Suggestions about online photo hosting

[eloquentXI]

So I have a dilemma.

My club photography and my faire photography is overloading my facebook, and to top it off, I feel like its not as accessible as it should be.

I have a photobucket that I use for faire sometimes but for whatever reason, its starting to crap out on me and the layout is really starting to annoy me. I still haven't uploaded all of my TRF photos from this past season or the wedding photos from Ginette's friends wedding.
I'm tired of having only 200 photos an album on facebook.

I've looked at pbase. It's really nice and ideally, I'd love to get one because I think its a good deal price wise.
But I want to see if anyone has any other suggestions or things for me to consider?

[Quiet One]

I use Flickr! pro.  It costs 24.95 a year, but the amount of photos is unlimited.  The free version limits you to 200 visible photos at one time.  They have links to free sites for editing.  I do mine before I upload with Picassa.  Their upload app will automatically resize your pics to a resolution that you choose before hand.  You can set the accessibilty of each picture and group them however you want.

here's a link to my Flickr page
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7733052@N06/

[dbaldock]

I second the choice of Flickr Pro.

You can upload images with a file size of up to 20 MB, and the full size images are available to be downloaded.

Take Care,
David Baldock

[lys1022]

I totally prefer Pbase.  I absolutely cannot STAND Flickr's viewing interface.  Pbase's galleries are much easier to move around in and generally a better layout in my opinion.  After all, what good is it to take photos and then have people give up on looking at them because they get frustrated with the interface?

Besides, Pbase is cheaper than you think.  Yeah, it charges by "the month" but the charges REALLY depend on how much memory you're using.  I've had the smallest paid account for three years now, and I've only paid for two "years" of service because I'm not using that much memory.

I also enjoy the forums there.  There's some fun photo challenges and the like always going on.

[Francisco Paula]

I use picasa for mine.

http://picasaweb.google.com/hikadaf

[dbaldock]

I use picasa for mine.

http://picasaweb.google.com/hikadaf

I like the Picasa interface, and you've posted some really nice pictures in your galleries.  Is Picasa a free photo hosting site?  Do they accept large image files?  What about with a paid account?

When did you switch from the D60 to the D90?  Which lenses do you normally have mounted on your camera?

Take Care,
David Baldock

[eloquentXI]

Thanks so much for the suggestions.

Another card got thrown on the table for me to consider. A friend has offered to host a site for me, I could have my own domain with unlimited bandwidth. Not sure what I'm doing just yet because I'm stuck between having my own site with an interface that is pretty nice but will be very customizable and she will help me take care of it or pbase.

[Stalkwell]

Your own site wouldn't be that hard to maintain.  I'm running unlimited/unlimited for about $3.50 a month.  IF you do get one of these accounts, be sure to ask if they have a total item limit for the site... many limit you to 50,000 items.  That seems like a lot, but it isn't.  Every thimbnail, every html page, all resizes of images count towards that total.  Both mine and Kim's don't have that restriction, like they geared their sales towards scrapbookers or photo nuts like me.

If you do opt for your own web site, there are a few hosting sites that have what's called 'Fantastico' as an option on their site control panel... that allows you to auto-install select software packages with a single button push.  They usually have 3 or 4 photo gallery options available, and at least 1 of them is as simple as Pbase.  I'm using Gallery2.3 right now, in some ways it is great, others it is a pain, but it is entirely customizable.  Go look at http://gallery.menalto.com/ for all of the things you can do with your own gallery.  It may not be the greatest, but it is a start.  Yu can make many of these apps as easy or complicated as you want them to be.  Other options are 'coppermine', or there is a plethora of other self-install freebies for basic photo display.

An added plus to owning your own site is that you can also keep track of the visitor whos and how manys stats to get feedback on your pic's popularity.

If you wanna see how I have it set up, go to http://www.stalkwell.com/gallery/main.php.  I kept it very simple.

Stalk well...

[dfloyd888]

I was told that Smugmug, although it charged, was a good site for picture hosting.  However, I've not used them as a photographer.

[Mandrake Von Sets]

I was told that Smugmug, although it charged, was a good site for picture hosting.  However, I've not used them as a photographer.

I don't use SmugMug either (or at least not yet), but I notice that a lot of photographers in a couple photography  forums utilize them.  If you go to the site and type "renaissance faire" in the search bar at the top, you can see what some photographers have done.

I'm a Flickr Pro user.   A site similar to Flickr that you can check out is Zooomr.

[Melkar]

I've been transferring my galleries from PBase to Smugmug.  Biggest thing for me is that Smugmug does a good job of communicating with their user base about upcoming maintenance windows, and their help desk response times have been amazing.   Downside is that you have to have JavaScript enabled to view any of the galleries.  There's not a "simple" HTML gallery template available.  Also the "command and control" interface (for lack of a better term) tends to change.  However that's because they are adding new features fairly often.

I needed to move to Smugmug because of one of my gigs that required the ability to sell prints/digital downloads and PBase didn't offer that ability without knowing some coding.  It made no sense to pay for 2 subscriptions so I just started migrating over to SmugMug.

The other big competitor to Smugmug that I've heard good things about is ZenFolio.  I've not tried them.

I think both SmugMug and ZenFolio have trial subscriptions.  You might take them up on it and see if the user interface and interaction work for you or if it's too complicated.

I also have a free Flickr account, but I don't use it.  Flickr is GREAT for the community aspects about photography, but their user interface is bad.  Looks like an undergraduate coded the UI, right before the assignment was due, as an afterthought. 

From the end-user simplicity point of view, I think I like PBase the best.  SmugMug is a bit busy.

Sooo boils down to, try some out and see which tradeoffs work best for you.  I look forward to hearing which you choose.