Being an eager video shooter already, I agree about most of the talking points in that blog post. Nevertheless, in many cases around the online world the 'video replacing photography' meme often gets a bit exaggerated, usually by gadget geeks with lack of perspective.
I think it would be good to note that collecting freeze frames off motion picture footage is nothing new. Even Hollywood have been taking stills off their 35mm films for their own promotional uses for decades.
But as we can see, that did not replace stills cameras using the same film, not even close. The reasons behind that were not about technical quality or even workflow alone back then, nor are they about that even today. We're comparing apples and oranges here.
Sure, I would love to own a RED Dragon and yank off great stills off the video footage, and no doubt such a workflow will become increasingly popular in the (very) near future. No problem, I may be doing that myself, too, at some point, as it may prove to be handy in some particular tasks.
However, I don't think that will make all stills cameras and photographers totally obsolete, as the most eager gadget geeks love to claim. There are reasons why the most popular portraits, for example, have not been made with the movie cameras of yesteryear, or with HDSLR's in movie mode today. The RED Dragon is not likely to make a dramatic change to that any time soon, either.
It's not all about technical issues. These are two different forms of art, ever since the Lumière brothers.
But I do agree that these days, at least if you intend to make a living with these arts, it's a generally good idea to be fluent with both. Even though there are some subtle but significant differences.
2 comments:
Well - have you read Chris' comment as well? Or the ones further down? Like "DPs are not photographers"?
I think there's indeed a big difference between framing for Cinemascope, or for a perfect portrait print...
Being an eager video shooter already, I agree about most of the talking points in that blog post. Nevertheless, in many cases around the online world the 'video replacing photography' meme often gets a bit exaggerated, usually by gadget geeks with lack of perspective.
I think it would be good to note that collecting freeze frames off motion picture footage is nothing new. Even Hollywood have been taking stills off their 35mm films for their own promotional uses for decades.
But as we can see, that did not replace stills cameras using the same film, not even close. The reasons behind that were not about technical quality or even workflow alone back then, nor are they about that even today. We're comparing apples and oranges here.
Sure, I would love to own a RED Dragon and yank off great stills off the video footage, and no doubt such a workflow will become increasingly popular in the (very) near future. No problem, I may be doing that myself, too, at some point, as it may prove to be handy in some particular tasks.
However, I don't think that will make all stills cameras and photographers totally obsolete, as the most eager gadget geeks love to claim.
There are reasons why the most popular portraits, for example, have not been made with the movie cameras of yesteryear, or with HDSLR's in movie mode today. The RED Dragon is not likely to make a dramatic change to that any time soon, either.
It's not all about technical issues. These are two different forms of art, ever since the Lumière brothers.
But I do agree that these days, at least if you intend to make a living with these arts, it's a generally good idea to be fluent with both. Even though there are some subtle but significant differences.
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