I've just returned from a hiking/mountaineering trip and for the first time have taken only video clips during the trip. As I had previously done the same trip and taken heaps of stills, this time I decided to only shoot video. I used my Pentax Optio 43WR which, quite apart from being a lot smaller and lighter than my *istD, is also weatherproof. I was very happy with the results and got to thinking that still photography may be on the way out.
Look at it this way: the Optio 43WR shoots video at 640x480 and 30 fps. This is near DV (digital video) quality. In fact, each time I was back in camp at the end of a day I recorded the Optio footage into my Sony handicam via the AV ports to clear my SD card for the next day's shooting. Later, back at home, I transferred the digital video into my computer and am in the process of editing it into a video/DVD. It strikes me that before long we will have digicams that will be able to shoot video at 2288x1712 (4MP) or even 3008x2008 (6MP) at 30 fps with no limitation other than the storage capacity of the memory card. Only recently digicams were limited to 320x240 @ 15fps for a maximum of 30sec which was of little practical value. Now cameras like the Optio 43WR and Optio MX can record 640x480 and 30 fps up to the capacity of the cards. At this setting I can record 7 minutes on a 512MB card. When you consider that Super8 films were only 3 minutes long, this is not bad at all. When the technology improves further why wouldn't people shoot video all the time and just pick a frame they like later if they want to print out photos? Of course I would still like an interchangable lens camera but there is no reason why such a camera shouldn't be able to shoot video. Action photographers would use nothing else. On one hand such a thought is depressing (especially for those of us who put down the money on an *istD) but on the other hand it's quite an exciting time for photography.
