only way to go though and Perpetual would be a false economy. Personally I like the idea that I'm free of the shackles of Adobe and their on-line validation.

 

Adobe Compatibility chart here:

 

https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/camera-raw/kb/camera-raw-plug-supported-cameras.html

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Thanks for all the feedback.

 

I think I wasn't clear enough though. When I submit the pictures...I can't even submit. Just uploading the pictures triggers an automatic "non-suitable". With my crappy software (Fotor), I can upload pictures from my friend's camera (X-E1) fine and then I would wait for the QC's feedback. Same software, same "manipulations" but the non-suitable is automatic after upload which is weird because I could even submit pictures from my old X20 (can you tell I like Fujifilm?).

 

There is definitely something I am doing wrong if other people have used older X100 or even the X100F and gone through. I'll try a few things but at least I know I didn't buy the completely wrong camera.

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So you are uploading your images withe the help of your Fotor software?  I'm not familiar with it but wonder what the output is, i.e., what is your file size and quality?  Perhaps it is downsizing the images for posting online, or something like that.

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You might try using the camera's internal file conversion software (go into image review, push the OK button, select from pallet of options such as film taste, and output a JPEG). You need to leave enough room on the SD card to store the resulting JPEGs, which you can then transfer to your computer.

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Trying to determine exactly what' going on here is a tad difficult, so forgive the impudence but I'm going to repeat a question from earlier:

 

what _exactly_ is the message you get when you try to upload?

 

DD

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15 hours ago, Colblimp said:

I blame QC.  An Alamy contributor recently had an image rejected for noise.  The 'noise' was actually water spray.  Even after emailing Alamy, the contributor got the same response - it's noise.  No, it's ridiculous!  Alamy, sort it out!!!

 

I'd truly like to see that image at 100%, for future reference and to avoid similar. Is that possible?

 

DD

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Olivier i had the same rejections last year when i started to upload those beautiful Fuji S3 Pro images.

Just changed camera settings to RAW instead of Jpg (camera is 15 years old and jpeg noise above 800 is simply too high) and it went fine throughout QC.

I had rejections at the beginning of my Alamy experience 'cause i was exporting from LR at 72dpi for reducing file size.

Another case: rejections for 360 images not properly formatted and/or keyworded with PS.

Immediate rejections are for some errors like that we're doin' on our images.

 

Could you pls explain your workflow here in details?

Edited by KODAKovic
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20 minutes ago, Colblimp said:

No, it's not my image.

 

Maybe the contributor could make it available?

 

It's just that over the past decade or so there have been many dozens of claims of QC incorrectly confusing things like tree bark, textured stone and the like for noise. And to the best of my knowledge every single claim so far, when the image has been presented at 100% for viewing to support the claim, has been been shown by forum members' learned inspection to have been in fact correctly identified by QC as noise. NOt quite the exact same issue, but the one I remember most fondly was the contributor angrily claiming QC were total idiots because they claimed there were dustspots in an image when there clearly (according to the contributor) were none. From memory, forum members pointed out over a dozen dustspots :)

 

. . . but back to noise. I hoped we might finally have an example where QC could be shown to be interpreting noise where there was none, an issue of some import to many here.

 

DD

 

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Okay I will try to make it clearer.

 

When I'm in the Alamy Image Manager page, I have to upload 3 files to submit for my first QC. Here is the result as soon as I select 3 photos taken by my Fujifilm X100F in RAW and processed (btw I got Lightroom and tried, same result) : 

 

01R4cPa.png

 

I cannot even submit the pictures, I just get automatically rejected in a fraction of a second because of the "unsuitable camera" error.

 

When I select any 3 images from the X-E1, here is what I see :

 

mLDG7BR.png

 

It lets me upload the pictures to submit at least and they could be rejected or accepted by QC but at least it's not an auto decline.

 

I haven't had time to contact anyone yet nor do I even know whom to contact but the point of my post was originally to see if anybody had submitted pictures from an X100F and gotten through which they have.

 

Again, thanks for the feedback and trying to help. I appreciate it.

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I also joined Alamy quite recently, though I've done other agency work for years. I also seem to remember that when I tried to upload photos from my X100F for the first 3 QC test pics, they were automatically rejected as well.

 

Oddly, since being accepted by Alamy, I have uploaded photos from the X100F without a problem; not only that, even photos from the initial X100, from X100S and X100T, all passed muster. Not to speak of the X-T1, X-T2 and X-T3.

 

I would suggest you use a different camera for your first 3 test shots (maybe you can borrow or rent one?), and after you get accepted the X100F should be all right. I must have 50 or so shots from the X100F in my portfolio.  

 

 

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