john_mcmillin

<p>My wife runs a small website concentrating on project management. No money changes hands through it, but it does enhance her professional reputation. To illustrate her articles, she uses photos and illustrations from various free-use sources. Apparently she picked up one photo that belonged to Getty Images and posted it to her site. Now she's charged with copyright violation. Getty is seeking $850, after opening with a four-figure demand. </p> <p>Though she keeps records for most pictures she uses, my wife can't document where she got the Getty image. She's certain that it had no warning of copyright attached. She took down the photo as soon as she got a notice from Getty.</p> <p>Does anyone have any experience to share in dealing with Getty Images? I'm looking for specifics, not general rants on the overall importance of copyright. I'm a photographer too, so I get that. She should have been a little more careful, but I'm suspicious that an agency could, hypothetically, salt the internet with unmarked photos and bring in a nice payoff by charging unsuspecting bloggers who pick them up?</p>

<p>My dear wife, God bless 'er, has taken up a new hobby: birdwatching and identification. Her first "Big Year" has brought her into the dozens after only a few months. She likes to photograph new birds in the field, and identify them later at her leisure. Although I own four digital cameras, none of them are ideal for her project. She doesn't want to lug my big Sony FF and 100-300 zoom around, and my compacts, the Fuji x10 and the Panasonic LX5 and 7, were selected more for their wide-angle capabilities than their long-zoom reach.<br> Please feel free to share your peeves and preferences among 'superzoom" and "travelzoom" models. Especially if you've actually used them to chase down LBBs (Little Brown Birds) birds hiding on the other side of that tree! What works, what doesn't work so well? Here are my own criteria:<br> - Small is beautiful: like most women, the wifey wants a tiny camera that fits in her purse and is easy to hold (I'm aware that this conflicts with stability and optimal sensor size). Travelzooms are much more compact than superzooms; would I miss the typical extra 300mm reach, or can that disadvantage be overcome by cropping?<br> - Seeing comes first: Since she won't use a viewfinder, the quality of the rear LCD is paramount. Since I would use the EVF, and I despise all EVFs I've seen, which EVF is slightly less vile?<br> I don't need to spend my way to the bleeding edge of the latest releases. Scanning KEH, I found many superzoom options around $100-200, and that's my comfort zone for a fifth camera. Once again, Fuji and Panasonic are appealing to me, either the HS20 & up or the FX150 (can't justify the price of the 200, but a 600+mm/2.8 sure has its appeal. Could you even get a whole bird in focus at that setting?). <br> Feel free to inform me about the one class of camera I'm least familiar with...</p>