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It is time for me to address the questions that some of our senior photographers have been asking regarding the possibility of selling their pictures which were shot on transparencies over decades. The situation has changed drastically in the last few years and the quality and quantity of images being produced has increased drastically and the entry barriers demolished completely with the proliferation of the digital media. What took us three decades to produce, now it takes a committed fellow not more than two to three years to match the numbers and to top it up, they are able to offer drum scan quality images to the buyers! It was never easy selling stock images and it has become even more difficult today. Unless you have top quality transparencies of rare subjects, it is not worth the trouble scanning them.
Like many others of our generation, I started photography in 1979 with a Canon A-1 and two lenses. In those days, all the publishers wanted colour transparencies if you wanted to have your pictures published. The dividing line was quite clear - serious photographers shot transparencies for colour and black and white negative film for monochrome work. The not so serious enthusiasts shot on colour negatives.
The cost of an Ektachrome or a Kodachrome with processing in 1980 was almost Rs. 200/- (+) and that was a lot of money at that time. Almost all the scanning was done on drum scanners and it cost Rs. 200/- to scan a TP on a drum scanner! The prohibitive cost meant that very few of us ventured into buying SLR's and fewer into buying transparency film. The advantage in those days was that very few of us had photos on a usable media (transparency-film) and therefore it was possible to sell an occasional picture even if it was not of very high quality.
By 2002, the cost of digital cameras that produced acceptable images for colour reproduction had become affordable to the serious amateur and with that there has been an explosion. Photo enthusiasts with high megapixel cameras are clicking furiously at a rate that would have been unimaginable in our days!
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