Moving image v still

removed account4 · Jun 24, 2014

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

clive

for 10years or more commercial photographers often times shoot DV (digital video )
burn a cd at the end of a shoot, and someone snatches stills from the stream of images.
if that is what you mean ... commercial photography will NEVER be the same again /
unless the client wants something "different" meaning the way it used to be ...
or something heavily "retouched" which used to happen with silver prints as well ...

markbarendt · Jun 24, 2014

ic-racer said:
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]

love it

ROL · Jun 24, 2014

One of the most consistently overlooked aspects of still photography, in fact the fine art image, often oversimplified as 'composition', is the ability to tell a story in a single moment, frame, image – however you would like to define it. That is a moving image (double entendre intended). I always strive for it, and encourage others to tell their own story in their images, no matter the format.

Dr Croubie · Jun 24, 2014

jnanian said:
for 10years or more commercial photographers often times shoot DV (digital video )
burn a cd at the end of a shoot, and someone snatches stills from the stream of images.
if that is what you mean ... commercial photography will NEVER be the same again /
unless the client wants something "different" meaning the way it used to be ...
or something heavily "retouched" which used to happen with silver prints as well ...

Well, that's what they're doing with the latest iteration of dslrs, even proffered as a selling point by Canon.
So not only can you now get 18MP at 14 frames per second with the traditional "still" mode, you can get 4k video (8.8MP) at 25fps and frame-grab from that (and then airbrush the hell out of it anyway). The only thing you can't do with that is 'normal' flash/strobe lighting, has to be continuously lit (or natural/ambient).

Personally, I use high-speed on my 7D and EOS 3 very very rarely when shooting birds and sports. For anything else I'd much rather spend 2 hours building a lighting rig to take 1 photo I know is right than to spray off a few hundred and spend 2 hours sifting to find the good one. Unfortunately from the digital forums I used to frequent (not any more, I only come here now), I know I'm definitely in the minority: most photogs I know (even the ones who shoot weddings) actually prefer the latter.

ambaker · Jun 24, 2014

As already mentioned,the ease of moving pictures display, and interactive capabilities increase, the demand in some areas for stills will decrease.

I'd rather see interactive movies of how to instructions, than a few stills.

At the same time, there are stills that I could explore every day for the rest of my life, and if they were movies they would not have near the attraction or impact.

One cannot, and never will, replace the other.

rorye · Jun 24, 2014

This thread reminds me of a fabulous movie, "La Jetee", made up almost entirely of stills with one 3 second moving clip in it.
Those 3 seconds were powerful.

Nuff · Jun 24, 2014

It's hard enough taking good photo, taking good video? It's beyond me, I have a dslr and I only ever used it once in 4 years of ownership.
But my guess is that different brains work differently.

blockend · Jun 25, 2014

The upcoming generation of 4k digital cameras could be a game changer. The quality will enable photographers to shoot movies and pick the best still photograph and the quality will hold up. That's like having an endless contact sheet from which to pick the choicest images. It demands impeccable editing skills of course*.

Younger visual artists worry less about movie vs still, film vs video, absolute resolution, etc, than us older photographers and get on with the business of making art with whatever's at hand. I think they have it right. A good movie sequence is a rare as a good photograph.

edit: *Dr Croubie made a similar point.

cliveh · Jun 25, 2014

Please note I'm not talking about movies here or long films. I mean the still image being partially displaced by a moving image/multiple image capture, that also maybe compressed or elongated over its timespan. Perhaps just 3 or 4 seconds.

markbarendt · Jun 25, 2014

Whether shorts will replace still or not I don't know. There is a pull to add more frames because many, probably most photos, don't tell enough of a story.

One of the biggest challenges we have in still photography is telling a story in a single shot; putting/showing a subject in an interesting situation.

A form that I've experimented with just a little bit is creating a contact sheet from a single roll of film that tells a larger story. It's a way to add more context points from a single "event" into a single print. Could be a Norman Rockwell kind of idea (but not form) or maybe a still version of the movie clip idea, maybe its a printed version of the slide shows we/I enjoyed way back when.

Whatever the drive, there is a pull to add more frames because IMO many, probably most photos, don't tell enough of a story by themselves.

removed account4 · Jun 25, 2014

rorye said:
This thread reminds me of a fabulous movie, "La Jetee", made up almost entirely of stills with one 3 second moving clip in it.
Those 3 seconds were powerful.

and an awful lot of mumblings and muffled noises
killer film!

yulia_s_rey · Jun 25, 2014

blockend said:
The upcoming generation of 4k digital cameras could be a game changer. The quality will enable photographers to shoot movies and pick the best still photograph and the quality will hold up. That's like having an endless contact sheet from which to pick the choicest images. It demands impeccable editing skills of course*.

Younger visual artists worry less about movie vs still, film vs video, absolute resolution, etc, than us older photographers and get on with the business of making art with whatever's at hand. I think they have it right. A good movie sequence is a rare as a good photograph.

edit: *Dr Croubie made a similar point.

I see what you are referring to, but, in my opinion, it is not like having an "endless contact sheet." For example, let's just focus on the aspect of shutter speed alone: a moving image is most often comprised of images taken at 1/48 (for 24fps) 1/60 (30fps) of a sec, one using video acquisition for stills will never fully understand the craft that is involved behind still (unless you're that type of photographer that limits shutter speed and only just adjusts your aperture)

This is why in cinema we often say a film is a gestalt, or a sum of its smaller parts: shots make-up a sequence and sequences make-up the idea. (Following the Formalist Film Theory)

Moving and still are different beasts all together. Yes, they share a certain technological and aesthetic aspects, but that is it.

Moving image v still

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