billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

You were so close that stopping down some more would still blur the back ground. Also, depth of field increases faster away from the camera. So make sure the foreground is in focus.

Steve Perry Loc: Sylvania, Ohio

Honestly, there's nothing in that image that I would consider sharp when looking at it at 100%. I almost wonder if there was a touch of moment during the exposure.

ChuckMc Loc: Prescott, AZ

The bleep with what they say. I really like the shot. My only complaint is you should have shown it to us earlier. Like 10 years ago. Seriously, thanks for posting now
Chuck

frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

It is not sharp at 100%. When you submit photos they need to be sharp at 100% or they will be rejected. you should always check your photos at 100% even if you're not going to submit them for sale yes. This one looks good small as a lot of photos will but not at 100% if they're not in good focus.

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

"Good" to you or me visually may not meet requirements of a stock-photo service. They have to provide an image that will be used over a very wide range of viewing... from closeup to very high magnification. Doesn't mean your eyes are failing, or your equipment. Just means whoever you were trying to sell to has a different standard than you.

I recently got a quote on selling a lens to a used-equipment dealer. To me and other photographer friends the lens was in very good condition. Some slight "stuff" internally, but nothing that shows in photos. Sent it to them, and they rejected it. Didn't meet their quality standard for resale.

Beauty, in all things, is very much in the eye of the beholder.

autofocus Loc: North Central Connecticut

From what I see at 100%, none of it is sharp, looking at it smaller it looks fine, until you zoom in. I shoot with a D300 all the time and it's certainly capable of producing extremely sharp images, regardless of it being 12mp. I don't know if you mentioned what lens you were using...many lenses have sweet spots on the focal length and f/stop settings. Besides the lens, any one of several things can be at play here. None the less, letting the camera select the focus point, lens calibration needed, subject, or shooter movement, high ISO settings, wind, are just a few things to consider, and certainly DOF can be an issue when critical focus is needed, but that's probably not the case here as none of it is tack sharp from what I can see.

saxman71 Loc: Wenatchee

It my not be tack sharp (as others have pointed out) but the colors and overall composition are really very nice.

Thomas902 Loc: Washington DC

shamann "Beauty is in the eyes of the checkbook holder" Dean Collins who btw was one of the most gifted educators of the photographic arts and a frequent lecturer at the renowned Brooks Institute of Photography (now closed)... If the Stock Agency rejected the image they likely had a compelling reason... Also I place a high degree of credibility on Steve Perry thoughts here... Steve is a working commercial shooter and as such has no illusions on quality assurance...

Food for thought shamann, it is not the camera in the mix that drives the image equation, but rather the skill of the entity deploying it.... There have been many magazine covers shot with a 12mp camera as well as countless weddings ceremonies... As for macro? SOP generally predicate an aperture of f/11 to f/22... beyond that diffraction takes it's toll...

Best Advice shamann? Post this query in the True Macro Forum
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/s-102-1.html
Albeit ONLY after investing quality time reading their 14 initial postings...
I've benefited immensely from the stellar wisdom latent within each of these 14 initial posts.

Final thoughts? Generating a credible revenue stream from Stock Photo Agencies is a Herculean challenge (trust me I've been there, done that). How to reliably generate revenue from photography? That is an easy query to answer... Portraiture! Especially Family Portraiture...This works well for me and a myriad of other thriving commercial shooters... I would suggest you move away from Entomology illustrations asap... there is virtually little if any recompense in the aforementioned... albeit it is a popular genre for those who are likely financially independent...

I wish you well on your journey shamann...
And welcome to the UHH

Toment Loc: FL, IL

Nice shot at low resolution but not enough data at high to be sharp. don't see movement just confused pixels
so must be lack of finer detail that got the bad rating. IMHO

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

THANK YOU for providing a perfect example of why it's usually ridiculous to evaluate image sharpness and focus "at 100%", as so many people want to do.

"100% or WHAT?" is the problem.

Your image is MASSIVE.... It's 10134 pixels x 9494 pixels and set to 240 ppi. Are you really planning to make a 42 inch x 39 inch print from it?

Taken with a 12MP camera, original native resolution would have been 4,288 × 2,848 pixels.

The image has also obviously cropped, too, since it's closer to square than to the 3:2 aspect ratio of the camera.

So the image is more than double it's original resolution. "Up-rezzing" is rarely kind to images and needs to be done carefully.

On top of that, now people are going even further looking at it highly magnified "at 100%" and judging it!

"At 100%" on most computer monitors, as you've sized the image, is like viewing a 103 inch x 94 inch print of it from 18 or 20 inches away. That's almost 9 feet by 8 feet and is just plain silly! No one would ever view a print that size from so close.

It's a wonderful image with superb color and subject matter. IMO, it deserves a little extra work to make it as good as it can be.

I hope you don't mind, I took your image into Photoshop, selectively sharpened it a little using a high pass filter, burned in the background a bit, then re-sized and cropped it a little differently (and to a standard size).,... it's now set up for a 16 x 20 inch print, at 300 ppi. It would look excellent that size or smaller, such as 8 x 10. Of course, there are a number of possible crops and sizes... as well as a variety of ways the image might be treated... below is just intended to be a quick example of what might be possible.

While it's certainly fine to zoom in to 100% or even higher magnification for retouching work and careful images editing... It's silly to evaluate sharpness, focus, the appearance of noise and some other things at such a ridiculously high magnification. IMO, for sharpness & focus it should be viewed no higher than 33% on most computer monitors, which have a resolution around 100 ppi. In fact, a 300 ppi 16 x 20 "at 100%" on most computer monitors is still like looking at a four FOOT by five FOOT print from roughly 18 or 20" away. OF COURSE it looks like crap!

Click on the download and view the enlargements of the below versions of the image... one sized for printing... the other at more typical internet resolutions (which will display "life size" at 100%).

300 PPI, PRINT RESOLUTION

(Download)

100 PPI, INTERNET RESOLUTION

(Download)

frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

Allen, thanks for your good write up, and you're right, to an extent. My point to the op was, viewing at 100% is what stock photos want. They want sharp as a tack at 100%, so if he's going to submit them he needs to look at him at 100% to make sure they're sharp.

I've had some rejected also because they weren't sharp at 100% I thought they were great. So I did some more work in Lightroom and Photoshop resubmitting they got accepted. I think that's the biggest rejection is non sharpness at 100%.

Otherwise you're right I probably do about 50% on most of mine.

BTW..... Great job on the edit......

tcthome Loc: NJ

not a bad pic. Should of used f8 or higher say , f16 up to f22 for macro if you were using a macro lens.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

Thanks, but it was just a little quick work to see what was possible. If it were my image I'd probably spend a bit more time on it.

For stock photos, I can understand - to an extent - being hyper critical. They set high standards and critique sharpness... or whatever... to have the right of rejection to "keep out the junk". Probably hire someone to do the reviewing and give them a set of rules to go by, though... so I bet their standards get over-appliled.

I was just looking at an image in another post that's terribly under-exposed and full of noise... but actually is a beautiful shot. It makes me thing of an impressionist painting... a Seurat or Monet. But I'm sure it would never be accepted for stock photo uses. (Conversely, I've searched some major stock sites for certain things and found 9 out of 10 were incorrectly keyworded... Not to mention a lot were either Photoshopped to death or just plain boring!)

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

Search: "Diffraction".

A middle aperture and focus stacking would be a more ideal way to handle it. But the bee would need to cooperate and hold still for a series of shots! There can't be breeze blowing the plants around, either. Maybe a camera and lens that can do a series of 5 or 6 shots in a fraction of a second!

gener202002

Yes, there are millions and millions of photos out there on stock sites, and only the very best sell. They do have to have some criteria for selecting. Sometimes I think maybe the criterion is too high, but then again I do not, due to the enormous amount of pictures out there for sale. Perhaps the criterion should be higher. Great photos still do not sell if they do not have that subject matter that evokes an emotional feeling on the viewer.

There is an innumerable amount of photos being submitted to stock agencies every day. Many are accepted and many are rejected. Even with good photos, the numerous amount of stock out there is overwhelming.

The stock agencies do hire numerous analysts to review photos and evaluate them by an existing standard. There are, however, among different analysts different views of the same picture. And sometimes, a picture can be rejected by one reviewer, resubmitted, and a different reviewer accepts it. It is a judgment call. But due to sheer volume, the criteria must be fairly strict.