MJ Mitchell 04 Nov 2009

My mother utilizes the rain "machine" to fall asleep. How wonderful would it be to actually look at a waterfall too. I think it would be relaxing - I think it is a GREAT idea - kudos! Are there other out there doing this yet?

RQ Trietsch 04 Nov 2009

If I understand what you are saying, I get e-mails from a friend in England that sends me post that sound like what you are trying. If that's the case, by all means go for it.

APHOTO4YOU 04 Nov 2009

Markos. No idea is stupid...Most known inventors and genious...Look at Bill Gates....People might thought it was stupid those days when those kids where toying with the inventure in garage.....But today we all depend on it...

Go for it..Sounds awsome..

Gary Glass 04 Nov 2009

Marko, marketed right, and it show work for you.. lots of people like to have visuals or sounds.. Look at the firelogs burning CD's out there, or the nature sounds cd's , Go for it.. the one thing, would be to make sure they could not capture single frame shots for photos..If your intent is to sell single images of the time lapse project to want to do..

I say that because the future of Photography is the merging of video and single shot images... Look at the still shot cameras coming out with video abilities and look at camcorders that allow you to print a frame off the video images . They eventually want to merge the two into one... you will be able to print a high qauality image off your viedo images...

But back to your question.. if you have a interesting time lapse series.. and it is priced right, I see no reason why it would not work for you.. SEE there is the rainbow out of the down side of you not having a job right now.. You get to read all of this stuff and realize it faster in a shorter time frame.. I wish you luck on it..

markosphoto 04 Nov 2009

MJ, I am not sure if anyone else is doing it.

Gary, thats the hard part, getting interesting time-laps, I have to figure out when to concentrate on the time laps, it might mean missing "the shot" or visa versa. I guess I will feel my way through that.

On the worrying about stealing frames, I don't see that as an issue cause if I go the 800x600 route it won't matter much. I might contact some frame makes, but I want to get a group of these movies done before I do that.

Would it be best to put the movie in the frame myself and let the user put there own images in the frame as well, cause that is what will happen...

The price will be the cost of the frame plus the cost of the image. It is cool cause I can manipulate the images in the series...saturation and other things before I create it. That could yield some interesting things, but in turn it will be much more work, cause of the multiple images need to match in some way to make it look good.

The other thing I was thinking was to take say a group of flower images and make a frame with a flower slideshow with perhaps the sounds of spring/summer.

Thanks you guys for the input. Bianca, Mr Gates didn't create anything, he bought DOS and sold it to IBM, he was a master marketer though, somehow convinced the world that DOS and Windows 3.1 (dos shell) was better than a Mac and I am a fan of Windows to this day. That is a good point cause the first computers were probably built in a garage... like the Apple computers.

Gary Glass 05 Nov 2009

I would probably offer both ways.. there are going to be those that don't want anything technical to do with computers but would love the finish product, if the scenery was pleasant to them. and then their are those that want to add to it and are not afraid or intimidated to add their own images..

Bottom line, if you have something that is eye candy for the viewer.. They will come.... as long as the price point is within their means... we have all been there on that point when selling products...LOL

Keep me in the loop, would love to see how it is progressing for you.. sounds like something down the line I wouldn't mind trying... when I learn all that stuff.. I still have to decide on lightroom version to go for...

markosphoto 05 Nov 2009

I will do that...

I would wait for 3.0... it is faster at least the beta is over Lightroom 2. I will have to wait on buying the upgrade cause I can't afford it right now, I will probably download the trial when it comes out. I haven't converted my catalogs over to 3 cause it is a beta and it is prone to errors. I should mention that it lets you put your catalog as a shared file so it can be used between multiple computers which is nice cause I have it installed on my notebook (which I use sometimes to tag images) but I have to export those images to a shared folder then import them when they copy over to my desktop, now I won't need to do that, at least from what I read about that feature.

That time-lapse to movie thing isn't technical cause you use a plugin that comes with lightroom or is downloadable now... and use lightroom's slide show tab, its actually quite easy, just taking the images and editing those is more difficult.

09 Nov 2009

10 Nov 2009

markosphoto 10 Nov 2009

I will check that out, but I'd rather stay away from web based creation tools... there is free plugins for lightroom and I will have better control.

Thank you though :)

markosphoto 18 Nov 2009

I found some nice frames... I think they do videos an audios, I have to do a little more research.

My problem is a 10 in frame meaning 10 inch LCD cost about $130, there is a 15 in but I didn't see the cost of that one. Why would someone want to spend that much for something like what I was talking below?

I obviously can't buy pallets of these things for cheaper... I wouldn't make a lot per sale of these, would it be worth the extra effort. Would someone rather have a 7 in one for next to there bed or the 15 in.

They come with remotes to pause or to stop sound so thats nice. I wish I could sell larger ones but 17 inch is the largest I have seen of these things.

Gary Glass 18 Nov 2009

That is the rub of it... the people selling these items(frames) or of these printing your prints on mugs etc.. are the one's making the money as by the time we try to add out little bit of profit on it. they get quite expensive as you are seeing with those frames...

maybe what you could do is sell your images//slide shows on a usb plug device that one can plug into those frames.. that way you can make a profit and they can buy the frames however they want and just plug in your creative work...

That is how I would go about it until you can somehow get the unit price cost down on the frames.. That is one of the reasons I don't sell framed prints that much anymore.. Gets too expensive unless you own your own framing buisness or want to invest into making your own frames.. I prefer to sell just the prints or prints with matting..

19 Nov 2009

19 Nov 2009

19 Nov 2009

Gary Glass 19 Nov 2009

Hey, I like that...:)

markosphoto 19 Nov 2009

I don't think those frames take usb... CF cards and SD.

If I do this it will be 7 in frames, those don't cost alot.

Gary Glass 19 Nov 2009

well , if that keeps the cost down, not a bad way to start out.. and if folks like it and want bigger , you an always go from there..

That is right, they do take cards.. I had only looked at them a bit a year ago.. I too felt they were too expensive and was waiting for the price to come down.. well you could always load of a card ,same as a usb.. just need a way to keep from folks sharing it or something , so you don't lose potential profit for your endeavor..

markosphoto 19 Nov 2009

That is a challenge, I wouldn't know where to start with that. If they share the video (cause that is what it will be) I don't see much of a problem... I could sell it without the cable to connect it to the computer, but its not difficult to goto a store and buy one.

Gary Glass 19 Nov 2009

True.. maybe there is someway to encrypt it like they do software that you buy. I would think there would be a way to do that.

and actually the one's that did try to copy, were probably never going to buy anyway