Digital Photography Blog

The auctioning of my Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens concluded today after, relative to other things I’ve previously sold on eBay, a huge amount of interest.  Bidding started at just 99p in order to attract interest and minimise listing fees.  Most of the time, my listing tend to stagnate for a while and only receive bids closer to the auction end, but this one received a few bids early on.

The listing also attracted over 40 watchers, that is people subscribing to monitor the auction, and also a number of queries from potential buyers outside of the UK.

From what I could see, despite the bountiful supply of lenses from Hong Kong, there is an unfulfilled demand for genuine used Canon SLR lenses on eBay.

After 22 bids, my lens was finally sold for £230 which is about £100 off the retail price.  Considering I only bought it in mid-March and it’s in pristine condition, it was quite a bargain.

Fingers crossed it’ll arrive at the buyer’s address safely…

My nearly new Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM zoom lens is being auctioned on eBay and starting at just 99 pence!

When photographers use avatars in forum profiles, why are they, more often than not, photos of themselves taking a photo of themselves in a mirror? You know, that classic hold the camera in portrait format and… Click!

Seriously… Is there anything more corny?

Flickr makes it very easy to save on bandwidth when it comes to displaying your photos on other websites. Not only do Flickr provide a robust hosting platform allowing your images to be served quickly and reliably to users all over the world, but there’s no charge for doing so even if it’s viewed a massive number of times.

In return for allowing people to do this, Flickr state, very clearly, that any images hosted by Flickr (regardless of whether it’s your image or not - that’s not relevant) and posted elsewhere should be linked back to the Flickr photo page just like this one,

On the Flickr photo page, when you click to view all sizes, you’re presented with two options; option 1 is some HTML code that will display the image on an external website and link it back to the photo page. Option 2, is the actual image URL. Underneath both of these options is this,

Flickr Community Guidelines specify that if you post a Flickr photo on an external website, the photo must link back to its photo page. (So, use Option 1.)

The following comes from the Flickr Community Guidelines,

Do link back to Flickr when you post your Flickr content elsewhere.
The Flickr service makes it possible to post content hosted on Flickr to outside web sites. However, pages on other web sites that display content hosted on flickr.com must provide a link from each photo or video back to its page on Flickr.

Pretty straightforward, yes?

Here’s one explanation of why you should link your embedded images back to the Flickr photo page from an employee,

The link-back-to-Flickr rule is there as part of a trade off: we allow people to reference image files hosted on our servers and pay for the bandwidth in exchange for some exposure.

So, there you have it. If you embed Flickr hosted images onto external websites (i.e. not Flickr) without linking the photo back to the photo page then you’re breaking the guidelines, taking without paying or in other words stealing.

In fact, you’d be no better than someone who hotlinks to other peoples images without permission and even has the cheek to serve the images from the owner’s website so it uses up the bandwidth that they’re paying for.

If you want to post your Flickr hosted images into a forum, the HTML code provided in option 1 probably isn’t going to work as HTML is usually stripped out of forum posts for a number of reasons.  Usually, the alternative is to use forum BB code which may allow you to post images depending on the rules of that particular forum.

To make it a little bit easier to use the HTML code from option 1, I’ve coded up a little tool to convert Flickr embedded Image option 1 HTML to BB Code.  The converted code ought to work on the most popular forum systems.  Let me know if it doesn’t and I’ll see about changing it.

430EX II

Typical. Weeks after I buy myself a Canon Speedlite 430EX, Canon announce its replacement; the 430EX II. Still, from an initial read of the announcement, it doesn’t look like I’ve missed out on much. New features are said to be:

• 20% reduction in recycle times meaning it’s ready to fire quicker than the model it replaces.
• The high-pitched whine normally associated with a charging flash has been eliminated and it’s now silent to minimise distraction. Can’t say I ever found it distracting.
• The mounting foot is now metal constructed for a more robust connection with a camera body.
• A new quick release and locking mechanism has also been incorporated.
• In Manual mode, the Speedlite 430EX II allows the light output to be altered in 1/3 stop increments for increased precision of operation, bringing it into line with the 580EX.
• All on-flash settings can be controlled using the camera menu system.

I haven’t seen any prices yet, though.

EOS 1000D

Canon also announced a new entry level DSLR in the form of the EOS 1000D, this week. Supposedly pegged lower than the 450D, the 1000D is available at £499 (body only) and the 450D at £459 (body only). I can’t quite figure Canon’s logic on the price point since the 450D is better specified, cheaper and itself was only announced 5 months ago.

Many people are suggesting that the 1000D is aimed at those looking to replace their point and shoot cameras, but even Canon’s own fantastic G9 is a whole £200 cheaper than just the body so it’s not such an easy decision to fall into.