Just out of curiosity, what subject is so candit or urgent to shoot handheld @800mm??

Wildlife.

I'm working with couple stock video agencies. For now is OK.
I'm thinking to buy a drone and try to make more video.
Is it worth it to buy?

Thanks

Is it worth it for personal films, having fun and seeing how the world looks from above? Yes, 100% yes. It is one of the best things I've ever bought (actually, I'm on my third now).

Is is worth it in order to just make money from stock? As always, that depends. Just like if it's worth buying any camera, it depends on what you film with it.

Just any regular drone shot will never sell. There are millions of them by now. If you're thinking of uploading 20 different angles and movements of  a random beach on your vacation, forget about selling them.

You need to compete with the high-end helicopter shots of things people want to buy.

Impossible to say, but a lot more than 3571. Extrapolation never works here.

Not necessarily, it can also work the other way, depending on whether you've increased your skill level or not.

I make a lot more from my 100 latest assets than my 500 first for example.

2. How are video sales on adobestock?

I find them to be generally quite good, usually more than Shutterstock and Pond5 for me. I'm sure others experience different results, as it depends a lot on when you started uploading and how many sales you already have. For example, I believe Pond5 is the absolute most difficult site to enter today because of the large number of clips. But people who entered the market 10 years ago and managed to get good sales then, may still see great returns because of higher search placement.

An easy way to see if your keywords are working is to search for your own clips (logged out, cookies cleared / different browser). If you can't find them, neither can the buyers.

As for post processing/color grading/etc - I aim for taking the shot/video correctly the first time, so I don't have to re-do things over again. So, very rarely do I have to do any post processing.

If you take a look at the bestsellers at any stock agency, you will find that 90-100% of the clips are quite heavily graded with a cinematic look.

Unless you have in-camera LUTs, a magical cinematic sensor, and/or a nice combination of 2-3 filters on your lenses, I doubt you can get a graded shot in camera. 

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 23, 2019, 10:42

Image description is fairly important if you want your images to be found in a web search, not so much if you don't care about appearing in searches.

That doesn't apply to Adobe Stock. They only use keywords.

In the INTERNAL search, yes, but Google (and other search engines) pick up the descriptions, so they are very important there too. I have seen it mentioned several times that a rather large portion of traffic/sales comes directly from Google.

I would argue that the #1 most important thing in selling stock (and everything else for that matter) is the metadata - descriptions and keywords.

Furthermore, not just relevant (obviously), but also UNIQUE (as much as possible) descriptions/keywords are very important. Google does not like duplicate content. Google hates duplicate content. Google penalizes duplicate content. 

So, good descriptions and keywords are more important than the actual content, or at least as important. If you are lazy and don't spend any time on that, well, expect low sales.

A good image that is found, will outsell any very good or perfect image that is not found. Actually, many times mediocre to bad images will also outsell the good if they are more visible.

Quote from: jjneff on February 21, 2019, 19:08

This is to funny! I am sure Abode and ShutterStock would love this info. as well!

No big secrets here.
Here is graph, showing these values for SS, for every year between 2004-2016:

https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/2017-infographic-contributor-earnings-payouts-report

But SS is publishing all this info (and more) every quarter and every year. The report for 2018 will be published on 02/26.

Interesting to see that European photographers make A LOT more than the American (Canada + North + Central + South).

This whole thread is based on a misunderstanding in post #2, and some people just take the fake news as facts and that's that...

Two minutes of research and some common sense and you will realize that it's not logical to believe that a reputable business can, will, or want to have full access to your PayPal account.

And also remember that there is also such a thing as "photographing for fun", or for other purposes than stock, like YouTube. 

I have been guilty of forgetting this myself, and I've caught myself getting annoyed by signs and people when I'm out photographing... It can truly ruin the experience and you forget what photography is all about - having fun and creating art.

But of course, I also know how much time it takes to blur faces and signs when I make clips for stock... Haha.

Anyway, great stuff! Are all of the standard film clips also shot with the D850? I guess they are, and it seems they look great in low light.

They are used in hundreds of thousands of stock assets so yes, it is legal.

Every single earth animation you see uses elements from NASA.

complicating keywording is best way to turn your contributors away

I only submit on 123rf and deposit because they are easiest to submit.

...

simple site, fast submit and important statistic is only that matter to contributors Mat. Only those three.

None of the big sites need more contributors. They already have a thousand times too many.

I find it to be a very good thing if it's a bit complicated to submit and there are things you can do to improve your search ranking.

That means I can get an advantage, and I don't have to deal with competitors that don't want to do the work. More sales for me.

A fast and easy submission process is the fastest way to eliminate sales.

For the very fine and specific work, Ae is an unparalleled tool.  "If you can think it, you can do it with After Effects." ;-)

While I do love what I can do with After Effects, my biggest concern is that it is so painfully slow. Any idea if the code will ever be updated? I realize this might never happen and would require writing a completely new application, but one can dream...

I speed up footage all the time, and with that comes adding motion blur. I export the same clip, with pretty much identical looking motion blur 20 times faster in FCP X. Yes, twenty times. That difference is just beyond reason.

Is AE just painfully unoptimized on Mac, and that's not a priority perhaps? Could be. But a 20x difference in export time is just beyond imagination. 

Rant over. I love AE. But I do also have to finish clips faster than 2 hours sometimes.

If someone wanted offsite, they would take these drives to a safe place, bank box Etc. Fireproof storage boxes are easily available. 4T drive $119

Most people (including myself) would find it quite inconvenient to have to go to the bank to get backups. And the point of cloud backup is that you can backup every day if you want. You won't do that with a bank. You would take each 4TB drive only once it's full, thereby not having very recent backups most of the time.

Often people forget that their cloud storage is mirrored, how many times do we read, "I deleted files on my computer and lost everything" because when you delete the computer file, the could file is removed.

Cloud storage is not all mirrored. Some is. Sure. But what lunatic would mirror 15TB of data?

I have already asked myself, who's going to care about my photos when I'm gone? No one that I know.

My family has photos from my grandfather that are of infinite value to us. We are certainly thankful some of his work survived.

Honestly how important is cloud backup or me having a half dozen modern drives and 3-4 backups of everything I ever shot with a digital camera?

If it's not important to you, we are not forcing you to use cloud backup.

To me, what I have created digitally is pretty much ALL that is of great value to me. All my physical things can be replaced. My life's work cannot. Having it backed up is of infinite value to me.

Some people are not nostalgic or sentimental people. Others are.