True still photography (as in push the button and capture a moment in
one picture) is going to be an endangered species very soon.
I'm sure that most of us still consider images taken at 6 fps with our
Pentax DSLRs to be photographs. What if your DSLR could do 30 fps? We
are already at the point where, with enough money, you can buy a 4K
video camera (shooting at 30 fps) and get video capture stills good
enough to use reproduced on glossy magazine covers.
One might think it tedious to go through video looking for stills (30
of them per second) but, if there isn't already, there soon will be
Lightroom-V sort of programs that do it for you. 10 seconds of video
would be laid out in 300 thumbnails for you to zoom in on and do
further post-processing. 10 minutes of video would give you 18000
images to zoom through.
All of this sounds rather unpalatable to most of us, I'm sure. Just
like many people are still enjoying film (and some young people
discovering it for the first time, the same may be said for still
photography). So it will be with still cameras. There will be a period
where weddings are being photographed by people using video, while
others hold on to still digital... just as there were film shooters
overlapping with early adopters of DSLRs. Eventually, still
photography will be dominated by people who are strobe lighting
experts, since you can't duplicate the light output of a flash for
anything resembling long duration video unless you can afford and
master Hollywood lighting set-ups. (the length of the flash determines
how many video frames you have to choose from... if it is less than a
30th of a sec. then you will only have 1 exposure on a 30 fps camera).
In film, the director is considered the creative force. He leans on a
director of photography and people to run the actual cameras. The sort
of still images coming from video of the future puts all of those jobs
in one person's hands (which those who are using their cameras for
video are already transitioning into). The job is just going to get
bigger and more sophisticated, and more widespread.
The far-sighted camera manufacturers can already see this day coming,
getting closer with each new revision of sensor, computing power,
software and increased storage. That's why most are putting more and
more emphasis on the video capabilities of their DSLRs. Some, like
Sony and Canon are producing both video cameras and still cameras.
Those that don't should probably be looking to acquire businesses (or
be acquired by them) that have that expertise and manufacturing
ability - because the future is going to involve a lot of
cross-pollination between engineers on both sides of the hall.
Those who fail to see the future and adapt quickly to it will be the
Kodaks of tomorrow.
--
"The key to seeing the world's soul, and in the process wakening one's
own, is to get over the confusion
by which we think that fact is real and imagination an illusion. It is
the other way around."
-Thomas Moore, "Original Self"
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