Stock Options

The Oxo Tower, originally uploaded by Me (?).

I have a number of my photos on Flickr for sale on a number of microstock sites. Each site offers different payment options and price points. Take your pick...

Buy My Stock Images:

• iStockPhoto
• Fotolia
• Shutterstock
• Dreamstime
• Bigstock
• Microstock Button

Sell Your Stock Images:

• iStockPhoto
• Shutterstock
• Dreamstime
• Bigstock
• 
  

Camera Equipment UK Price Drop Alerts

Criss Cross, originally uploaded by Me (?).

In my last post I said I would really like to be able to create a price drop alert email to tell me when a specific product reaches a specific price or has been discounted heavily.

I am sure there is a proper service somewhere that does this but I thought it would be a good excuse to create a really basic mashup using Yahoo Pipes.

What this 'thing' allows you to do is create an RSS feed filtered by brand/product and also by the amount that the price has dropped by.

You can then use Yahoo RSS Alerts to email you the feed when it changes.

Great! Well it is a bit "String and Sellotape" but I like fiddling!

Step 1: Create a Filtered Feed

Go to my Price Buster Yahoo Pipe at pipes.yahoo.com/xrrr/camerapricebuster

Click "Run Pipe" to see the raw camerapricebuster.co.uk price drop feed so you can see what sort of information is in the feed.

Enter a product or brand into the "Fliter Text" box - for example enter "Canon" for all Canon products or "300" for all 300mm lenses. This will filter the original feed so that only the words you enter end up in the result. You can test it by clicking "Run Pipe".

If you want to limit results by the size of the price drop then enter a number into the "Price Drop" box - for example enter "9" to remove all feed items where the price drop was less than (and including) £9.00. Again you can test by clicking "Run Pipe".

If you want to limit results below a maximum price then enter a number into the "Price Lower Than" box. Any item with a price higher than the price you enter will be filtered out.

So if for example you wanted to get an email when a Canon 24-105mm f/4L lens is priced lower than, say, £700 (I wish) you would enter:
Price Lower Than = 700
Filter Text = "24-105"

If you are entering a product that is not already in the list then you need to be careful you use the same item name as the camerapricebuster.co.uk or else it will not work.

Step 2: Create an Alert

When you are happy with your new feed click on the "Get as RSS" button and copy and paste the RSS URL:

e.g.

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=4kKo4O0B3hGmiar4PhJ3AQ&_render=rss&filter=24-105&price=400

Press the back button on your browser and press "More Options" and then "Results by Email or Phone". Note: you may need to be logged on to Yahoo in order to do this.

Fill in the form and start receiving your personalised price drop email notifications.

Job done.

Camera Equipment Buying Tips

X Marks the Spot, originally uploaded by Me (?).

I am in the market for a new camera lens because I am getting rather annoyed with my Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM. At the wide end it gets huuuuuuge barrel distortion and quite bad chromatic aberration. So I have decided it is time to change. After much consideration and dilemma I have decided on investing in a Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM instead. I have one other "L" series lens and I swear that it is hard to take a bad picture with that lens so it is time to upgrade. I have done all the donkey work so I thought I would summarise my usual Internet haunts for camera based research.

For the newby photographer out there; these are the five key sites you need to know about when looking for new equipment:

1) Flickr
There are 3 aspects to Flickr that make it a great resource:

(i) The discussion forum search. A great place to get real world opinions on equipment.
(ii) Lens tagging. Perfect for finding examples of shots taken with your particular lens. See the Canon DSLR User Group and Nikkor Flickr groups for details.
(iii) Camera finder. Not sure which camera body to go for? Check out the rankings and example shots.

2) Digital Photography Review
Without a doubt *the* best place to go for in depth reviews of camera bodies. They have been a bit slow at doing lens reviews (2 or 3 lenses a month across all brands) but there are an awful lot of lenses out there and they have limited time!

3) Fred Miranda
This is the best place to go for a 'crowdsourced' view of the best lenses out there. It is all based on the scoring from real users and therefore opinions can be quite polar. My advice is to look at the aggregate score and take the individual comments with a pinch of salt.

4) SLR Gear
This is a new find for me as I only found out about it this week. In a similar way to dpreview.com these guys are doing lab tests of all SLR lenses out there. In addition they also have a user forum for end users to score (similar to Fred Miranda). The lab reviews are not as in depth as dpreview.com but they do currently have better coverage. If you want to compare lab results graphs between lenses this is currently the best place to go.

5) Camera Price Buster
This is also a new find for me this week and it now my new favourite. The site aggregates prices from a number of online dealers and displays the best prices for each piece of equipment. Price aggregators are not new but I like this site's specific UK camera buyer's focus. Another great feature is the price tracker graphs. They act like stock price trackers to show the price history and trending. If you are not in a rush to buy then keeping an eye on the graphs is a great way to keep on top of the best prices. I would really like to see some sort of price alert capability where you can get an email alert if a particular product drops below a price threshold. The site *does* offer a 'price drop' RSS feed which you can subscribe to which does go some way towards this. Note it is a UK only site.


So there you go, five places to go in order to make sure you always make the best camera purchases.

One final note of caution. Due to the financial meltdown and the crappy £ verses the Yen, lens prices have all gone up recently and show little sign of dropping in the near term...