Moving image v still

[cliveh]

With the moving image becoming more common in digital photography, do you think the still image is now or soon resigned to history?

 

[removed account4]

hi clive

moving images have been common in silver photography since the 1800s.
why would a different media make a difference ?

 

[Brook Hill]

Having been bored out of my mind with home videos I can't see moving images displacing a quality still. Making a good movie clip needs far more skill and expertise than most of the people have who make them. I think it will just be a tool that teenagers use to amuse them selves.

Tony

 

[cliveh]

hi clive

moving images have been common in silver photography since the 1800s.
why would a different media make a difference ?

Because now it is as easy to make a moving sequence with digital as it is to make a still. Not the case with film.

 

[horacekenneth]

Not just the ease of shooting a a film but also the nature of viewing media today - was not easy to put "moving pictures" on a wall before, nowadays most photographs are viewed online where it is just as easy to view a video. I think that is just as big a change.

I don't think photographs will ever be obsolete just like live theaters, poetry, novels or paintings weren't replaced by other competing types of media that surged in popularity or ease.

 

[Prof_Pixel]

In 1988 Michael Evans, one of my good friends and a former presidential photographer, produced a book - HOMELESS ON AMERICA - for Tipper Gore (Al Gore's wife) and a non-profit organization. They also produced a promotional video with slow pans of the B&W still images and plaintive banjo music in the background. I found the emotional impact of the video with the slow pans and music to be much greater than just looking at the still images by themselves.

Ken Burns later went on to make many video programs with this technique. and it has become known as the 'Ken Burns Effect'.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Movies and photographs have their own niches. Photographs can be mounted on the walls. It is hard to mount a movie on the walls.

 

[Prof_Pixel]

Photographs can be mounted on the walls. It is hard to mount a movie on the walls.

People do it all the time with large, flat screen TVs.

 

[ic-racer]

What is a "moving image?" They are all stills. What is your cutoff between seeing a 'still' or 'moving' image? 30 fps, 24 fps, 18 fps, 6 fps, 2 fps, 0.5 fps? The average museum viewer sees a new picture each 30 seconds, that is 0.03 picture frames per second.

This discussion of movie vs still is not new with respect to "still" cameras. You all have seen this, right? I guess next we will be discussing if color pictures are really better than B&W now that they can be produced so easily by a cellphone... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwv82GIrHOg[video=youtube;hwv82GIrHOg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwv82GIrHOg[/video]

 

[Sirius Glass]

People do it all the time with large, flat screen TVs.

So people mount several flat screen TVs in their living rooms to show multiple movies simultaneously, just like I have multiple photographs mounted on my walls?

 

[cliveh]

So people mount several flat screen TVs in their living rooms to show multiple movies simultaneously, just like I have multiple photographs mounted on my walls?

Perhaps, but maybe not movies, perhaps something on a smaller scale. A good example of what I mean is Google, which for quite some time showed a still image. They now seem mostly about movement if you wish to activate. If you get the drift of my OP.

 

[Dr Croubie]

4-5 years ago, I got me one of them thar fancy dslrs that could take the highest resolution video, everyone raved about how good it was for video, major studios used it, even episodes of House were filmed on it (as one example I can remember).
2 years later, and I'd only ever shot stills on it. In 5 years I've used it twice for filming my missus do poetry gigs, and never at that fancy high-def stuff.

Even news sites and such (eg bbc.co.uk and abc.net.au), which I only read at work, I never watch the videos because I can't easily click away when the boss walks past, or grab a few seconds now and then with video like I can with text. Half the time I get rather annoyed when there's an interesting headline I follow and it turns out to be video, I can't find out what the story is about because there's no text.

 

[Dr Croubie]

... video with slow pans of the B&W still images...

Maybe it worked in that instance for the subject at hand, and I don't want to take that away from you.

But honestly, every time I see a still photographer's website and portfolio, and they've uploaded all their photos into some flash animation that just randomly pans and zooms in and out of their images, I instantly close it before my fist goes through my monitor. No. Bad. Ugly. Stop it. If you're a still photographer, show them still. I can't appreciate the detail and the beauty of the photo if it's moving all the time. If I wanted to see movies, I'd go look at a videographer's website. I'll be glad when this fad is over.

 

[jp498]

I think youtube is a exceedingly awesome use for the Internet. To me, it beats Cable/Satellite TV for creativity, innovation, entertainment. I only use my TV for youtube and netflix, and youtube is 10x the creative realm that netflix is.

Recording video well is tougher than stills. Things like sound, holding the camera steady are the basics and harder than most people can handle and still pretty impractical with DSLRs and cell phones. It's easier to use a shoulder mounted VHS camcorder if it weren't for the quality digital video can do.

Like Croubie, I don't watch news videos much either. Annoying ads preceding the videos, disruptive in the workplace, etc.. I can pull up a photo and appreciate that though. Still photos will go away like text or paint or pencil as a medium. Not.

 

[Ricardo Miranda]

What is a "moving image?" They are all stills. What is your cutoff between seeing a 'still' or 'moving' image? 30 fps, 24 fps, 18 fps, 6 fps, 2 fps, 0.5 fps? The average museum viewer sees a new picture each 30 seconds, that is 0.03 picture frames per second.

This discussion of movie vs still is not new with respect to "still" cameras. You all have seen this, right? I guess next we will be discussing if color pictures are really better than B&W now that they can be produced so easily by a cellphone... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwv82GIrHOg[video=youtube;hwv82GIrHOg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwv82GIrHOg[/video]

I love this movie!

 

[Prof_Pixel]

every time I see a still photographer's website and portfolio, and they've uploaded all their photos into some flash animation that just randomly pans and zooms in and out of their images, I instantly close it before my fist goes through my monitor.

Done correctly, there are no random pans and zooms; it requires a great deal of planning to have the desired emotional impact. Note too that appropriate music is an important part of the emotional impact.

 

[cliveh]

Done correctly, there are no random pans and zooms; it requires a great deal of planning to have the desired emotional impact. Note too that appropriate music is an important part of the emotional impact.

How true, once you introduce movement/sound the computations of getting what you want are a zillion +.

 

[Jeff Kubach]

Movies and photographs have their own niches. Photographs can be mounted on the walls. It is hard to mount a movie on the walls.

Unless it is a long wall!

Jeff

 

[Sirius Glass]

Unless it is a long wall!

Jeff

Somehow that sounds like a stretch.

 

[Maris]

Stills versus movies? Different means to different ends!

Until stop-action still photography was invented no one knew what moving things really looked like. Even the great old painters got breaking waves and galloping horses wrong.
Until long exposure still photography was invented no one knew what a moving image integrated over time looked like. The great landscape painters never painted a waterfall like a flow of cream.
Think of still photographs as physical facts.

Movies are narratives and narratives, at least sometimes, consist of a stream of successive facts.

 

[removed account4]

Stills versus movies? Different means to different ends!

Until stop-action still photography was invented no one knew what moving things really looked like. Even the great old painters got breaking waves and galloping horses wrong.
Until long exposure still photography was invented no one knew what a moving image integrated over time looked like. The great landscape painters never painted a waterfall like a flow of cream.
Think of still photographs as physical facts.

Movies are narratives and narratives, at least sometimes, consist of a stream of successive facts.

THANK YOU !

 

[Bill Burk]

These are two completely different media to me, movies compared to still photography.

I'm working with a filmmaker, who I'll hopefully be providing some stills for...

Part of a discussion we had... I told him I was never able to make movies and he felt he was unable to take stills...

He added... "not to compare myself talentwise at all, but approach wise, I am more of a Tarantino and less of a Kubrick"

So in that spirit I told him... "by the same token I am more an Adams than a Mortensen"...

 

[Sirius Glass]

What Bill said. Different media with different skills for different purposes.

 

[yulia_s_rey]

With the moving image becoming more common in digital photography, do you think the still image is now or soon resigned to history?

Not at all. Both still photography and motion pictures are different crafts in many respects. One cannot compare one to the other; they are both unique forms of expression.
For example, consider how in still a single 'fine-art' image can draw many different ideas by the audience/viewers, and how in the motion-picture it is the director's* idea(s) being conveyed directly to the audience.

Now-a-days, all that is different is the ease of use for acquiring digital video upwards of 2K on the consumer/pro-sumer level. In short both will live on even on that day that we have Star Trek-type holodecks.

 

[MattKing]

There will be differences in the future, because although moving and still photography involve their own skill sets, the wider availability of video tools and their relative ease of use (compared to the past) and the amazing accessability of youtube and other resources will most likely mean that many creative people will choose in the future to use video to express that creativity when in the past they may have chosen still photography.