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quade

Ok, how about THIS for a student operation?

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We've been talking a bit about how to best deal with digital cameras and student operations. So I did some checking and Shutterfly now offers a business solution that I think might actually work.

Check THIS out and let me know what you guys think.

My plan would be to not charge for the photos at all at jump time, but rather give them a card saying where they could look on the web to order their prints.

Price accordingly.

Looking at the web site further . . .

In addition to the annual fee for hosting the services, Shutterfly also takes their wholesale print fee and an additional 10% convenience fee to handle order processing, monthly reporting, and accounting fees.

They'd cut you a check 45 days after month end -- that's a hell of a long float, but still not unreasonable if you have a high volume operation.

I think the thing I'd be most worried about is the storage limit. In a high volume op 5000 images (the largest available) might mean you'd have to put a pretty short time limit on how long you kept images up on the site. Let's say you put up 20 images per jump . . . 5000/20 = 250 jumps?

Does anybody do a total of 250 student/tandem camera jumps per month? Well, maybe the larger DZ, but an individual camera flyer might get away with keeping the images up for maybe 6 months, so that's not too bad is it? But what happens after that?
quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

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This is exactly the sort of operation I have been talking about. Shutterfly is one of many web based print labs offering this sort of service. They also allow the option of a "portal" to their website from your own.

A better solution might be to talk to local print labs with a bit of internet presence that'll work with you to the same end result. Having a local company can save a bit on shipping charges and resolving problems may be easier when you can walk through their door.

The laws of physics are strictly enforced.

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I've seen ski resorts use this type of operation... although they were still using film, developing, then scaning... I talked to them about it and they seemed to like it ok... their margin would be alot better if they were using digital...

doesn't OB use something like this?

Josh
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. - Edmund Burke

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doesn't OB use something like this?



Not to my knowledge. He may for some of the smaller stuff, but OB, Raoul and I did most (all?) of the printing for the Women's World Record on-site at Perris and OB usually prints stuff right in his team room.

Jump Run Productions (Brad Hood) -may- have used something like that for the fulfillment of the record photos for the sponsors, but Brad's web site doesn't look like he's using anything like a service to do it.
quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

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I went back to look at what I had seen... he has some older stuff (last year) at craigobrienphotography.photoreflect.com... I looked in to what Photoreflect's deal is... they give you a eStorefront to take orders, they take 10-15% (depending on volume) plus a processing fee, then you print (or have printed) and ship yourself, but no upfront cost or annual fee...

the shutterfly thing looks like it may be a better deal and less headache... but I'm too tierd to crunch any numbers

Josh
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. - Edmund Burke

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Hmmm, I was totally unaware of that site.

Geeze what a loser am I?

I'll float the Shutterfly thing by OB and Raoul this weekend. I'm almost certain that it would save him a bunch of headaches on things like swoop meets.

The thing I'm loving about the Shutterfly deal is that the photog doesn't actually have to even know the person making the order. So there's a whole huge level of crap that you don't have to deal with.
quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

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I took a bit of time to look for this sort of service. I only found two. One of them was Shutterfly. The other was www.PhotoAccess.com.

PhotoAccess has two programs to pick from as follows...

One time setup fee of $500
No monthly fees
$1.00 per photo printed service fee
Prints sold to you at existing web site prices (for example,
5x7 - $0.95;
8x10 - $3.49)

or

$100 one time setup fee
$19.95 a month
$1.50 per photo printed service fee
Prints sold to you at existing web site prices (for example,
5x7 - $0.95;
8x10 - $3.49)


I think shutterfly might be the better deal.

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Q, thanks for the info.

We went on a whitewater trip last summer and this is exactly the setup they used. They had this domain name up right at the exit of each rapid section. Whitewater.com or something. We went home or to work, looked at all the pictures, and ordered what we wanted.

It might really be a winner for skydiving photogs when a big family comes out to watch one family member do a jump, either tandem or AFF.

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Ok guys I bit the bullet for all of us and I'm now experimenting with my new Shutterfly Pro Gallery account.

I'll let y'all know how it turns out as soon as I get my first "real" gallery & album up.

For now, here's a test one I whipped together.
http://www.shutterfly.com/pro/FutureCam/Skydive

The first thing I've noticed is the cropping options kinda suck -- I might have to do that before I upload.
quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

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Can the photographer self-fulfill the order or are they required to use the shutterfly developing service?



Well, the entire point of using the Shutterfly service would be that you don't have to do anyting but post the picts and get the checks.

BELIEVE ME -- the more you can have somebody else do actual printing and paperwork, the better. It's such a freekin' hassle getting the names, checking the orders, printing the orders, packaging the orders, shipping . . . yada, yada, yada.

ALSO, I think my tax lady is going to like this a lot better. It will cut down on a bunch of the copies of order forms and checks and stuff. MUCH more simple from a business stand point.

I've put a little note on the page saying that if a client needed a larger print they could contact me via email, but the majority of orders are going to be 8x10s or smaller anyway.
quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

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The first thing I've noticed is the cropping options kinda suck -- I might have to do that before I upload.


How will you manage the fact that all 3 print sizes have different ratios? 4x6, 5x7, 4x5 (8x10) Perhaps not frame quite so tightly on your original shot?
I think this is absolutely the best way for anybody to sell stills. No printing, no packaging, no mailing, no checks bouncing...just you depositing a check from Shutterfly!
The less work you have to do, the better. Hope you sell a ton of stills and make a bunch of money!
--
Murray

"No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

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Ok, so last night I did a couple of experiments with the Shutterfly system to determine how much of a hassle this is going to be.

The first experiment involved me simply uploading a bunch of fairly large digital photos to see what kind of time that was going to take.

I took 60 D60 photos at the highest res and lowest compression (average size for each photo is about 2.5 meg for a total of about 149 meg) and dragged and dropped them onto the Shutterfly batch upload plug-in. They started uploading immediately and took about an hour on my DSL connection from home.

I just did the same experiment from work and it took about 6 minutes on the Company LAN.

Next I did a bunch of crops and found that the long aspect ratio dimension of whatever crop you do (the 10 in 8x10 for instance) gets used for all of the other sizes. This actually isn't as bad as I had thought it might be, since for the most part if you crop for the 8x10, most of the other crops look pretty good too. The only exception is in horizontally composed pictures where the top of the subject is close to the top of the frame.

However, what happens when you tranfer these photos over to your Pro Gallery is that the crop that is shown is the 4x6 crop based upon whatever crop you happened to give the picture and there's no way for the client to see the other crops. Currently, Shutterfly says they're aware of the issue and are working on a solution.

Anyway, take a look at the gallery now and please give me some feedback.

http://www.shutterfly.com/pro/futurecam/skydive
quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

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If all the buyer had was a memory of the Shutterfly system, I'm wondering how they navigate to your gallery.



I'm not sure I understand the question, but the address I give below will take you to my "gallery" which could contain several "albums".

In my case, I'd make each "album" a different weeks worth of photos and I think that even a child would be able to find stuff from that.

Quote

What would your shutterfly address look like on a business card.



Since I already maintain a website, I could do something on the order of;

http://futurecam.com/photos (BTW, this is a fake address so it's not clicky) and then have that page immediately redirect to the correct site. This might be a better option for handing out cards to visiting skydivers (tandems) that don't know me or my web site.

Or I could simply have http://futurecam.com do the same thing as it does now, except instend of taking you to a weeks worth of photos on -my- site, it would take you to a weeks worth of photos on the Shutterfly site. Slightly more difficult for a tandem to figure out, but more inline with the folks that already check my web site on a regular basis.

Or if I didn't already maintain a web site I think I'd be stuck using the shutterfly default web address for my gallery;

http://shutterfly.com/pro/futurecam/skydive

Which is a hell of a long thing for them to type correctly -- I'll grant you that.
quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

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Yeah, Q, I was refering to wieners like me who don't have a website.:P

I was thinking if they could go to the Shutterfly website, find my name and then select my galleries.
THAT would really eliminate the need for me to have any other sort of web presence.

The site works fine. But I'd like whuffo grandmas and other regular Americans with 5th grade educations to find my stuff. So if they scroll past "Shemales" To "Shutterfly" I think it would be most useful if they could then scroll through an index past "Skanks" to "Skydive", click that, and then select Paul Quade's albums. Or scroll past Kelly to Kinky and find pictures of consenting adults frolicking in tandem harnesses attached to garage door openers.

Wow. Sorry. That got pretty "talkback". I got this huge lizard reading over my shoulder and it's making me nervous.

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Something along those lines would be really nice.

Yeah, I'm writing feature requests to Shutterfly like crazy -- I'm sure they're sick of me by now.



They don't have moderators to lock you out, do they?:P:P

OK, I'll knock it off. I'm ordering my D10 this weekend. Shutterfly means I might make the investment back in a couple years if I don't shear the damn thing off on the horizontal stabilizer.

And even if it doesn't, it's a good enough excuse.

YouDaQ.

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I'm ordering my D10 this weekend.



Something to think about.

In February of 1994, Apple introduced the Quick Take 100, the first consumer digital camera. It cost $749 and could store 32 images at 320*240

In 2003, the Canon PowerShot G3 costs $770 at bhphotovideo, comes with a 512MB flash card, capable of storing 864 images at 2272x1704. As an added bonus it has a 4X optical zoom.

Are you sure you won't regret this next year?

_Am
__

You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

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I've been looking at www.photoreflect.com.

There are some substantial differences between PhotoReflect and Shutterfly.

PhotoReflect will give you a web site/photo store with 'MyCompany.Photoreflect.com' where 'MyCompany' can be whatever you want it to be.
They do not have an annual fee or monthly fee.
They charge 18% of the order. (15% commision and 3% credit card service fee.)
You only upload low resolution images to your on-line store/photo gallery.
When a customer places an order, photoreflect collects the money and sends you an order confirmation and your money (sale amount less fees).
They will send you a check every two weeks for the sales that you have received.
You then have a choice of how to fulfill the order.
You can use their software to upload the hi-resolution images to one of their partnered developers. They say it only takes a couple mouse clicks to submit your photos for developing. The developer will ship directly to the customer. Or, you can do the work yourself using your local developer. Whichever way you fulfill the order, you must pay the provider for the costs of deveoping and shipping.

I think Shutterfly is the more simple solution but I wish they would offer a larger selection of enlargements.

There are pros and cons to both. It just depends on which best fits the needs of the individual photographer.

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High tech is always a PITA (pain in the @ss).

With computers, I've found if you spike in at the top end you have the longest life of product.

The D10 is just a refinement of the D60. All of these cameras just produce hi-res JPEG images. The pixel range of both is sharp as the human eye is going to percieive on average, and there doesn't appear to be a replacement for the eyeball on the horizon.

The next generation will be lighter, faster, and marginally sharper, and will have a bigger reciever so that a 20 mm lens is 20mm instead of 32mm on film, but I can live with that. I don't think SLR digital is going to get much cheaper, just more feature filled.

I'll have some regrets next year, but I'll take some great pictures during that time.

:)

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