Make the most of your powerful professional camera. Your Canon EOS 5D has features you've dreamed of, like a 12.8 megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor that lets you take advantage of your lenses with no focal-length conversion factor. Make the most of all it can do with the professional advice and tips in this go anywhere guide. Learn to use every control, compare various lenses and Speedlites, and then explore how to get peak performance from your EOS 5D in all the shooting situations where it truly shines.Customer Review: Quick and easy guide to the 5D
When I bought the 5D I quickly realized I wanted something besides the Canon manual. There are very few choices out there so I took the chance on this. For very little money you get an easily read, well rounded book about the 5D. I found it pretty easy to navigate around, and it answered all the questions I had. It is clearly geared more to the newer DSLR user and covers different type of photography (i.e. event, portrait, etc) which is not quite what I would expect in a field guide but the information is accurate and will be very helpful to newcomers. See the review just before mine for detailed information on chapters, etc. The best of limited choices and I definitely recommend.
Customer Review: Users Manual Made Easier
Canon -EOS 5D Digital Field Guide By Bryden D. this field guide for the Canon 5D is basically aimed at the DSLR amateur and prosumer photographer. It is obvious that the writer worked with this camera for some time before writing this book. The technical advantages of the 5D are presented in four major sections that really make it easy to understand and follow. Part 1. " Using the canon EOS 5D " Part 2. " Selecting and using lens - Working with Canon Speeslites." Part 3. " Shooting with the EOS 5D " Part 4. " Appendixes A & B " A- Canon CMOS Sensors and Processors B- EOS 5D Specifiacations Lowrie writes in a way that easily explains most of the technical fatures of th 5D. Although not perfect, this book is a good choice to help make it easier to understand some of the clipped explanations used in the Canon 5D User Manual.
If you were selling apples, which of the following scenarios would you enjoy most?
A. You start your morning with a leisurely breakfast at 9:00 a.m., load three dozen apples into your cart and deliver them to one customer at 11:00 a.m., and then spend the afternoon at the beach.
B. You are awakened by the alarm at 5:00 a.m.; you rush through breakfast so that you can start knocking on doors in order to sell your 36 apples by the end of the day.
No contest, right? Yet most stock photographers resort to the second scenario, or even a third: they wait by the phone and hope someone will call them.
In the early days of the California Gold Rush, the '49ers who proved most successful were those that panned the creeks first to locate the gold, but then took one more important step. They followed the gold back to the source and then spent their time in the mine.
Too often, stock photographers will sell a photo to a buyer and consider the sale and relationship done. The photographer goes on to look for "gold" elsewhere.
FUTURE WORTH
Successful stock photographers, on the other hand, learn how to "mine their lode." That is, they calculate the future net worth of each photobuyer (and the market he/she represents) and put the buyer into their marketing program, which includes systematic promotion. A buyer soon forgets a photo and a photographer unless you remind the buyer regularly of your work.
You can cultivate long-term working relationships with photobuyers at markets whose photo needs match your strong coverage areas.
Determining the future net worth of an editor or photobuyer is not difficult to do. Based on photobuyers at other, similar, markets, be it a book or magazine publisher, a corporation, etc., the photographer estimates the jobs, sales, and other revenue that can be obtained from the photobuyer over two to three years, and then projects what potential revenues will come in. Past experience shows that each buyer represents certain predictable variables: per-picture rate of pay, average number of pictures bought per transaction, frequency of purchase per year, spin-off to other photobuyers in the same publishing house/ad agency/ corporation. From this, it's possible for the stock photographer to determine a fairly accurate future net worth of their new photobuyer.
The future net worth over a ten year period of a typical low-budget buyer would be approximately $5,000. A mid-range buyer would be approximately $25,000, and a high range would be about $75,000. By the way, we have found ten years is an average length of time you can expect to remain with a buyer in the publishing industry.
PROMOTION
The critical factor is promotion.
If the stock photographer does not set up a regular and consistent plan of promotion, the new photobuyer could very easily be lost.
What does it cost to promote? If your costs to promote were just 10% of the expected gross revenue, it's easy to see that promotion costs are irrelevant. The critical factor is to know who you should spend your promotional dollars on.
Which brings us to how to get good leads worth your promotion dollars (panning for gold along the creek). Obviously, the leads in your marketletter (PhotoDaily, PhotoLetter, or PhotoStockNotes/Plus) are the most cost-effective for you. If you spend $330 per year on a marketletter service, and obtain 10 excellent mid-range leads during that one year, you have a gold mine: 10 x $25,000 = $250,000 future net worth--at a cost of only $330, plus 10% to promote to them over a ten-year period. There are not many businesses that can realize that kind of cost-effective marketing strategy.
Begin today. Follow up with the photobuyers you've cultivated in the past. Start mining this hidden asset of yours.
Rohn Engh is director of PhotoSource International and publisher of PhotoStockNotes. Pine Lake Farm, 1910 35th Road, Osceola, WI 54020 USA. 1 800 624 0266 Fax: 1 715 248 7394. Web site: http://www.photosource.com/products
Canon D20