Yes it's like their eyes light up over seeing a free $8 (if that) in the short term and don't think about what it could turn into 6 months down the line, a year, 5 years. Sonicgroove and creativecoin tokens are ones I'll be looking to get more of and looking at the new tunes token (bless Amy) there's suddenly a few options to get stuck in to!
I know what you mean as an individual can only do so much but I do feel that these niches are going to bring together like minded people who enjoy creating and those who enjoy curating creative works.
I'm personally on a mission to grow my account beyond minnowhood in at least one of these tribes haha! Would love to join the dolphin club on steem and this dolphin council I've heard about (if it's still a thing). By loading up and staking everywhere, one upvote can make a splash in many tribes.
As for the images and image quality. Steemit SUCKS for that! When I've tried to do travel posts direct to steemit, it wouldn't accept anything bigger than 8MB! That seemed to be the cut off. I just moved over to a website (WordPress) and posted from there on steempress, seemed to work somehow so I don't know they condense the images. Otherwise, you could use a website called "postimages.org", upload your pictures there and then insert the url to your steem post. I don't know what the size limit is (or even if there is one) but could be an option for you.