Shutterstock Photographer Forum :: View topic

gghoffman · Joined: 19 Dec 2005 Posts: 2

I've been doing OK posting photos shot with my Nikon D200 and all the pro lenses, etc. for still photography at SS and other sites. But I'm very interested it taking along a video camera and submitting video footage. But I don't know what level of quality would be acceptable. Does anyone want to share what cameras they've used that have resulted in successful acceptance to ShutterStock footage?

moishe · Admin Joined: 16 Dec 2005 Posts: 314

Hi,
We are pretty flexible with camera type, provided that it falls within professional/prosumer standards. The bottom line is that we do NOT want anything shot with a point-and shoot digital camera that happens to have a video function.
Thanks,
Moishe

farrell · Joined: 08 May 2006 Posts: 12 Location: NYC

Any SD or newer HDV cam should do, but keep in mind that good lighting, focus, exposure, color correction, framing, stabilization, etc, can go a long way on even the cheaper consumer cams (as long as the manual controls are there to give you that control). Automatic-only can result in noisy dark clips, blown out sunny clips, annoying focus hunting, not being able to focus/rack-focus where you want, etc...

And half of good video is the audio - for which you need separate mics and a XLR adapter - but most stock clips needn't include the audio track.

Also, the lighter cameras like my new 1.5 pound Sony HC1 tend to shake a lot more than the bigger shouldercams - especially when zoomed in - because there's just not that much distributed mass to dampen the movement. I've just bought a 14" "steadicam" Glidecam (which also functions as a monopod) in order to get much smoother shots without getting hassled by the "Tripod Police".