Check out Digital Darrell's new startup website at:
Mainly a nature site but great examples here. I have one image lloaded. Weather is crappy here in South Germany!
Purestock
These are some tips that he sent to me:
Primarily, the interest in stock images is for lack of noise, high
sharpness, saturated colors, and good compositions.
Shooting in Aperture Priority is a good idea if nothing is moving fast, since you can forget shutter and worry about depth of field.
Always use a tripod, keep your ISO set to its lowest number. (100 or 200) Use your self-timer set to 5 or 10 seconds to release the shutter, or use an electronic or infrared release. Don't release the shutter by hand if you can help it.
Keep your histogram on the bright side, as much as possible, since this reduces noise tremendously. Do not clip the highlights though. Push the histogram all the way up to the right side of the histogram window without going past it.
Use normal sharpening in-camera, as this will overcome the blur filter (anti-alias filter). The D50 is a very sharp camera. Do not sharpen any of your images before submitting them.
Sharpening is best left to the buyer.
Do add additional color to your images by boosting saturation by 10 or 15 at the most. 5 to 10 is better. Too much saturation and the image looks like candy.
Shoot RAW with your camera set to "-2 Low Contrast" (Tone Comp on page 77 of your manual). This allows the camera to capture more image detail.
Later in postprocessing manually raise the contrast yourself to give the image "snap." You will have to decide when it has snap, and your eye will learn the best look. Too much contrast and you will blow out the highlights. Too little and the image looks dull and gray. Your images will not look their best until you postprocess them, when set to this mode, since the camera will be trying to get maximum dynamic range, without clipping highlights or darks. Shoot two images to see the difference, one set to Normal, one set to
Low Contrast. Examine them on your monitor and you'll see what I mean about detail and snap. Doing this, you are taking control of your camera.
Always use Color Mode II (Adobe RGB). See page 77 of your manual under Color Mode. This is a wider gamut setting than sRGB, and will give you better looking images after postprocessing.
Set you saturation in-camera to normal, not enhanced. Saturate your images later by yourself to taste.
What I am saying is turn your camera into a low-contrast, high dynamic range, low ISO, normal saturation imaging device. This is very different from the way most people shoot, and the images will be better for it.
HOWEVER, you will have to make them so, by adjusting the image yourself. You are basically telling you camera, "I can do this better, you just get the best light and color you can, and I'll do the rest."
Primarily, don't shoot handheld unless you can't get the picture any other way. Handheld is NEVER sharper than on a tripod no matter how fast the shutter speed is. USE A TRIPOD!!!!!
Purenaturestock