If I could drop my two cents on this..
For reasons mentioned above (and not to mention that iCloud restores are horribly slow) - I hope everyone who saves a ton of pics/vids to their phone regularly backs up to a computer from time to time..
My iPhone 5 was experiencing random shutoffs, etc due to some sort of 'panic' - so, I was told to set my new device (Apple replaced it) up as new and to not restore my data from iCloud (I guess as to not pollute the new hardware with possibly corrupt data)..only problem - I hadn't made an iTunes backup recently and couldn't get my pics/vids back without restoring via iCloud. So, I chanced it - and it worked - but, it took hours and is very finicky. Other users have reported that if you don't leave your phone alone for the entire restore that photos will stop restoring - amongst other various issues. Also, iCloud restores are "all or nothing" - meaning you cannot simply restore your pics/vids - you MUST restore all (potentially corrupt) apps/music/data/everything at once.
Point I'm trying to make is that iCloud is, seemingly, a terrible solution for backing up pics/vids (although a ton of people I've spoken to seem to think it'll do them good if they ever need it) - in the event you ever have a problem with your phone and need to salvage them somehow.
If you didn't know - upon plugging my iPhone into my MacBook Pro - it registers as if it is a digital camera - and with one click of the 'import' button - it will save all pics/vids to my laptop to the destination folder of my choosing. For a few hundred items the other day - it took maybe a minute or so, probably less.
So, although, the problem I experienced might not be common - you might want to take the few minutes every so often to back up your stuff.