As an amateur or casual photographer, it’s only a matter of time until you start running out of storage space for all of your images and video files. If you shoot in the RAW picture format or shoot RAW + JPG depending on your camera settings, it’s pretty easy to eat up precious storage space on your hard or disk drives.
For example, the Sony A7iii, which has a 26-megapixel sensor, creates a RAW file that is approximately 46 MB when shooting an uncompressed RAW file. Taking only around 22 photos would result in 1 GB of RAW files when shooting like this. On higher resolution cameras such as the Sony A7RV which has a 61-megapixel sensor, a RAW file is around 120 MB. Once you account for RAW file sizes, exporting JPG, TIFF, or PNG files, it’s easy to get warnings that your drive is low on space.
Why Consider Amazon Prime As A Photographer?
Three words – unlimited photo storage. That’s right, in addition to Prime Delivery, Prime Video, Prime Music, you also get Amazon Photos, which allows you to upload unlimited and full-resolution photos as long as you keep your Prime membership active. Keep in mind that Amazon’s terms and conditions do not permit the use of the service for professional photography services, commericial use, or as a file-sharing site for third-parties to access.
Picture / Image Storage
Amazon lets you upload unlimited RAW files! Not just high-quality JPGs. In fact, I’ve uploaded approximately 403 GB (45,700 image files) without issue.
As you can see, Amazon lists the usage as 403 GB out of unlimited usage.
Video Storage
Unfortunately, Amazon only allows 5 GB for video storage, so you’ll have to look at other options for video storage, such as external or internal hard drives. If you want to keep all of your files backed on in one place, you can pay Amazon for additional storage.
Here is what pricing looks like below. As you can see, it is much more expensive to pay for Amazon’s 2 TB plan at $249.98 per year, instead of going out to BestBuy and buying an external 2 TB hard drive for around $70 USD. So why would anyone pay for Amazon’s 2 TB plan to store their videos and miscellaneous files? You’re pretty much paying for Amazon’s cloud storage. If your external hard drive fails, you’re pretty much out of luck unless you want to send your hard drive out for professional recovery services, which can cost between a couple of hundred dollars to over a thousand dollars. With Amazon, your files will be stored on more than one drive for added backup. It is important to note that Amazon does not offer any guarantees if you lose your files, though.
You can also rest assured that your files will be pretty safe since it is going to be hosted on Amazon’s Cloud platform, which is arguably the most powerful cloud platform currently.
How Do You Use Amazon Photos?
You have two options. The first option is to log directly into Amazon Photos here then select.
The second option is to use Amazon’s Photo Software, which is available for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS.
The interface is pretty easy to use, and it allows you to set folders on your device that you want to be synced to Amazon Photos. You can also backup photos manually through the software, without enabling the sync option. You can also limit the number of concurrent uploads and downloads so that you have enough bandwidth while you use your computer.
Amazon’s Terms Of Use
Amazon offers this service for personal and non-commercial use. It is not meant for professional photography businesses, but it is great for the hobbyist and casual photographer. If you violate any of their terms, they can cancel your account, which would leave you without access to your files. Learn more about Amazon’s terms here: American Terms & Canadian Terms.
Amazon Photos is a great service for backing up your photos if you are using it for non-commericial use, and since it comes bundled with your Prime Membership, it’s a great option to use first until you decide on a local backup system if you want to go that route. You can also use it as a secondary backup for your photos if you are already backing up your photos locally on hard drives.
Want to give it a go with Amazon’s 30-day free trial? Click here to get started.
Good luck!