Robin Lund

About Robin Lund

Posts by Robin Lund:

Reine walking tour

Reine walking tour

I have started to experiment with a new genre, “walking tour”, for my Images of Norway YouTube channel. The scene is situated to the the fishing village of Reine in Northern Norway.

There are different ways to do walking tours. My goal is to make immersive, straight walks in both video and audio. No stops, no cuts, just purposefully walking a set route. Later on I hope to also do hikes.

Though I am fairly happy with the end result as a first attempt, I gained some insight as to what worked and what did not with regards to my gear and execution versus my goals.

One is that the pans where choppy, so I will need to use ND filters to sort out the shutter speed. Another issue is that I don’t like that the steps translates to the image. So I will need a fourth axis stabilization remedy.

Lastly is that the Røde VideoMicro II microphone sucks with regards to wind noise. I was able to resolve the issue with a lot of post processing, but I’d rather not do the work. So a better microphone setup must be researched. I find binaural audio unnerving, but a stereo setup could be nice.

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Do not use ‘freetousesounds.com’

Free to Use Sounds is a deceptively named sound library. I kind of like their YouTube work, saw use for the sound of ‘crashing waves’ in one of my projects, and was looking for forward to support fellow creators by licensing their work. Because it is not at all that ‘free to use’. Which was okay, as a $25 license fee is reasonable for an ‘All In One Bundle’.

…considering the following statements:

‘All our recordings are royalty-free and no credit is required! We created a license agreement that we promise fits your project’s needs without any strings attached.’

‘[…]a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use all or any of the sound[…]’

‘Licensee can use the licensed sound effects on an unlimited number of projects for the entirety of their lifetime.’

etc.

Only, the further the license reads, the less ‘free’ it gets and strings gets quite constrictive.

I had worked for hours and hours on a video and on incorporating their sound, as it was paid and licensed, into the video. I even contacted them to suggest future collaboration. Only to be rudely threatened with a copyright strike. I had to take down the video and stop paid ad campaigns and all promotional materials. Lots of time and money lost.

Sure enough, hidden inside all the text promising the license would fit my needs, was a sentence that made sure it would not fit my need.

All content creators should be paid for their work. But be upfront about the terms. Don’t call something free if it isn‘t, and don’t create and hide loopholes in small print after having promised ‘no strings attached’. It’s deceptive.

I normally license music from Pond5. A quick search revealed thousands of similar sounds of crashing waves within Pond5’s library, at a fraction of the cost.

Lesson learned: Do not use ‘freetousesounds.com’.

The final video, with the use of Pond5 sound:

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Goodbye Getty

Goodbye Getty

Some years ago, stock agency Getty Images requested that I sell my work with them. Despite being somewhat skeptical about Getty based on their less than stellar reputation with other contributors, I thought I could try it out. Some contributors reported that Getty, as the market leading stock photo agency, had sales volumes that made up for the bad terms.

I purposefully gave Getty a test run with the kind of work that was making me money with other agencies to see how they fared. And the result was abysmal.

While other agencies was making me thousands of dollars, Getty made me less than $15 combined over several sales. All other agencies paid a lot more for every single sale.

So today I requested the termination of my Getty account and the deletion of my portfolio with them.

Goodbye Getty.

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Goodbye Alamy

This photo of an escaped farm fish salmon with lice has been one of my top sellers with Alamy.

Alamy is a stock agency with a lot going for it. It is one of a few ‘traditional’ stock image agencies left, they have been giving contributors a fair commission share and they are a foundation giving their profit to charity.

However, over the last few years they have been pricing images more to the like of microstock agencies, and recently they disclosed that they would cut contributor commission to 40 percent. They stated that this was to support future growth, i.e. they want to grow at the expense of their contributors.

Anyways, I long since had decided that I would leave any agency paying less than 50 percent to the contributor and immediately asked them to delete my account, and today I received confirmation that my account with Alamy has been deleted.

It is a shame, though. Agencies paying 50 percent or more commission are fewer and fewer, and I really wanted to like Alamy.

But thanks for all the fish.

 

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PolarPro DJI Mavic filters – usability review

PolarPro Mavic filters
The PolarPro filters for the Mavic Pro are hard to distinguish. (Photo courtesy of PolarPro)

This is a short usability review of PolarPro filters for the DJI Mavic Pro drone. The review will not touch image quality, only usability.

PolarPro are usually the filters to get with regards to image quality. Don’t bother with cheap, Chinese eBay filters. The colours are likely to be horrific.

While the PolarPro filters are usually high quality products, from a usability standpoint they should hire some competence.

First, the case. The Mavic Pro is all about portability. Downsizing, smallness. As such, so is also the PolarPro filters by necessity. But the case is huge in comparison. PolarPro has been lazy and are using the same filter cases as for Phantom filters. This is a big miss.

Second, the distinguisability. With both the 3-packs or the 6-packs of filters, the aluminium frame of the filters are the same colour. You can’t distinguish one filter from the other, not even in daylight. And remember, these filters are small. There is print on the side of the frame. Again a miss, as the type is small and the font is bold, italic and just really difficult to decipher.

You’ll need to remedy this, e.g. by writing the designation with a high visibility felt pen on the case. Or colour code the filters themselves by different colour felt markers.

However, the best solution is for PolarPro to rethink the usability of their products.

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New audio gear

New audio gear

Today a package with new audio gear arrived.

The package contained two Røde microphones, both intended for use with smartphones. One lavalier (the SmartLav+) and one directional (the VideoMic Me).

And not least the Zoom H6 Handy Recorder, which basically is as portable as an XLR mixer can get.

I also have a full gear list, to which these additions are now added.

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Mobile office

I have bought an old Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van. The plan is to use it as a combined adventure van and mobile office, so that I can film and photograph the whole of Norway, and maybe even other countries.

I will not make too many modifications, but installing a diesel heater is a must. This is Northern Norway.

I made a road movie from when I purchased the van:

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