In case some of you haven't seen this over the last couple days. Dropbox is offering to increase your free space up to 5GB by beta testing their Import Pictures and Videos feature.

First time you import a picture or video, you get 500MB of free space. And then after that they'll increase you another 500MB for every 500MB you upload. They cap you at 5GB.

http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=53104
https://www.dropbox.com/help/287

So how it seems to work. I installed the latest desktop beta for Windows.
I took some pictures and videos with my phone.
Plugged in the phone and the Windows AutoPlay window appears.
Choose Import pictures and videos using Dropbox.

That's it. Very first time you'll almost immediately see a message from Dropbox that your storage has been increased by 500MB. After that it takes a bit more work as you'll have to upload 500MB of pics and vids to get 500MB more free space.

I finally got enough uploaded to reach the cap. I started out with 2.2GB of assigned storage in my account. So I was curious if I'd get capped at 5.0 or 5.2GB. I got 5.2GB, so it seems if you start with more than the default 2GB, you can go above the 5GB.

Droid only?

 

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If you are using the desktop client (Windows, Mac, Linux), you can plug in any camera or phone and import pictures.

I had the free 2GB Dropbox account. Uploaded 5.5GB worth of pictures and now my account is 6.5GB. I was expecting it to go all the way up to 7, but for some reason it stopped.

Still 4.5Gb of free extra storage is nice.

Just FYI, I uploaded the pictures from an SD card connected to the PC by a USB adapter. As long as the pictures are in a folder named DCIM and the picture names are IMG_<insert number here> it works.
Have to use the Dropbox option when the auto play pop-up detects the SD card.

You get 500 MB storage increase when the 1st picture gets uploaded, then additional 500MB for each 500 MB you upload up to 4.5GB in my case.
I kept uploading another GB just to make sure I had maxed the giveaway.

One more edit: Som epeopel say the upload freezes when they upload about 100 CR2 files. I uploaded about 10 and it was fine, but I made sure all the rest to be jpg. No problems with those. Uploaded some mov and avi files too - about 10-15 of each. No problem.

 

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Love my Dropbox, the absolute must have app in my toolbox!

This is a very simple way to get some extra space and is well worth the effort imo. I simply installed the beta client on my desktop and then turned my iPhone on record to make several long videos of my ceiling. Uploaded all of them and went from 2.25 to 7.25 GB while watching tv the other night.

 

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Sounds like I stopped too soon. I'll keep uploading and see if I can get a little more.