[JohnB]

Greetings everyone. I've got a couple of questions.

Do you think paid photo hosting is worth it? The most popular one I've found is pbase.com and they charge $23 for 200 megs or $60 for 600 megs yearly. I'm not 100% certain, but I'm pretty sure you can get some web host providers that give you more space and cost less. Then you could use something like picasa to produce photo albums.

Second question is whether it's worth putting photos online at all. I mean who really wants to see my pictures of my friend's birthday party anyway. Well, apart from my friend. And I could email those to him.

Thanks, I would appreciate your comments.

[Rufus]

I use PBase, and have for a while.

As your pictures become more than a friends party, the number of visits and comments will aid you, (mostly).

My personal opinion of PBase is very high. I wouldnt like to be without it.

HTH

R.

[slejhamer]

I also use pbase. It's not the cheapest, but it is geared entirely to photos and they have good support and relatively quick and easy to use. They are also good people - in December they had some server problems and they credited everyone with a free month.

And as we're a photo site, WE want to see your photos!

[shuttertalk]

Hi John! If you're an occasional user, there are a few free options other there, such as fortune city or even OurMedia which was recently launched. If you have the motivation and knowhow, the webhost and set up your own is definitely an option. You can download some pretty good free scripts such as Gallery or Coppermine which will provide you the photo gallery functionality. This site's photo gallery uses Coppermine.

Why put photos online? Hm... good question. Personally, as a photographer, I want to continually improve my technique. Putting my photos online for critique and comments is one way to learn.

[EnglishBob]

I pay $120 (USD) yearly for 1500mb of space and 30gb of Bandwidth a month. That hosts a whole lot of pictures and comes with a free domain.

The hosting even has a control panel that will install a few options of photo gallery for you if your not technically minded.

Added bonus, I can do more than just host pictures

[Petographer]

I use pbase but haven't kept up my membership as a supporter. I have since found fotopic.net and like it very much.

[alastair_hm]

I'd expect that going with a generic web host and using one of the numerous free web gallery creating applications would be the cheapest method.

[shuttertalk]

I'd expect that going with a generic web host and using one of the numerous free web gallery creating applications would be the cheapest method.

Defintely the cheapest and most flexible, but the setup process could be a bit invovled for the uninitiated....

[alastair_hm]

Sounds like there's a business oppertunity there

[Schellamo]

Ummm, what about photobucket, or am I totally off the mark?
Its free, easy to set up, easy to copy the addy into forums and you get plenty of space (enough for a casual user like me anyway)

[alastair_hm]

http://www.imageshack.us/ is another one along the same lines as Photobucket.

[Irma]

We use flickr.com and we are very happy with the pro account... There are a lot of groups where you can add your pictures and share them with the flickr community, or you can set them private and just give the link to your friends...

basic accounts are free... about space you can upload 20MB worth of photos each calendar month. This is not a storage limit, but a bandwidth (or throughput) limit. At the end of each calendar month, your bandwidth allowance is reset to zero again.

Pro account costs US$25 a year, I think... and you have 2 GB monthly upload limit, unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited photosets, permanent archiving of high-resolution original images...

[wulinka]

no one mentioned smugmug so far, did you ?
www.smugmug.com

they have 3 different kinds of accounts at different rates and with different customizing options and bandwidth limits.
I'm using it since I won a one year account on SHUTTERTALK!!!!, and can't say much other than that it serves me well, I don't even use the bandwidth entirely, and the guys are really really helpful with anything you might need.

uli

[adam]

I've got a FlickR pro account (thanks guerito), but it expires next week, I'm deciding whether to pay

[eblack]

I've got a FlickR pro account (thanks guerito), but it expires next week, I'm deciding whether to pay

Got one of those too, I like it because their client will reisize and batch upload stuff really easily and quickly.

A friend of mine made a Flickr knockoff called Zooomr that's missing some functionality, but has some fun features like geotagging.

[shuttertalk]

A friend of mine made a Flickr knockoff called Zooomr that's missing some functionality, but has some fun features like geotagging.

Looks pretty cool, I must admit, but I'm very wary of these beta services. I signed up for this very cool sounding service (Zoto) which had 2G free accounts, and then suddenly switched overnight to a really painfully restrictive paid model without any notice. Many users were not impressed, and there was a huge backlash in the forums...

[noonespillow]

Flickr is the best place I've seen yet. Though I've been too cheap as of yet to purchase a pro account. I'll probably do that eventually though, once I have enough money.